Copán & the West

Copán was the south-eastern outpost of the Classic Maya world. A dynasty founded by K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' in the early fifth century AD ruled the Copán valley for about four hundred years, and sixteen kings are shown on Altar Q, carved for the last great ruler, Yax Pasaj. The thirteenth, Waxaklajuun Ub'aah K'awiil, often called 18-Rabbit, filled the Great Plaza with sculpted stelae before being captured and executed by the ruler of nearby Quiriguá in 738. His successor rebuilt the Hieroglyphic Stairway he had begun and doubled its length, but by the ninth century royal power had collapsed and the valley slowly emptied. The American John Lloyd Stephens and the artist Frederick Catherwood brought the ruins to world attention in Stephens's book of 1841.

The highlands further east belonged to Lenca peoples. Around 1537 the Lenca leader Lempira led resistance to the Spanish from the fortified rock of Cerquín before being killed, and the department of Lempira and the national currency now carry his name. The Spanish founded Gracias a Dios in 1536, and in 1544 it became the seat of the Audiencia de los Confines, the court that governed Central America, before that moved to Guatemala a few years later. In the eighteenth century Santa Rosa de Copán grew as the centre of the Spanish crown's tobacco monopoly. In the twentieth century the west turned to coffee, and it remains a major coffee region.

The west is rural, Catholic and conservative, with deep Indigenous roots. Around Copán Ruinas live Ch'orti' Maya communities, and in Lempira and the neighbouring highlands the Lenca are the majority in many villages. The Lenca language has almost disappeared, but the guancasco — ceremonial visits exchanged between neighbouring villages carrying their patron saints — keeps older beliefs alive alongside the Church.

Lenca pottery, made by women in villages such as La Campa near Gracias, is shaped by hand, fired in open fires and decorated with simple designs. Santa Bárbara is known for weaving hats, baskets and mats from junco palm, and Santa Rosa de Copán for hand-rolled cigars. Holy Week processions in Gracias and Santa Rosa are elaborate, and each town holds a patron-saint fair with rodeos, music and fireworks.

The west's colonial towns see themselves as the older, more cultivated Honduras, and Santa Rosa de Copán has a strong regional pride. People here are known as reserved and courteous; greetings are formal, and dress in the villages is modest.

Santa Rosa de Copán, with about 62,000 people, is the region's commercial centre, followed by Santa Bárbara and Ocotepeque; Copán Ruinas and Gracias are small towns of a few thousand residents in their centres. Most people live in hamlets scattered across steep hills, and Lempira has long been one of the poorest departments in Honduras.

Coffee drives the economy. Smallholders in Copán, Santa Bárbara, Lempira and Ocotepeque grow high-altitude arabica. The harvest, from roughly November to March, brings pickers into the hills and cash into the towns. Maize and beans feed households, cattle graze the lower valleys, and tourism supports Copán Ruinas and, on a smaller scale, Gracias.

Ocotepeque, near the point where Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador meet, lives from cross-border trade. Emigration to the United States is high in the west, and remittances pay for many of the new houses in the villages.

The west eats highland food: thick maize tortillas, often patted by hand and cooked on a clay comal, with red beans, eggs, cuajada (fresh curd cheese), quesillo (a stretched, mild cheese) and mantequilla, a soured cream. Sopa de gallina india, a soup made from a free-range hen, is a weekend and fiesta dish, and tamales and tamalitos de elote, made from fresh corn, appear during the maize harvest.

Lenca villages make chicha, a fermented maize drink used in rituals, and atol, a thick warm corn drink. Rosquillas, hard rings of maize dough baked with cheese, and semitas, sweet breads, are eaten with coffee, and coffee itself, grown on the hills around Santa Rosa, Gracias and Santa Bárbara, is served everywhere, strong and sweet.

Copán Ruinas has the region's most varied restaurants, and small farms around it offer coffee and cacao tastings. Santa Rosa de Copán is known for its cigars rather than a dish, and its market for cheeses and local honey.

The ruins of Copán, about 1.6 kilometres from the town of Copán Ruinas, are the region's centrepiece: the Great Plaza with its stelae of 18-Rabbit, the ball court, the Hieroglyphic Stairway with its long inscription, the Acropolis with Altar Q, and tunnels that expose earlier temples beneath. The Sculpture Museum at the site holds original stelae, the original Altar Q and a full-size replica of the painted Rosalila temple, and the residential group of Las Sepulturas lies along a path to the north-east. Around the town are hot springs, coffee farms and Ch'orti' villages.

Santa Rosa de Copán, high on the road to the east, has a cathedral, a colonial centre and the Flor de Copán cigar factory. Gracias keeps colonial churches, the hilltop Fortress of San Cristóbal and hot-spring pools outside town. Above it rises Celaque National Park, with cloud-forest trails and Cerro Las Minas, the highest point in Honduras at about 2,850 metres. From Gracias, roads lead into the Lenca highlands: the pottery village of La Campa and, further in, San Manuel Colohete with its colonial church.

To the south-west, Ocotepeque borders the Montecristo cloud forest near the tri-border point with Guatemala and El Salvador, and Santa Bárbara National Park rises above the junco-weaving town of Santa Bárbara.