Bajo Aguán (''Lower Aguán'') refers to the lower part of

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...

' Aguán River Valley, in the north-eastern Colón Department and

Yoro Department Yoro is one of the 18 departments into which Honduras is divided. The department contains rich agricultural lands, concentrated mainly on the valley of the Aguan River and the Sula Valley, on opposite ends. The departmental capital is Yoro. The de ...

; the entire valley covers 200,000

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...

s.Jeffrey R. Jones
Colonization and Environment: Land Settlement Projects in Central America
The United Nations University Press, 1990 The area was at one time farmed by banana companies, but was abandoned in the 1930s, after which infrastructure deteriorated and the population sharply declined, to 68,000 inhabitants in 1961. Re-colonization of the area after 1974 resulted in a population increase, to 181,000 by 1980. The region is now again a major agricultural area, and by the early 1980s was producing "the majority of the nation's pineapple, grapefruit, and coconut, and nearly half its banana output". By 2011 though, much of the farmland was turned to

oil palm ''Elaeis'' () is a genus of palms, called oil palms, containing two species, native to Africa and the Americas. They are used in commercial agriculture in the production of palm oil. Description Mature palms are single-stemmed, and can gro ...

plantations, including 22,000 acres (around a fifth of Bajo Aguán's agricultural land) owned by Miguel Facussé Barjum's Corporación Dinant.''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', September 15, 201
In Honduras, Land Struggles Highlight Post-Coup Polarization
/ref> Ramón Amaya Amador set his novel ', among the concerns of life on banana

plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...

s in the area.

References

External links

* Food First Information and Action Network
Human Rights Violations in Bajo Aguán
July 2011 Regions of Central America Geography of Honduras {{Honduras-geo-stub

References

Further reading

External links