Music Therapy in Honduras
Honduras: Geographic Location
In order to better understand the situation of Music Therapy in Honduras, it is necessary to know some data about this country. Honduras is the most central of all Central American countries; its limits are the West Indies Sea to the north, the Pacific Ocean (Gulf of Fonseca) and El Salvador to the south, Nicaragua and the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala and El Salvador to the west. It is the second biggest country of Central America, with a surface of 112,492 km2.
Population, Health and Education
According to recent estimations, Honduras has a population of 6,927,000. In the analysis of population census, we can notice that Honduras is characterized by an exponential demographic growth. It significantly grew in the '30s, due to the immigration's influence, and has reached a very high rate over the past thirty years. There has been a demographic growth of 65% between the 1974 census and the present time. This growth has resulted in a lower income per capita, an acceleration of the urbanization process, particularly in the bigger cities, and a growing pressure on the country's natural resources.
Health indicators reflect that infant mortality rate in Honduras is still high compared to the other Central American countries. Despite the high birth rate, newborn mortality rate reaches 35% and the overall mortality rate is 6%. Taking into account that infant mortality rate is one of the most sensitive indicators of a population's health status we can assume some overall demonstration of how they are in this country.
According to the latest official data, there is a 20% of illiterate population, which implies a huge obstacle to the process of economic and social development of the country. There is also a high level of absenteeism in the initial (68%), intermediate (78%) and high (92%) levels of education. A great number of children fail to complete primary school, while another enormous number (100,000) do not attend school at all.
Economy
Agriculture is the basis of Honduran economy. The activities that mostly contribute to the gross domestic product (GDP) are, in the first place, farming ones (agriculture and stockbreeding), followed by manufacturing, commerce and financial activities.
The implementation and development of the banana tree culture in the northern coast of the country was, at first, in the hands of local developers, but from the last third of the XIX century this activity went under the control of United States companies. Following Honduras integration to the international community, a primary model of exportation, typical of Central American countries, was established. Banana export has been the dynamic crux of the Honduran economy.
Music Therapy
There is no Music Therapy university degree in Honduras. This fact has not prevented us from hoping that some day Honduras will have a wide range of information and techniques applied to this new discipline. Meanwhile, we keep on incorporating the techniques taught by music therapists that visit our country, the reading made by our professors, and the perseverance to maintain the communication with the music therapists that have visited our country.
You might ask why do we seek Music Therapy? Since Monica Papalia, our colleague from Argentina, came to Honduras for three days, we could see the difference in children's behavior that music applied with Music Therapy knowledge produces. We have also watched her in the II Colombian Music Therapy Congress in Santa Fe de Bogota (Universidad Nacional de Colmbia, March 29-31, 2001, www.facartes.unal.edu.co/musicoterapia/menu.html).
A Case
When Alan, a fifteen months old boy arrived with his grandmother, she anxiously told us that the child had lost his mother due to a brain cancer. After his loss of his mother, Alan had nightmares every night, and he would not stay away from his grandmother.
We started "playing" with Alan and applied some techniques that Papalia had taught us. After four months of treatment, his grandmother told us that Alan had not had any more nightmares and he showed signs of being a well-adjusted child. He played with his friends and could play alone in the house without his grandmother's constant participation. Alan had no other treatment, except for Music Therapy.
This is the most significant case we have handled, since it implied a dramatic situation. There have been other successful cases, some of them with adult clients.
Conclusion
From some time on we have received support from Edgar Blanco, a colleague from Colombia, who gave us guidelines and beneficial advice about music teaching. Both the visits of Edgar Blanco and Monica Papalia have been isolated events with the purpose of setting goals for the future; that Music Therapy will finally be established in Honduras.
For the past three years, I have noticed that Music Therapy has its own language. It is a new world. The light it brings over music education is like a spiritual light that allows us to see better every day. We have plans running for an orphan home. We hope to create there a Music Therapy research center that would benefit a lot of people in the Caribbean basin. We have already obtained the field to build the orphan home. We hope that we will soon sign the title deeds and start building. The project will take 3-5 years to be completed.
I think that Music Therapy is the course towards the future of music. Music as an art for entertainment is good by itself, but together with medicine to help people it enhances its power to survive as Art in this complex world.
I do not have enough words to tell how much Music Therapy has helped me personally and, at the same time, benefited others in their music learning.
How to cite this page
Teresa Devlin (2005). Music Therapy in Honduras. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=country/monthhonduras_april2005
