San Pedro Sula

On 27 June 1536 the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado founded a Spanish town beside the Indigenous settlement of Choloma, calling it Villa de Señor San Pedro de Puerto Caballos. It began with 35 Spanish citizens and 200 enslaved people to build it and work the fields, and the conquest brought a collapse of the native population from which it never recovered. In 1601 Spain made Santo Tomás the official port of its Central American colonies, diverting trade from Puerto Caballos, and the town declined: it had only 70 inhabitants in 1714 and 357 in 1789.

Bananas and railways revived it. The Interoceanic Railroad, built between 1869 and 1874, linked the town to the coast at Puerto Cortés, and the banana trade of the 1870s and 1880s brought growth; in 1875 the population was reported at 1,200. The city formed close ties with Samuel Zemurray's Cuyamel Fruit Company, which worked with local elites and paid very few taxes. In the twentieth century migrants from the interior and from abroad, among them Palestinians, came to the growing city.

In the later twentieth century San Pedro Sula became the country's industrial centre, filled with textile maquilas and migrants from the countryside. Hurricane Mitch in 1998 left a lasting mark on the banana industry around the city. From the 2000s the city became the centre of gang violence; it was described as the murder capital of the world until early 2016, and in 2013 it recorded 187 homicides per 100,000 residents. Homicide rates in Honduras have since fallen from their peak.

San Pedro Sula sees itself as the country's engine — practical, commercial and hard-working, in contrast to the government city of Tegucigalpa. Its mix is distinctive: about a tenth of the people are of Arab, mainly Palestinian, origin, an Antiochian Orthodox cathedral built in 1963 stands alongside the Catholic cathedral begun in 1949, and migrants from the Honduran interior, North America and Europe settled here in the twentieth century.

Football is the city's passion. It is the only Honduran city with two major football stadiums, and its two most popular clubs, Marathón and Real España, divide the city; the larger Estadio Olímpico Metropolitano also has facilities for athletics. Nights out centre on the Zona Viva, with karaoke, live music at weekends and discos that fill late.

The Museum of Anthropology and History tells the story of the Sula valley from pre-Columbian times, and the crafts market near the Parque Central gathers leatherwork, textiles and silver from around the country. The city is also the starting point for journeys to the Maya ruins of Copán, the Garífuna coast and the Bay Islands.

San Pedro Sula had 701,200 people in its central urban area in 2023 and 1,445,598 in its metropolitan area, making it the second city of Honduras and the largest city in Central America that is not a capital. Its metropolitan area in the Sula valley is the second most populous in Honduras.

The economy rests on industry, commerce and finance: textile and apparel maquilas and trade through Puerto Cortés, the largest seaport in Central America by volume of traffic. The banana industry around the city has never fully recovered from Hurricane Mitch, and in some years manufacturing has struggled too.

The city is divided into barrios and colonias spreading out from the centre: the business district of El Benque, residential colonias in the north-west, and poorer districts on the edges, among them Chamelecón to the south, which has been under heavy pressure from street gangs. Gang violence and extortion weigh heavily on daily life in the poorer districts. Heat sets the rhythm: early starts, air-conditioned malls at midday and busy evenings.

The baleada, the north coast's favourite food and one of the most common street foods in Honduras, is believed to have originated on this coast, particularly in La Ceiba: a flour tortilla filled with refried beans, crumbled cheese and mantequilla, a cream, with eggs, avocado or meat added. Pastelitos are a common snack, and chicken is often served with tajadas, slices of fried green plantain.

Fried and rotisserie chicken is a city institution, sold by Honduran chains such as Pollos El Hondureño and by small local shops. Grills and steakhouses serve Honduran-style beef and chicken, particularly in the Zona Viva; the city also has Mexican and Italian restaurants, and cheap Mexican-style taquerías around the Parque Central are busy at breakfast and lunch.

Everyday Honduran plates of rice, beans, plantain, cuajada (fresh cheese), cream and tortillas are served in comedores across the city. Salva Vida is one of the big Honduran beers, and fried fish from the lakeside restaurants of Lake Yojoa is the classic meal on the road south to the capital.