Cortes Department
Industrial powerhouse hosting 100,000+ maquila workers and 70% of maritime trade, vulnerable to export demand shocks and automation displacement.
Cortes represents industrial Honduras—the manufacturing engine that emerged not from colonial heritage but from geographic opportunity. San Pedro Sula, the departmental capital, sits in the Sula Valley where flat terrain, Caribbean port access, and proximity to US markets created conditions for export-oriented manufacturing that Tegucigalpa's mountain-locked position could never replicate.
The department received 16.5% of Honduras's remittances in 2024 ($1.47 billion), placing it second nationally despite housing the country's industrial core. This reflects the export orientation: value is created here but capital flows elsewhere. The maquila sector employs over 100,000 workers directly in Cortes, concentrated in industrial parks at Choloma, Villanueva, and Puerto Cortes. CAFTA-DR preferential access has made Honduras a nearshoring destination, with textile and apparel manufacturing forming the productive backbone.
Yet industrial monoculture creates vulnerability. The sector lost 60,000 jobs across Honduras in 2024 due to tax reform uncertainty, with Cortes bearing disproportionate impact. Container shipping disruptions, US demand fluctuations, and labor cost competition from Bangladesh and Vietnam create external shocks that propagate through communities designed around factory schedules and income.
Puerto Cortes handles 70% of Honduras's maritime trade, making the department both the nation's economic oxygen supply and its single point of failure. By 2026, expect continued nearshoring investment driven by US-China decoupling, but watch for automation pressure that may reduce the labor intensity that currently distributes manufacturing income across working-class communities.