Puerto Lempira Puerto Lempira Puerto Lempira is the capital of the Gracias a Dios department in northeastern Honduras, located on the shores of the Caratasca Lagoon. Though it does not have paved roads, it is the largest town in the La Mosquitia region. The town is named for the 16th century leader of the indigenous Lenca peoples, Lempira, who directed an ultimately unsuccessful resistance against the Spanish "conquistador" forces in the 1530s. Puerto Lempira became the departmental capital in 1975, prior to which it was Brus Laguna. In the 1980s, the town became a centre for CIA operations against the Sandinistas. Its
European Monetary System European Monetary System European Monetary System (EMS) was an arrangement established in 1979 under the Jenkins European Commission where most nations of the European Economic Community (EEC) linked their currencies to prevent large fluctuations relative to one another. After the demise of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, most of the EEC countries agreed in 1972 to maintain stable exchange rates by preventing exchange rate fluctuations of more than 2.25% (the European "currency snake"). In March 1979, this system was replaced by the European Monetary System, and the European Currency Unit (ECU) was defined. The basic elements of the arrangement