The population of Honduras is 7.5 million. 90% of the population is Mestizo, 7% ( mixture Amerindian and European ) Amerindian, 2% black and 1% white.[1]
The 7% of the Amerindian population in Honduras include the Ch'orti' (Mayan descent), Pech (2,500), Tolupan or Xicaque (25,000 hab.), Lenca (100,000 hab.), Sumo or Tawahka (1,000), and Miskito (40,000 hab.), most still keep their language, Lenca being an exception. For the most part, these tribes live in rural areas and deal with extreme poverty.
About 2% of Honduras's population is officially recognized in the census as black, or Afro-Honduran, and mainly reside on the country's Caribbean or Atlantic coast. The black population is mostly of West Indian (Antillean) origin, the descendants of indentured laborers brought mostly from Jamaica and Haiti. The Garifuna (people of mixed Amerindian and African ancestry) live along the north coast and islands, where there are also many Afro-Hondurans. This ethnic group, estimated at 150,000 people, has it origin in the expulsion of black people who refused to be slaves, by the British authorities, from the island of St. Vincent during the eighteenth century after the Carib Wars. GarÃfunas are part of Honduran identity through theatrical presentations such as Louvavagu.
Many Honduran families have roots in the Middle East, specifically Palestine. 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 Arab-Hondurans, who tend to cluster in the city of San Pedro Sula, alongside a tiny Jewish minority population (from Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Russia) exert considerable influence on Honduran economics and politics through their industrial and financial interests.
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