FEATURE: MAQUILAS

M. Fine & Sons says best investment is in Honduran people

Four years ago Robert Breeden accepted an offshore offer from the company he had been working for for ten years in Louisville, Kentucky. Without much knowledge about Honduras, not even its language, he and his wife Carolyne found themselves operating the M. Fine & Sons industrial building at ZIP Bufalo less than a year later.

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Cultural differences can complicate worker-management relations

The Honduran maquila industry has grown steadily in the last five years. Many of the foreign investors who have built plants in Honduran industrial parks come from other highly-saturated maquila countries, mostly in Asia.

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The maquila is an old industry energized by new ideas

The Honduran maquila industry has been around for more than 70 years now, but it didn't begin to boom until 1987 when the private sector convinced the National Congress to pass the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) Law.

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Kattan family teaches Honduras a lesson in ambition

When you think of the Honduras of the 1920's you think of a third world country subject to constant coups and military rule, a place where multinational banana companies controlled the economy, and a society struggling to keep pace with a politically and economically changing world.

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Strikes uncommon but not nonexistent among maquila workers

Honduran workers began fighting at the beginning of the century for labor rights. After many attempts, the great banana strike of 1954 gave Honduran workers the right to form unions. But the struggle didn't stop there.

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Building success on environmental and community awareness

Thirty years ago San Pedro Sula merchant Juan Canahuati had no idea his business know-how would build one of Honduras' most progressive industrial empires.

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Latino cuisine goes microwave fiendly for U.S. market

What do you do when you get a craving for a big plate of fried plantains? Usually at least 25 minutes of peeling, cutting and frying. For Latin plantain lovers that's nothing. But for their fast-paced U.S. counterparts, it's two minutes in the microwave or nothing at all.

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The maquila: a gem of potential locked in a hodgepodge of problems

Made in Honduras.

You will never buy another article of clothing without checking for those three little words once your sojourn in Honduras gives you a unique insight into the politics, the trade agreements and the myriad of livelihoods that lie behind them.

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'Maquila republic'

SAN PEDRO SULA -- Like the banana nearly 100 years ago, the maquila is forcing wrenching change on the family-based Honduran society.

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