The several gringo concerns have so developed the formerly worthless, fever-stricken swamps of the Caribbean, that to-day it contains almost half the population of Honduras, and produces eighty-two per cent. of the country’s revenue, and both ratios are increasing in favor of the Coast. Nearly all the revolutions start in this region, partly because of its isolation from the Capital where the government holds sway, and partly because in cutting off the revenue the revolutionists can starve the government into surrender.
With every revolution—as in all these countries—come rumors that some American company is back of it, financing a new régime as the cheapest road to new concessions. The rumors are so recurrent that some of them are probably true. But the Honduraneans as a whole are rather fond of insurrection, whether started by foreigners or by their own countrymen. Living in a country for the most part unfertile and unproductive, whose resources can be developed only by much toil and trouble, they find it easier to leave constructive work to the gringo, while they squabble among themselves for control of the government.
XII
January first arrived, and Congress met.
I went to the Capitol with Mario Ribas, who was the Associated Press Correspondent and the editor of Tegucigalpa’s leading magazine. He was a Spaniard and a neutral in politics.
“If any one starts shooting,” he advised, “the quickest way out of the building is that of sliding down the shed, running across the patio, and climbing over the roof.”
The legislators met in a long, narrow room filled with plain wooden benches. On the wall were the pictures of former presidents, almost none of whom had been able to finish his term before succeeded by one of the others. The chamber’s only real embellishments were the many flags and draperies of blue and white that hung from the ceiling.
At the entrance was a company of boy soldiers from the military school—none of them twenty years of age, but considered the most dependable of the government troops. Their officers scanned every one who entered the Capitol, but they knew Ribas, and passed us without question.
The congressmen assembled gradually, each of them appearing a trifle nervous. They wore high hats and Prince Albert coats, but a suspicious bulge at the hip testified that each was ready for a possible emergency, and when a coat swung accidentally open, one caught a glimpse of a well-filled cartridge belt.
Still, the first day passed without disturbance. There was a slight row when the august body voted down a motion to make some trifling alteration to the minutes of the last meeting. The deputy whose motion was defeated rose indignantly. With the amazing sensitiveness of the Latin-American, he felt that he had been personally insulted. Furiously he turned and stamped out of Congress, seizing his hat and cane from the rack outside, and knocking down the hats of several other deputies in his haste. They all rushed out, picked up their hats, wiped off the dust, and hung them up again. Then the meeting resumed, interrupted by other slight rows, as other men took offense because their suggestions were not received enthusiastically, and followed the exit of the first.