History of Tela

="EN">Tela became an important port in 1914 as headquarters of the Tela Railroad Company, a subsidiary of the United Fruit Company whose Honduran headquarters were there until 1970. The company brought in many laborers for the railroad and then for the banana industry as it expanded its production in Honduras. Many of these workers were African-descended people from the English-speaking Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Belize, and introduced the English language and Protestant (especially Methodist and Anglican) churches to the town.

The United Fruit Company built a new town, called Tela Nueva, outside the older town for its employees. The town, which was carefully planned was segregated by race, and the best housing (single family homes of varying size) was in the "White Zone" (later called the "American Zone") in which only Euro-American employees lived. The remaining workers lived in barracks type houses outside the zone. The town included an excellent hospital, good schools, and a golf course. Some of these units remain today as part of a hotel complex.

Local mestizo and Spanish speaking workers in the town resented the presence of West Indians, who often held the best jobs, and because they spoke English were more able to get even service jobs in the US controlled company. In time the government of Honduras took up an anti-West Indian line, which was accompanied in many cases, by racist literature and cartoons that contrasted the African descended Caribbean workers with the mestizo Hondurans. In 1929 and again in 1934 immigration laws were hardened, making it difficult for English speakers or non-Hondurans to enter the country or remain there, and between 1930 and 1939, hundreds of Caribbean people were deported,