Honduras is the size of Pennsylvania, with Guatemala on its northern border, El Salvador to the west, and Nicaragua to the south. It’s two hundred miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific at the narrowest point. When Zemurray arrived, there were a half million people in the country, the majority of them poor mestizos, that is, half-breeds. It was a divided nation, with the Atlantic lowlands more properly Caribbean than Central American—seaside, frond filled, populated by the descendants of African slaves—and the highlands reminiscent of the ancient Mayan landscape known to the conquistadores.
