CENTRAL AMERICA: Strictly Business

Ever since North Carolina-born Bank Teller William Sydney Porter fled to Honduras in 1896 to duck an embezzlement charge in the U.S., Central America has been a raffish sanctuary for some of North America's rarest wild birds. Some went there to evade U.S. justice, some were shoestring promoters brewing or forgetting get-rich-quick schemes, and some were merely fugitives from an over-mechanized world, attracted by such tall tropic yarns as Porter himself later spun under the name of O. Henry.* As a group, they answered philosophically to the name of Tropical Tramps. Since...