The department of El Paraíso occupies the southeast of Honduras, on the border with Nicaragua, next to the important Las Manos border crossing. It is a region of mountains, fertile valleys and a temperate climate, where high-altitude coffee became the main economic engine. The department was created on May 28, 1869 by decree of Congress, during the presidency of José María Medina, initially grouping the jurisdictions of Danlí, Yuscarán, Texiguat and the town of Güinope.
Its capital is Yuscarán, although Danlí is its most populous and dynamic municipality. The region was inhabited by indigenous peoples and colonized during the Spanish period for its mineral and agricultural wealth, and its border position always made it a crossroads and a hub of trade with Nicaragua.
Pine-forest mountains, valleys of coffee and tobacco, and a rural life of strong identity define the landscape of this Honduran east, at once agricultural and strategic.
The colonial treasure of the department is Yuscarán, its capital, one of the most picturesque mining towns in Honduras. Emerging around the rich silver and gold veins of Cerro Monserrat, Yuscarán lived its mining heyday between the 18th and 19th centuries, which left cobblestone streets, stately mansions with wooden balconies and colonial churches perched on the hillside.
In 1979 Yuscarán was declared a National Monument of Honduras, in recognition of its valuable historic ensemble. The exploitation of its minerals in turn spurred the area's cattle ranching and agriculture, and its old mine shafts and the Casa Fortín —today a house of culture and museum— can still be visited, preserving the memory of the silver boom.
Also designated a 'Charming Town', Yuscarán is one of the most authentic destinations in the Honduran east, with its atmosphere frozen in time and its reputation as the cradle of the country's best aguardiente.
Yuscarán is famous throughout Honduras for its traditional aguardiente, the 'guaro of Yuscarán', a strong sugar-cane distillate produced since colonial times. The Yuscarán brand became a national icon, and its distillery is one of the town's hallmarks, tied to the agricultural and festive history of the east.
Guaro, made from cane molasses, accompanies Honduran popular celebrations and has become almost synonymous with the name of Yuscarán. Its production, along with mining and agriculture, sustained the local economy for generations and made the town famous far beyond the department's borders.
Today, the combination of mining heritage, colonial mansions and liquor-making tradition makes Yuscarán an obligatory stop for anyone traveling through the east of Honduras.
Danlí, the largest municipality in El Paraíso, is one of the great coffee-growing centers of Honduras and an important hub for the manufacture of handmade cigars, heir to the tobacco culture of the east. Its cigar factories, many of them founded by exiled Cuban tobacco growers, export internationally acclaimed cigars, and the city celebrates each year the popular Corn Fair, one of the most crowded festivals in the country.
El Paraíso has established itself as one of Honduras's great coffee-producing departments, a country that has become the largest coffee exporter in Central America and one of the leading ones in Latin America. Its high-altitude farms, in municipalities such as Danlí, El Paraíso and Güinope —famous for its apples and fruit— produce internationally prestigious beans.
The departmental economy thus combines coffee, tobacco, basic grains, cattle ranching and cross-border trade with Nicaragua, in a region of strong agricultural vocation.
The border position of El Paraíso gave it a strategic and tragic role during the 1980s. The area —around Danlí, El Paraíso and the mountains bordering Nicaragua— was one of the main settings of the presence of the Nicaraguan 'Contras', the anti-Sandinista guerrilla financed and trained with U.S. support at the height of the Central American Cold War.
In these mountains camps of Nicaraguan combatants and refugees were set up, and the region experienced up close the tensions of a conflict that bled neighboring Nicaragua and turned Honduras into a base of U.S. operations. That legacy left a mark on the department's memory and on its relationship with the border.
Today, with the wars behind it, El Paraíso protects natural areas such as the Yuscarán Biological Reserve, on Cerro Monserrat, and cloud-forest mountains that harbor a rich biodiversity and water sources for the whole region, in an east that combines historical memory, coffee, cigars and nature.