HONDURAS and the REVOLUTION BY THE PEOPLE

Let's face it while I am completely against the actions taken against Zelaya in Honduras, I at the same time am not fully enamoured with his politics. He has been courting the left but his track record is not that of the left. Any of the changes he was attempting to introduce could have been made without tampering with the constitution (which unfortunately now seems to be the favourite pastime of Latin American Presidents both from the left and the right). At the same time Zelaya does not seem to have consulted the different parties in Honduras before he made his bid for a constitutional referendum partially because he does not seem to be the man that can sustain political alliances with the left. And, thus, in effect took a gamble, which is why the opposition was able to plan its move and get the necessary backing from the US to move ahead.


For Honduras this translates into there being a deeper crisis than most wish to admit: the current political stalemate plus the trickle effects of the economic crisis. There is unparalleled unemployment and hunger. Despite the tremendous hardship of the people the coup plotters have underestimated Zelaya’s popularity and the injury to the pride of Hondurans who see in the coup a stab to their national pride.
Honduras is in a crisis because, let us face it, Zelaya is in fact a member of the "liberal party", a cattle rancher (i.e. from a class which traditionally in Latin America has been far from open to the struggles of the left, actually usually working in the opposite direction, which means that he does not have the political machine that could sustain his return to power. The parties of the left seem disarrayed at this time and this is what the coup plotters are taking advantage of. So who else is in the offing to take his place? - it appears there is a lack of dauphins and that may be a critical problem for Honduras.

The good news in the long run, not for Honduras which may be the quintessential guinea pig in the ploy of the hard game of US-American foreign policy, is that with Honduras, and given the changes in the political conjuncture of Latin America the US inadvertently has opened the door to legitimizing coup d’états, - and the left should be paying attention - because this may be to the advantage of other political movements in Latin America. It may just very well be that now the door is open to deposing right wing tyrants provided an alliance can be made with the military. Thus, Obama, may yet rue the day he turned a blind eye to the plight in Honduras because he will be hard pressed to call the next bringing down of a President , which hopefully will be a right wing tyrant through the mechanism of a revolutionary coup d’état.

As for Honduras, and if the US continues to turn its blind eye and maintain that we do not have a coup d’état in Honduras, history will show that the result of whatever euphemism they wish to use, is slight which turned into a revolution by the people of Honduras.