Honduras has been violently crumbling into a state of political crisis since the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya on June 28. The disaster Honduras faces today stands in stark contrast with the political climate in Colombia, even though they have faced similar situations.
President Manuel Zelaya and his opponents now in charge in Honduras remain in a standoff. Inside the country, supporters of both sides are waging mass protests, while concerns continue regarding media censorship. This crisis provides an opportunity to look more closely at the Honduran political system and how it “broke.” Even more importantly, it’s a chance to consider what life is like for the average Honduran and how the United States impacts that small Central American country.
The day after Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed, President Barack Obama cautioned against repeating Latin America’s "dark past," decades when military coups regularly overrode the results of democratic elections. Obama went on to acknowledge, in his understated way, "The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies."
One of the hemisphere’s most critical struggles for democracy in 20 years is now unfolding in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa (nicknamed "Tegucigolpe" for its long history of military coup d’états, which are called golpes de estado, in Spanish). Despite censorship and repression, popular anger over the June 28 military overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya is growing. International condemnation has been near-unanimous, and the Organization of American States has suspended Honduras, the first time the hemisphere-wide body has taken so drastic an action since 1962.
On the morning of June 28, masked soldiers burst into the home of Honduran President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya and forced the elected head of state onto a plane out of the country. Later that day, the Honduran congress overwhelmingly elected its speaker Roberto Michiletti, a member of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party, as the country’s new president.