This article deals with the armed forces of Honduras.

During the twentieth century, Honduran military leaders frequently became presidents, either through elections or by coups d'état. General Tiburcio Carías Andino was elected in 1932, he later on called a constituent assembly that allowed him to be reelected, and his rule became more authoritarian until an election in 1948. During the following decades, the military of Honduras carried out several coups d'état, starting in October 1955. General Oswaldo López Arellano carried out the next coup in October 1963 and a second in December 1972, followed by coups in 1975 by Juan Alberto Melgar Castro and in 1978 by Policarpo Paz García.

Events during the 1980s in El Salvador and Nicaragua led Honduras — with US assistance — to expand its armed forces considerably, laying particular emphasis on its air force, which came to include a squadron of US-provided F-5s.

The military unit Battalion 316 carried out political assassinations and torture of suspected political opponents of the government during this same period. Battalion members received training and support from the United States Central Intelligence Agency both in Honduras and at U.S. military bases and in Chile during the presidency of the dictator Augusto Pinochet.Amnesty International estimated that at least 184 people were "disappeared" during from 1980 to 1992 in Honduras, most likely by the Honduran military.

Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was at times referred to as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize. The country is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, and to the north by the Gulf of Honduras, a large inlet of the Caribbean Sea.

Honduras was home to several important indigenous cultures, most notably the Maya. Much of the country was conquered by Spain who introduced its predominant language and many of its customs in the sixteenth century. It became independent in 1821 and has been a republic since the end of Spanish rule.

Its size is just over 112,492 km² with an estimated population of almost eight million. Its capital is Tegucigalpa. Its northern portions are part of the Western Caribbean Zone.

It is notable for its production of minerals, tropical fruit, and recently for exportation of clothing for the international market.

José Manuel Zelaya Rosales (born 20 September 1952) is a politician who was President of Honduras from January 27, 2006 until June 28, 2009. The eldest son of a wealthy businessman, he inherited his father's nickname "Mel", and, before entering politics, was involved in his family's logging and timber businesses.

Elected as a conservative, Zelaya shifted to the political left during his presidency, forging an alliance with the ALBA. On 28 June 2009, in the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis, he was seized by the military and secreted to Costa Rica in the 2009 Honduran coup d'état. On 21 September 2009 he returned to Honduras clandestinely and resurfaced in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. In 2010 he left Honduras for exile in the Dominican Republic, an exile which lasted more than a year.

He is now a deputy of the Central American Parliament representing Honduras.

The surname 'Zelaya' (pronounced 'zelaja' in Latin American Spanish) is a word from the Basque language, meaning 'field.' Zelaya was born the first of four children in Juticalpa, Olancho.^{[citation needed]} Two of his brothers remain alive: one is Carlos Armando and the other is Marco Antonio. Zelaya's mother, Ortensia Rosales de Zelaya, has been described as his best campaigner. His family first lived in Copán, then they moved east to Catacamas, Olancho.