Last week's coup d'etat in Honduras

[pscot]

was kind of confusing. While many DUers seemed to quickly chose sides, I wasn't sure exactly who the good guys were supposed to be. Given our long and bloody history of invlvement in Central America, objective accounts were hard to find. This Article from Der Spiegel is reasonably unbiased, provides some context and unpacks the politics. The snippet is from the very end of the article.


http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,635471,00.html

.....When intervening in their constitutions, Chavez and his cohorts promptly turn their entire political systems upside down. They establish parallel power structures tailored to keeping them in control. The Venezuelan president has set up militias, and in Nicaragua so-called people's councils and gangs of thugs have been established to secure the president's position. Both countries are on the verge of dictatorship.

The most reactionary representatives of the old elite, backed into a corner as a result of these tactics, take a tried-and-tested approach to the advance of leftist strongmen: they stage coups. In Venezuela, wealthy businesspeople and rebellious officers deposed Chavez seven years ago, with the US looking on benevolently. But the putschists had underestimated the political support for the president, and after three days Chavez made a triumphant return to office.

Bolivian President Evo Morales claims that right-wing groups have tried to kill him, and that he barely managed to escape an assassination attempt in April. Although the circumstances of the conspiracy are unclear, his accusations cannot be denied, especially after a video was released in which one of the presumed assassins shot by the police had announced his intention to fight the "leftist dictatorship" as a mercenary.

..The perpetrators of the coup in Honduras have also apparently miscalculated. The OAS, which Chavez once demonized as a stooge of the United States, expelled Honduras on Saturday after it failed to reinstate the elected President Zelaya. When the ousted leader attempted to return to Tegucigalpa on Sunday, accompanied by OAS Secretary General Insulza, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and other politicians, his plane was turned back.

On Thursday the two rivals refused to meet face-to-face during talks organized by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Arias, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for helping Central Americans resolve their civil wars, held separate talks with Zelaya and Micheletti in the Costa Rican capital San Jose in an attempt to resolve the Honduras crisis. Afterwards the Costa Rican leader said that any resolution to the dispute must include Zelaya's reinstatement as president.

Last week, the new government received a foretaste of what the small country could face if the putchists refuse to comply. For 48 hours, the neighboring countries of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala closed their borders to trade with Honduras. Within hours, a backup of dozens of trucks developed at the El Espino border crossing. As the drivers dozed in hammocks under the trucks, their loads of meat and vegetables spoiled in the heat.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. What about the role of the Venezuelan Supreme Court?

Its discussed in an Op Ed from the LAT is here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-estrada10-2009jul10,0,1570598.story

Never seen that issue addressed elsewhere, then again, its hard to tell if its even true.

[pscot]

3. My guess is that the L.A.Times article

is factually accurate, up to a point. Based on the Spiegel piece, it seems likely that the Honduran Congress and Judiciary are repreentative of the elites; the ones Der Spiegel characterizes as believing that they own the country. The author of the Times article sounds like one of them. On the other hand, I think it's legitimate to question the genuiness of Zelaya's populism. Zelaya, like Chavez, sees Fidel as his roll model. Fidel is a dictator, and he has the usual authoritarian trappings of the dictator; the prisons, the snitches and the secret police. He may be more benign than Lenin or Stalin, but he's no Minnesota democrat either. It looks as though no matter who comes out on top in Honduras, the real victim will be Democracy, and the right of the people to choose their own leaders. I don't see any White Hats in this mess.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Its an OpEd written from what looks like an American born in Honduras

From the piece:
Miguel A. Estrada is a partner at the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. A native of Honduras, he was a member of the official U.S. delegation to President Zelaya's 2006 inauguration.

The claims that their supreme court issued an arrest warrant and that the popularly Congress, where his party is a majority, confirmed the successor overwhelmingly are not found in most of the articles, but certainly give it much more legitimacy that other reports. Have to wonder what is not being said

[pscot]

5. Well one thing we know about Mr.Estrada

He was a Bush appointee. That might suggest a certain ambivalance about popular democratic institutions. He's probably one of Elliot Abrams' and John Negroponte's home boys. It was kind of assumed that Negroponte was in the thick of the attempt to oust Chavez a few years back. There's probably a really interesting back story to this whole affair.

[roody]

2. Unbiased? The vocabulary alone rules that out.