The Honduran Army in the Sociopolitical Evolution of the Honduran State

Abstract

Frequently, commentators on political developments in various small Central American nations describe the political participation of the military as if it were an unchanging and ineluctable force that had conditioned public life from time immemorial. Unfortunately, such a perspective not only distorts historical reality but makes it extremely difficult to offer accurate interpretations of current events. While it seems fundamentally correct to assert that Latin American military institutions differ from such organizations in other less developed areas in that they were forged in the crucible of 19th rather than 20th century events, such a generalization cannot apply to every Hispanic nation. A more adequate representation of reality might be that there are essentially two types of Latin American military establishments which relate in quite different ways to their respective political systems. First, there is that class of military organization where institutional identities were fairly well established by the early 20th century and, secondly, there are those which bear a closer affinity to military establishments in the new nations. Here, there has been a very late process of institutional consolidation which makes the behavioral patterns of these institutions particularly volatile.

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