The enigmatic world
of Honduran acronyms

Acronyms are something of a puzzle in Honduras. Acronyms by nature are supposed to make things easier. Why say United States of America, after all, when you can get by with USA? But many Honduran acronyms only complicate matters in their efforts to uncomplicate them. Take ANDEFPJ, for example. Does the National Association of Judicial Employees and Officials actually believe that by �acronyming� their name to ANDEFPJ they are making it easier for people to talk about them? What, exactly, is the FPJ letter combination supposed to sound like?

While some acronyms hail the unpronounceable, others seem to be suffering delusions of grandeur. Wouldn't a word like COLPROSUMAH look more appropriate chiseled into the pedestal of an armless Greek statue than posted over the entrance to the Honduran Association of Professional Teachers? And doesn't FECESITLIH sound more like an intestinal disease than a nom de plume for the Central Federation of Free Workers Unions of Honduras?

Honduran acronyms have their own law of the land � and that law mirrors anarchy more than anything else. Many acronyms do, in fact, succeed at making things easier. ENEE for the National Electric Company (Empresa Nacional de Energ�a El�ctrica), COHEP for the Honduran Private Enterprise Council (Consejo Hondure�o para la Empresa Privada) and UNAH for the National Autonomous University of Honduras (Universidad Nacional Aut�noma de Honduras) all do their states of being acronyms justice.

But then a group like the Union of R�o Mame Banana Company Workers throws SITRABARIMASA at you and you are dumbfounded. The gap between the R�o Mame Worker's Union and a word like SITRABARIMASA would seem to the untrained eye to rival the Grand Canyon. But, fortunately, there are enough semi-rules that enough people follow in the acronym business to make the jump at least explainable.

It helps to know that SITRA at the beginning of an acronym means it is some sort of workers union. This is based on the words SIndicato de TRAbajadores. (SITRAUNAH, then, is the UNAH labor union.) Another thing to remember when unscrambling acronyms is that the letters SA at the end of the abbreviation generally stand for Sociedad An�nima, kind of the Latin American version of �Inc.� So a company known more commonly as the DERIMASA wood furniture factory is really Derivados de Madera, S.A., or Wood Derivatives, Inc.

Now back to SITRABARIMASA. Take a look at Sindicato de Trabajadores de las Empresas Bananeras R�o Mame, S.A, the Spanish name of the group. SITRA, of course, tells you it is a union, and SA lets you know it is tied to a company. What's left, the BARIMA, is a loose abbreviation of BAnaneras RIo MAme. (Some executive apparently decided the word Empresas was expendable.)

Making sense now?

The realm of Honduran acronyms is replete with this kind of mindbending, which can make understanding them difficult. But, as with all things Honduran, a little explanation and patience can go a long way toward understanding. (JS)