The Town of La Esperanza

Welcome To The Capital Of The Pine Forest State of Intibuca

Come and Experience The Hospitality and Beauty of the Mountain Cloud Forest

Welcome to La Esperanza, the "Hope".  This mountain town is multifaceted and multicultural with about 12,000 population.  In truth, La Esperanza is two cities, the Barrio El Centro is found in La Esperanza.  Surrounding La Esperanza is Intibuca, the Indian city.  La Esperanza is where the Spanish colonial city was built.  Here you will find the Parque Central (a central park is a hallmark of colonial Spanish towns).  In many towns that you go to in the South in the US, you find a Central Park in the center of town. That means that community was settled originally as part of El Camino Real, The Royal Road of Spain. The Royal Road or El Camino Real stretched from St. Augustine, Florida to Argentina.

La Esperanza is also home to the Correo Nacional, the national post office. The Catholic Cathedral was built by the Spaniards who also built colonial houses in the Spanish style.  Look for the old houses that present a solid, windowless front to the street with two portones or gateways.  One is the entryway for people to come into the house or courtyard.  The second portón is for vehicles. Many newer houses have gates of wrought iron and may have windows covered with wrought iron grills.

People in La Esperanza live inside their families. They visit and socialize with "parientes," extended family members such as brothers,  sisters, aunts, uncles, and a wide variety of cousins.  If you can trace your relationship back several generations, you can still call yourself a member of the parientes.

I watched one of the new rich family members try to connect their grandchild's parentage to an ancestor from four generations ago to say that the child was a pariente of one of the genteel, though poor aristocratic families. The aristocrat would have none of it. The new rich were not their pariente.  The woman who had tried to connect lost face and left the room close to tears.

So the concept of family is vital to belonging here.  Only if you are able to form true relationships with a family will you be invited to see inside the houses of the "Old Families" of Esperanza.  The way to do that is to come back year after year, live like they do, and treating them with respect so that  finally you will be admitted. But you must work at it. You need to keep your relationships within the same parientes and carefully cultivate them.  Whenever you visit, bring gifts such as jewelry, clothing, and other items.  Be generous with your gifts. Always bring gifts for the children.

Hospitality in La Esperanza requires you to always have coffee made and available.  Hot chocolate should also be available and you could also have manzanilla tea .  That requires three thermos jugs.  Coffee should always be made fresh in the morning.  Never save it over as it is horrible the next day.  Cookies or cakes are required to be served with the hot drink.

You can tell the social class and culture by looking at the clothes.  Women who work in offices often wear beige, brown or muted colors with two-piece suits.  Young girls often wear tight pants and pretty clothes. But these are not a signal to accost them.  Usually there is a brother, cousin or pariente in the area and you could get into trouble accosting them.  Most married women do not dress that way, especially during the work day.  Although women who are government officials wear brown, beige, blue or muted suits, in the evenings at fiestas or at special occasions such as weddings or "bodas," they wear beautiful clothes and jewelry. 

Men of the business class dress any way they want.  You may see a man in jeans getting out of an expensive SUV. He may be a store owner.  Men of this class have high self esteem and they are used to having their way in all things.  No one in their families would dare disagree with them. They are lords of all they survey and do not have to dress up to prove it. 

Often women of the prosperous are not allowed out of the house except with a male relative or in a family group.  If a younger woman of this class goes out, usually she is accompanied by an older relative, mother or aunt.  You see them walking with their arms around each other or holding hands.

Bicycles are probably the primary mode of transportation in La Esperanza.  There are numerous Toyotas, Nissans, some SUVs, buses and large stake and trucks with covered bodies.  Daily you might see ox drawn carts as well as men on horse back.  The one thing I have never seen in La Esperanza is a burro.  I have seen them on the road to Siguatepeque, but never one in the town. Siguatepeque is the turn off point to El Esperanza that is on the road from Tegucigalpa to San Pedro Sula. Horses are often tied up in the Parque Central while their owners shop or perform the ubiquitous "mandados" or errands.

Here are some scenes of La Esperanza.

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