Dow Jones. By Mary Anastasia O'Grady. To Read the Full Story. Subscribe Sign In. Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership.
Resume Subscription We are delighted that you'd like to resume your subscription. Zelaya, a leftist, was detained and sent into exile in a dispute over his push to extend presidential terms. Left-wing Latin American leaders led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced at a meeting in Managua, capital of neighboring Nicaragua, that they would withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras in protest at the coup.
Leaders from Central America, also meeting in Managua, followed suit soon after, a senior diplomatic source said.
Related Coverage. See more stories. Honduras, an impoverished country of 7 million people, is a major coffee producer -- and is expected to export some 3. But there were no immediate signs that output or exports were affected as ports and roads remained open.
The coup followed a week of tension when Zelaya, a Chavez ally who took office in , angered the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and army by pushing for a public vote to gauge support for changing the constitution to let presidents seek re-election beyond a single four-year term.
Washington appeared to seek to leave a way open for negotiation. Such a formal step would require Washington to cut off most aid to Tegucigalpa.
They handcuffed him, threw him on the floor, and cursed at him and beat him. Then they bundled Zelaya, still in his pajamas, into an armored car, took him to a military airfield, and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.
Honduras had enjoyed regular democratic transitions of power since , when a military government was replaced by an elected one. The afternoon of the coup, the plotters sought to legitimatize their actions at a special congressional session, producing a resignation letter from Zelaya.
The letter was a forgery—it even had the wrong date, a remnant from a plan to carry out the plot a few days earlier. They also claimed to have had a secret arrest warrant, but there are suspicions that it was produced after the fact. Zelaya was certainly deported on no legal basis. The golpistas had some support. Honduras is often said to be controlled by ten families. To the extent that that is true, almost all ten had come to loathe Zelaya, and the many newspapers and radio and TV stations they own were, naturally, comfortable with the coup.
That left a lot of Hondurans, though, who were appalled by the coup, and the streets and highways soon filled with them. The Army and the police met them with tanks and tear gas, clubs and rubber bullets, and, in some cases, live ammunition.
A curfew was imposed, and various civil liberties were suspended. There were deaths, disappearances, and mass detentions. Still, the protests went on. Even people who had not particularly liked him came out to protest. His policies were not the issue; democracy was. The international response was hostile as well. Honduras was suspended from the Organization of American States, and the coup was condemned by the United Nations.
The U. The golpistas were privately stunned, I was told, by the firmness of the U. Even their promise to hold Presidential elections on schedule, in late November, left the Obama Administration unmoved. The results of those elections would not be legitimate unless the coup was reversed and Zelaya restored to office, the Administration said. But the signals from Washington were mixed. Congressional conservatives rallied around the coup leaders, who, along with allies like the Latin American Business Council, have reportedly spent at least six hundred thousand dollars on Washington lobbyists and lawyers.
Lanny Davis, the former Clinton White House special counsel, and his firm pocketed much of that. DeMint had been blocking confirmation of two key Obama diplomatic appointments in Latin America. Zelaya did not go quietly into exile. A week after his overthrow, he tried to fly back to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Tens of thousands of people came to the airport, but the Army blocked the runway with trucks and troops.
He next tried to enter on foot, through a Nicaraguan border post, but was foiled again, and another young supporter was killed. Finally, on September 21st, Zelaya sneaked back into Honduras, concealed in a vehicle, and turned up, with his wife, at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa. Roberto Micheletti assured Hondurans that Zelaya was not in the country, that he was, in fact, in a hotel suite in Nicaragua.
Then Zelaya appeared on national television. Thousands flocked to the Brazilian Embassy, which is on a small street in a hillside residential neighborhood. They were beaten and dispersed by soldiers and riot police. A standoff ensued. The regime issued threats and ultimatums: Zelaya would be arrested if he stepped outside the Embassy. Zelaya was defiant.
The Brazilians were discomfited but steadfast. The United States was officially aghast. The hundreds of Zelaya supporters who had crammed into the compound dwindled to a couple of dozen. Among them were several journalists, who managed to send out unnerving reports of food-borne illnesses and suspected chemical attacks. I managed to reach Zelaya by phone, and asked him what would happen if he was not restored to the Presidency.
His voice sounded almost serene. The coup leaders said they would never allow it. His dismissal, they argued, had been legal, and he was now charged with treason, among other things. There is movement on some of the charges already. That was true, but when I arrived in Tegucigalpa, in late October, I found a widespread belief that a word from Zelaya could spark an insurrection.
His supporters had formed a broad alliance known as the National Resistance Front, which has its base among workers, students, and campesinos, and in the many dirt-poor barrios marginales that surround Tegucigalpa.
She is twenty-four, slim and glamorous. She is known for singing boleros, accompanied by her father on the guitar. The resistance provides her with bodyguards. The President seems almost incidental to their aspirations. In fact, as a redeemer figure, Manuel Zelaya is a distinctly odd choice.
Everybody calls him Mel. His family was part of the old rural aristocracy, and he grew up on a ranch in Olancho, which is the Texas of Honduras, famed for its tough, proud ways.
Zelaya, who is fifty-seven, wears a big white Stetson and has a big black mustache.
0コメント