Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Most police around the world will tell you that they’re always wary about getting into the middle of a domestic dispute. It can be a no-win situation, and everybody ends up hating the cops.

Case in point, how to deal with the Honduras crisis — so far, the United States appears to have steered clear of getting stuck. The Obama administration has been listening to both sides and endorsed the entry of a neutral non-U.S. mediator, Oscar Arias, the Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Most important, the two sides in Honduras — Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and his old friend and former ally, Roberto Micheletti — have agreed to the mediation. This is a complicated domestic matter, seated in rivalries and seething questions about power, influence, economic interest and the long-term welfare of a desperately poor country.

Zelaya and Micheletti hold steadfastly to their positions — the deposed president said his return to office is not negotiable, and Micheletti is equally adamant against him returning to power.

But they will be talking with Arias’ help this week, instead of fighting at the borders.

Ideologues of various stripes — from The National Review to the halls of power in Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez holds forth — are looking in from the outside and bloviating about what is best of Honduras.

Chavez’s government Web site, “Gobierno En Linea,” said that the coup plotters were attempted murders and should be dealt with accordingly:

[...] it was an attack directly against the head of state [Zelaya], by which the coup members and those responsible for the military coup should be taken to court and judged for the crime of attempted murder.

[..] atentó directamente contra la vida del Jefe de Estado, motivo por el que los golpistas y responsables del golpe militar deben ser llevados a una corte y juzgados por el delito de homicidio frustrado.

Most governments and publications in the hemisphere and beyond were saying more mildly that the coup was illegal and Zelaya had to be returned to power. However, the National Review, the voice of conservatives in the United States, defended the coup on grounds that Zelaya would have turned Honduras into “a satellite” of Chavez’s Venezuelan revolution:

It was an affirmation of democracy and the rule of law, both of which the president had flouted. If anything, it was a counter-coup, the real coup having been attempted by Zelaya.

The resolution has to lie somewhere in between the extremes, and here’s hoping that one group — the millions of desperately poor people in Honduras — will somehow benefit in the end.

Those were the sentiments of Arias as he went into the round of mediation:

Those of us who seek to protect democracies in this hemisphere have no time to waste. I urge all leaders in the Americas to see the Honduran crisis for what it is: an urgent call for the profound social and institutional changes our region has delayed for far too long.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user living water international under a Creative Commons license.

Earlier in the week, there was a violent clash at the airport in Tegucigalpa when a plane carrying Zelaya was turned away. Competing protests have rocked the capital city.

Sandra Cuffe is an independent Canadian journalist currently in Tegucigalpa. On Monday, the day after the standoff at the airport, she joined Worldfocus to discuss the mood at the riots, the impact on daily life in Honduras and the range of possible outcomes.

Below, view a slideshow from recent protests, also by Sandra Cuffe:

Worldfocus also spoke with Greg Weeks, an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the editor of the journal The Latin Americanist, about the implications of the recent coup.

Worldfocus: What provoked the coup and did it come as a surprise?

Greg Weeks: The precise timing of the coup was provoked by President Zelaya attempting to go through with the vote about a constitutional commission even though the Supreme Court, Congress, and the armed forces had told him it was unconstitutional. The coup occurred on the Sunday of the scheduled vote.

Conflict between Zelaya and other major political actors in Honduras was long-standing and sometimes bitter. It was well known that Congress was working on formal accusations against Zelaya, and he had publicly criticized the idea of what he called a “technical coup.” Nonetheless, few observers expected a full military coup.

Worldfocus: Has public opinion swayed in either direction in Honduras? Did Hondurans support the referendum?

Greg Weeks: We know that Zelaya was unpopular at the time of the coup (with an approval rating of approximately 30 percent) but we do not know the levels of national support for his forced removal. Both sides claim massive support, but at least for now it is not possible to know for sure.

It is safe to say, though, that a majority of Hondurans did not support the referendum and he likely would have lost it.

Worldfocus: International reaction has been swift, with many (including the U.S. and Organization of American States) urging Zelaya’s return. Has this had any effect?

Greg Weeks: Yes, it put Micheletti and other coup supporters immediately on the defensive and quickly started to pinch the country economically. Plus, the fact that governments as ideologically distant as Colombia and Venezuela were united on this issue made it more difficult for anyone to claim there was ideological bias.

Worldfocus: What are Hugo Chavez’s interests?

Greg Weeks: His primary interest is having another regional ally like Zelaya remain in power. But he and other leftist presidents also have a strong interest in ensuring that other would-be coup makers get the message that international opinion is firmly against such actions (which, of course, is ironic given Chávez’s own background as a coup leader).

Worldfocus: And what of U.S. interests, and the possibility that the U.S. may cut off aid?

Greg Weeks: The U.S. has very little concrete at stake in this crisis, but it is the first Latin American crisis for President Obama, so he is interested in ensuring that his rhetoric of support for democracy and dialogue is taken seriously.

A full cut-off of aid would be a last ditch effort and is the main “stick” the United States wields. As a result, I think it is the least likely policy option, and would be used only if every single other possibility had been exhausted.

Worldfocus: In your opinion, how will the current stalemate end?

Greg Weeks: This crisis has been fluid and unpredictable, so I can’t really say much for certain. I do tend to think that there will be some sort of negotiated solution. There will be massive pressure, both from outside Honduras and inside (as the cutoff of aid from various sources squeezes the economy) for Micheletti to negotiate. Meanwhile, Zelaya knows that negotiation is the only way he can return to the country without invasion — which no one supports, despite Chávez’s comments on the topic.

A woman holds a copy of the Honduran constitution and flag at a protest.

While governments around the hemisphere (including Cuba and the United States) support the return of Honduras’ ousted president, José Manuel Zelaya, we have an opportunity to focus on a country rarely mentioned in the news.

In the 1980s, the United States was deeply involved in Honduran military and political affairs — the Reagan administration saw the country as the frontline in fighting a supposed communist march through Central America that would end up at the Texas border.

While the United States mounted counterinsurgencies against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and looked the other way when death squads marauded in El Salvador, Honduras was an American base camp.

There are those who mistakenly claim that the United States — billions of dollars spent, tens of thousands of deaths later — somehow helped “win” the Central American wars. In fact, the nations settled their differences themselves after the United States backed off.

The United States backed far off in fact, and Honduras was left poor as ever — one of the poorest of the poor in Latin America. A majority of the country’s seven million people live on far less than $100 a month; illiteracy, hunger and disease are endemic. A report by the World Bank in 2006 said that despite economic growth, a majority of Hondurans received no benefit.

My then-colleague at the Washington Post, Marcela Sanchez, reported two years ago that corruption was a major factor:

According to a U.S.-funded public opinion poll, the percentage of Hondurans who believe the government is combating corruption declined from 40 percent in 2004 to 26.6 percent in 2006.
Juan Ferrera, coordinator for Honduras’ National Anti-Corruption Council, said in an interview from Tegucigalpa that corruption is creating such public disenchantment that Hondurans may even “put aside democratic options.”

In a cauldron like that, are elections enough? A Honduran friend of mine said this week that left-wing or right-wing, it hasn’t seemed to matter. “They kind of just keep themselves in power and steal some more!”

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user giggey under a Creative Commons license.

Many world leaders, from U.S. President Barack Obama to President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, called for Zelaya’s reinstatement. This marks the first Central American coup since the Cold War.

Christopher Sabatini, the senior director of policy for the Council of the Americas, joins Martin Savidge to analyze the consequences of the military coup.

Bellow, bloggers in Honduras react to the coup.

A blogger from Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras, is fearful what the coup may bring:

I fear we have gone from bad to worse. At least Zelaya seemed to speak out for the poor. As one priest said this morning, despite all his errors and his vanity, Zelaya was the first major leader in many years to offer people a little bit of openness to the needs of the poor. The priest said he is not supporting the person Zelaya, but the cause of the poor. Micheletti is closely tied with the economic powers to be. An indication of his position is his support of privatization of water in his own district.

Another blogger from Honduras disagrees, stating that Zelaya is to blame:

[...] Zelaya has been trying to usurp the authority of the other two branches of government with his actions of the last few weeks. If anyone was trying to overthrow the government, it was him.

A Peace Corps volunteer takes a neutral stance, pointing to the difficulty in choosing a side:

[...] many countries are around the world are denouncing the coup by the military and the U.S. government is stating it’s against democracy. In my opinion, it is very difficult to take a stance on this. President Zelaya was motivated a lot by legacy along with his buddies in Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia. There were a lot of manipulation and alternate motives during his presidency. However, the way his own government took him out of power is not the way to do things.

Ousted Honduran President José Manuel Zelaya.

What’s your take on democracy? Time to think about it a bit after reading this front-page headline in the New York Times today:

Honduran Army Ousts President Allied to Chavez

The elected president of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya, was deposed on Sunday by that country’s armed forces, one of the first military coups in Latin America in more than a decade.

Part of the answer lies in our own prejudices and subliminal responses to the words. If Zelaya is an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, should we be happy, unhappy or neutral? And in terms of democratic principles, should the United States be supporting the deposed president or pleased that his absolutist policies have been derailed?

Zelaya won the Honduran presidency in a tight — but fair — election more than three years ago, and, like Chavez, was trying to tinker with rules that bar presidents from serving more than one term. Chavez, who was also elected by a popular majority, has progressively gathered up power, weakening his country’s legislative and judicial branches. Using various populist techniques and the bully pulpit of the presidents, Chavez has won approval for his actions through national referendums.

For his part, Zelaya was trundled off to the airport on Sunday, and declared from Costa Rica, still in his pajamas, that his ouster was illegal: “I am the president of Honduras.”

The United States, governments throughout the hemisphere and Europe have condemned the coup and say they support Zelaya’s return to office. That hasn’t stopped Chavez from decrying “oligarchs” who should be opposed by force.

One last question: Has U.S. policy been steadfast in supporting election results? Answer: No. Consider the case of Guatemala in 1954, when the CIA engineered the overthrow of a democratically-elected government deemed to be leaning the wrong direction; Chile in 1973, when the United States applied economic sanctions, and U.S. officials supported and aided a coup against the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, a Socialist. Or further afield, but more recently, when Hamas won democratic elections in Palestine in 2006, the United States sided with Israel and imposed economic sanctions.

Are there limits to supporting the will of the people? Or is the pragmatic solution in dealing with foreign policy questions more complicated than a knee-jerk ideological response? Consider this, then, a vote for critical thinking.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Presidencia de la República del Ecuador under a Creative Commons license.