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This article is about the ethnic groups and population of Honduras.
According to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects[3][4] the total population was 10,278,345 in 2021, compared to 1,487,000 in 1950 (a fivefold increase in 60 years). The proportion of the population aged below 15 in 2010 was 36.8%, 58.9% were aged between 15 and 65 years of age, and 4.3% were aged 65 years or older.[5]
As of 2014, 60% of Hondurans live below the poverty line.[6] More than 30% of the population is divided between the lower middle and upper middle class, less than 10% are wealthy or belong to the higher social class (most live in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula).
Registration of vital events is in Honduras not complete. The Population Department of the United Nations prepared the following estimates. [5]
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):[13]
The Amerindian population is the largest minority group in Honduras. The largest Amerindian group are the Lencan people. These people have been living in Honduran territory since before the colonization of the Americas, developing their own societies and civilizations. They still have many communities across the country. The indigenous population would begin to decline from the mid-16th century, mainly due to the various diseases brought by the Europeans in addition to the growing mestizo population after the founding of towns and cities. According to the 2001 census the Amerindian population in Honduras included 381,495 people (6.3% of the total population).[14] With the exception of the Lenca and the Ch'orti' they still keep their language.
Six different Amerindian groups were counted at the 2001 census:
Examples of Honduran natives are the many Mayan rules of Copan and other Mayan cities, native chiefs such as Lempira and Cicumba, and environmental and feminist activist Berta Cáceres.
Mestizos (meaning mixed European and Amerindian) have been reported by the CIA World Factbook to be about 87% of the population of Honduras.[15] As in other Latin American countries, the question of racial breakdown of a national population is contentious. Since the beginning of the 20th century at least, Honduras has publicly framed itself as a mestizo nation, along with other Latin American countries such as Guatemala or Mexico, ignoring and at times disparaging both the European component of the population and the surviving Amerindian population that was still regarded as "pure blooded". It's well known that many Hondurans of European or almost entirely Amerindian background consider themselves mestizo.[16][17]
Because of social stigmas attached, many Honduran people denied having African ancestry, and after African descended Caribbean workers arrived in Honduras, an active campaign to denigrate all people of African descent, made persons of mixed race anxious to deny any African ancestry. Hence official statistics quite uniformly under-represent those people who have ancestry in favor of a "two race" solution.[16]
A genetic admixture study focusing on kidney disease in Hispanic populations in the United States found an average genetic mix of 40% European, 39% Indigenous, and 21% African ancestry in the Honduran-American diaspora population, from a sample of 295 US residents who reported all four grandparents born in Honduras.[18] Another genetic study, found that the genetic mix of the majority of Honduran mestizos is 58.4% European, 36.2% Native American, and 5.4% African.[19][20]
Examples of Honduran mestizos are, Poet Clementina Suarez, novelist and poet Roberto Sosa, footballer Noel Valladares and former president Manuel Zelaya.
The Afro-Honduran population consist of people of Afro-Descendants with roots in colonial Honduras, Garifuna, Miskito, and Creoles. Most of them are descendants of African people brought by the Spanish and other European colonizers between the 16th and 18th centuries. Many of them came from the west African coast, from places like Angola or Senegambia, where European bought slaves for their colonies, while others came from the other colonies in the Caribbean.
According to some reports around 230,000 enslaved Africans arrived to Honduras during colonial times, directly from Africa and other colonies in the Americas.
Scholars and private universities claim ranges from 20-30% of the Honduran population being Afro-descendants due to many Black Hondurans or Afro-descendants, Mulattos, Afro-Indigenous and people with significant African descent identifying as Mestizo due to oppression from society and the government and Mestizaje, wide-spread mixing amongst other things.
Examples of well-known Afro-Hondurans are footballers David Suazo, Victor "Muma" Bernardez, Dr. Emet Cherefant, and Wilson Palacios.
Honduras of European descent or White Hondurans, along with Afro-descendants and Amerindians belong to the minorities of Honduras. Most of the white population are descendants of the Spanish settlers, who mainly came from southern Spain, and inhabit most of the western part of the country. Other populations include descendants of European immigrants who arrived at the beginning of the 20th century. In 2014, there were about 14,000 Hondurans of Italian descent, while there were around 400 Italian citizens.[23] Percentages of whites varied between 2.1% and 7%,[24] due to the fact that the majority of Hondurans identify themselves as mestizos, regardless of their ethnic and racial category.[25] This makes it more difficult to study the number of people who fit into the white category in Honduras.
The census states that only 89,000 people in Honduras labeled themselves as white, which is equal to around 1% of the total population at the time.[26] Another study has stated that around 210,000 people in Honduras fit this category, which would make the Honduran white population to be around 2.1%.
However, other studies report that the percentage could rise much more, reaching close to a half a million white people in Honduras, which according to official national sources would make a percentage of between 5% and 6.9% of whites in Hondurans.[27] This is because the majority of whites in Honduras do not identify themselves as Euro-descendants as such, adopting and feeling more identified with the mestizo identity.[28]
Examples of white Hondurans are ex-president Simon Azcona del Hoyo, pharmacologist Salvador Moncada, film director Juan Carlos Fanconi, politician Roberto Micheletti, General Florencio Xatruch and former president of the Central American federation Don Francisco Morazán Quezada.
There is a small Chinese community in Honduras. A lawyer of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) stated that the Chinese community in Honduras is rather small. Many of the Chinese are immigrants who arrived from China after the revolution and their descendants.[29]
Honduras hosts a significant Palestinian community (the vast majority of whom are Christian Arabs).[30] These Arab-Hondurans are sometimes called "Turcos", because they arrived in Honduras using Turkish travel documents, as their homeland was then under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians arrived in the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, establishing themselves especially in the city of San Pedro Sula.[31] As mentioned earlier, they are also considered whites in the country's censuses, in total the Arab-Hondurans make up 3% of the Honduran population.
Spanish immigration to Honduras during the colonial era was the main source of the country's current white and mestizo population. It was later followed by African immigration, first brought over as slaves and later as free people of color.
