Tela

Tela was founded by the Spanish conquistador Cristóbal de Olid on 3 May 1524, near an Indigenous town called Tehuacán with good water, food and medicinal plants. Olid named it Triunfo de la Cruz, the Triumph of the Cross, after the feast day, and the name survives in a promontory on the bay; some historians derive "Tela" instead from Tetela, a Nahuatl word for a land of hills. Spanish control was light, and by the late sixteenth century buccaneers used the bay to lie in wait for treasure ships. After the British exiled the Garífuna from St Vincent to Roatán in 1797, groups moved along the coast and settled at Tela in 1808, founding Triunfo de la Cruz to the east and San Juan to the west.

Tela became a municipality in 1876 and a city in 1927. Its great years came with bananas: from 1914 it was the headquarters of the Tela Railroad Company, the Honduran subsidiary of the United Fruit Company, which stayed until 1970. The company built a planned town for its staff across the river, segregated by race, with a hospital, schools and a golf course, and brought in workers from Jamaica, Belize and the English-speaking Caribbean. Hostility towards these workers grew, immigration laws were tightened in 1929 and 1934, and hundreds were deported in the 1930s.

Floods ruined plantations in 1930, and Tela declined before slowly recovering. In 1954 it was the epicentre of the general strike that won major concessions for banana workers. The company returned its lands to the town in 1976. The long dock burned in 1994, and a hasty replacement, opened in January 1995, collapsed in high winds; since then the town has turned to tourism, fishing and farming.

Tela is one of the favourite beach towns of Hondurans themselves. In Holy Week tens of thousands arrive to swim, drink and party, and in June the town celebrates its patron saint, San Antonio de Padua, with a week of parades and parties; after the carnival parade, bands play on the seafront boulevard. Most Teleños are Catholic, with the church of San Antonio across the river from downtown, but Episcopal, Mormon and evangelical churches are part of the town as well, including a large evangelical church near the beach known locally as the "Jumping Church".

The Garífuna villages around the bay are the town's most distinctive communities. Some, such as Tornabé, hold their land under a communal title, and the Garífuna language, dance and music, recognised by UNESCO, are part of life along this coast. Women from the villages sell pan de coco, coconut sweets and crafts along the beaches, including jewellery made from shells and coconut shell.

The banana-company years left their own mark: the planned streets and bungalows of Tela Nuevo, the abandoned station and pier near the bridge downtown, and a memory of the English-speaking Caribbean workers who brought Methodist and Anglican churches to the town.

The town of Tela has about 40,000 people, by a 2023 calculation, and is the centre of a large municipality that includes the Garífuna villages, farming settlements and protected forest. Tourism, fishing, agriculture, cattle and trade are the main sources of work, and tourist jobs swell in Holy Week and December. In the Garífuna communities, families grow cassava to make casabe and sell starch, fish and coconut oil to towns as far as San Pedro Sula.

The Lancetilla river divides the town into Tela Viejo, the old commercial centre to the east, and Tela Nuevo, the former company town to the west. Downtown's main street is a busy row of shops, banks, bars and pool halls, and in the barrios almost every corner has a pulpería, a small shop in the front of a family house. Fishermen bring their catch to the market and to restaurants each day.

Emigration to the United States, Canada, the Cayman Islands and Spain is common, and many households depend on money sent home.

Tela eats like the rest of the north coast, with the Caribbean close at hand. The baleada — a thick flour tortilla folded over refried beans, cheese and cream, often with egg, avocado or meat — is everywhere, and many Hondurans say the best are made in Tela and La Ceiba. Fresh fish arrives daily, and sopa de caracol, conch soup made with coconut milk, and sopa de jaiba, crab soup, are the seafood dishes to try.

Garífuna cooking is built on coconut, cassava, plantain and fish. Casabe is a large flat bread of dried cassava, made in the villages around the bay, and pan de coco, coconut bread, is baked and sold door to door and on the beaches along with coconut sweets. A cold coconut, cut open on the beach, is the usual drink in the heat, and the beach bars serve local beers.

The town market, two blocks from the park, sells fruit, vegetables and meat from the surrounding farms as well as the morning's fish.