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Tegucigalpa

Honduras · North America

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Capital and largest city of Honduras

About Tegucigalpa

Tegucigalpa —formally Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District, and colloquially referred to as Tegus or Teguz—is the capital and largest city of Honduras along with its sister city, Comayagüela.

Etymology

Most sources indicate the origin and meaning of the word Tegucigalpa is derived from the Nahuatl language. The most widely accepted version suggests that it comes from the Nahuatl word taguz-galpa, which means 'hills of silver', but this interpretation is uncertain since the natives who occupied the region at the time were unaware of the existence of mineral deposits in the area. Another source suggests that Tegucigalpa derives from another language in which it means 'painted rocks', as explained by Leticia Oyuela in her book Minimum History of Tegucigalpa. Other theories indicate it may derive from the term Togogalpa, which refers to tototi (meaning a small green parrot, in Nahuatl) and Toncontín, a small town near Tegucigalpa (toncotín was a Mexican dance of Nahuatl origin). …

History

Tegucigalpa was founded by Spanish settlers as Real de Minas de San Miguel de Tegucigalpa on September 29, 1578, on the site of an existing native settlement of the Lenca and Tolupans. The first mayor of Tegucigalpa was Juan de la Cueva, who took office in 1579. The Dolores Church (1735), the San Miguel Cathedral (1765), the Casa de la Moneda (1780), and the Immaculate Conception Church (1788) were some of the first important buildings constructed. Almost 200 years later, on June 10, 1762, this mining town became Real Villa de San Miguel de Tegucigalpa y Heredia under the rule of Alonso Fernández de Heredia, then-acting governor of Honduras. The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw disruption in Tegucigalpa's local government, from being extinguished in 1788 to becoming part of Comayagua in 1791 to returning to self-city governance in 1817. …

Geography

Tegucigalpa is located on a chain of mountains with elevations of 975 metres (3,199 ft) at its lowest points and 1,463 metres (4,800 ft) at its highest suburban areas. Like most of the interior highlands of Honduras, the majority of Tegucigalpa's current area was occupied by open woodland. The area surrounding the city continues to be open woodland supporting pine forest interspersed with some oak, scrub, and grassy clearings as well as needle leaf evergreen and broadleaf deciduous forest. The metropolitan area of both Tegucigalpa and Comayagua covers a total area of 201 square kilometers (77.6 sq mi) while the entire Municipality of the Central District covers a total area of 1,396 square kilometers (539.1 sq mi). Geological faults that are a threat to the neighborhoods on and below the hill have been identified in the District's high regions surrounding the capital. …

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Economy

The Central District has an economy equal to 19.3 percent of country's GDP. In 2009, the city's revenue and expenditures budget was L.2,856,439,263 (US$151,214,182) while in 2010 it was L.2,366,993,208 (US$125,204,606). 57.9 percent or L.43.860 billion (US$2.318 billion) of the country's national budget is spent within the Central District. The District's active labor force is 367,844 people of which 56,035 are employed in the public sector. In 2009, the unemployment rate in Tegucigalpa was 8.1 percent, and an unemployed person may spend as much as four months seeking employment. There are 32,665 business establishments throughout the capital, the most of any city in the country. The size of these businesses is broken down as follows: micro-enterprises (73.2%), small businesses (9.63%), medium-sized businesses (7.47%), large companies (0.28%), and the remainder unreported (9.62%). …

Transportation

All barrios and colonias in Tegucigalpa can be accessed by automobile, although some neighborhoods in the city suffer from unpaved, narrow, or hilly streets making them difficult to maneuver. A grid of surface streets and a network of major avenues and boulevards cross through the major areas of the capital. However, the most transited roads suffer from heavy traffic congestion due to the region's geography and disorganized urbanization. An estimate of 400,000 vehicles take on the city streets and roads every day. The oldest districts were not built with the advent of the automobile in mind and therefore lack efficient roadways to accommodate the overwhelming number of vehicles. Newer developments, such as the malls, have been built with the car in mind allowing for large parking lots to accommodate their visitors. …

Demographics

The 2013 Honduran census recorded a population of 1,157,509 in the Central District, continuing a trend of population growth in the city since the 2001 census, which recorded 850,445 residents. In 2004, there were 185,577 households with an average of 4.9 members per household. Both the city's population and metro area are expected to double by 2029. The Human Development Index (HDI) is the highest in the country measured at 0.759 in 2006. During the same year, 47.6 percent of the Central District's population lived in poverty—29.7 lived in moderate poverty and 17.9 in extreme poverty. Life expectancy in the District as of 2004 is 72.1 years. By 2010, 4.9 percent of the population remained illiterate, compared to the national rate of 15.2 percent. In 2010, the average monthly income was L.8,321 (US$440.49), compared to the total national average of L.4,767 (US$252. …