Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses the positivist-oriented measures enacted by the State to create a homogenous Honduras in the 19th and 20th centuries. I focus on the socio-scientific reasoning for the strategies carried out to correct the racial and cultural make-up of its Indian and Black populations.

Paper long abstract:

Honduras during the 19th and early 20th centuries was a space controlled by disparate and conflicting powers. Hondurans, Americans, British and others explored and inhabited different regions of this country as well as created a series of representations of the Honduran natural and built environments and the populations they encountered. During this period we see the production and circulation of works that utilized behavioral and physical characteristics - skin color, hair, facial features - as well as tropes of blood to define the cultural and racial composition of the Honduran people. In this presentation, I discuss the relationship between the geographical descriptions and demographic assessments that both foreign and national writers make, and the theories pertaining to natural history and the science of race prevalent in the Americas and Europe. I explain how ideas and assumptions on race were utilized to justify positivist measures aimed at improving the racial and cultural composition of its Amerindian and Black populations, to define Honduran identity in opposition to the Caribbean coastline, and to deny its strong African heritage.