Americas Quarterly

FIELD THE COUP IN HONDURAS by Dan Rosenheck

White vs. red: Zelaya’s ouster exposed the deep divide between the coup supporters (opposite page) and opponents (above).

Parque Morazán, the city’s central square, to express their support for the new leadership. Although the crowd clearly skewed toward the young, affluent and white, most walks of life were represented.

BENEDICTE DESRUS/SIPA

“We don’t want Mel! Go away, Mel!” bellowed the crowd, using the nickname the former timber magnate inherited from his father. Zelaya was accused of being an aspiring dictator, a drug trafficker— but above all, of being a pawn of Hugo Chávez. One

poster depicted the Venezuelan president dragging a crawling Zelaya, with a Soviet hammer and sickle inscribed on his signature Stetson hat, by a dog collar. The applause turned particularly raucous when Roberto Micheletti, president of the de facto government, showed up, surrounded by a gaggle of soldiers in camouflage and wielding sub-machine guns.

The international community’s reaction was quick and unanimous. The Organization of American

States (OAS) suspended Honduras, and the country lost foreign aid (equal to 6 percent of its GDP) from the World Bank and other governments. The demonstrators in Parque Morazán, however, disagreed. “It was legal! It wasn’t a coup!,” demonstrators chanted.

I wasn’t the only one confused by what Doris Gutiérrez, a centrist congress woman, calls a “golpe lite.” As I learned in two visits to Tegucigalpa in the month after Zelaya’s

removal, the debate over what transpired on June 28—a classic coup d’etat or a mere “constitutional succession?”—was emblematic of the country’s deep political divisions. Discussion had become so polarized that the two sides could not even agree on what happened, let alone how to go about resolving the conflict.