While all eyes were firmly focused on Iran’s heavy-handed, internal crackdown; North Korea’s increasingly belligerent, attention-seeking, sabre-rattling; deaths of celebrities galore, and; the continued squirming of the Governor whose heart was broken in Argentina, something new in somewhere new reared its head again. But this time, with a twist. Sunday morning Talking Heads TV was interrupted abruptly by breaking news of a coup in Honduras.
It seems the sitting President of Honduras was kidnapped and spirited out of the country overnight – by the Honduran military. The same Honduran military which some 500 US troops that we have stationed in Honduras are there to teach and instruct on civil ways to handle political issues, crowd control and other useful tactics.
You’ve got to admire Wikipedia. As I write this on Sunday morning, the breaking news having flashed across my TV screen within the last couple of hours, there is already a piece posted on Wikipedia that is headed: “2009 coup d’ état, ” in the general ‘Honduras’ article, and a whole new article devoted just to this news – the toast that I made earlier and haven’t had time to eat yet is older than this posting and the news it broadcasts. We are told there that: “President Manuel Zelaya was arrested at his home by his country’s army, allegedly acting on a court order, and was held in an airbase outside Tegucigalpa and flown to San José, Costa Rica.”
The inside story goes something like this. President Zelaya wanted to have a constitutional referendum vote on Sunday, June 28, but the Honduran Congress said “no,” and the Honduran Supreme Court also said “no.” Undaunted, Prez Zelaya ordered the head of the Honduran army to go ahead and pass out ballots; the Honduran army, interestingly, is in charge of Hondura’s elections. When the Honduran army head said “no:” we won’t be passing out ballots, the Prez fired him, but the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the Honduran army head reinstated. The Prez still would not back down and sent in his people to seize the ballots and the military base where they were held. Apparently to stop this last plan by the Prez for the constitutional referendum, no matter who said “no,” the army then kidnapped the Prez, spiriting him away in the dead of night. So much for Separation of Powers.
Now Central American coups are nothing new or uncommon – the last four or five decades have seen many of them. But, this one has a twist.
The US does not usually station troops in countries that are having military coups; at least, the plan is not to do that. But, what happens when 500 US troops awakened on Sunday to the news that the Honduran military (whom they were there to assist) had just “assisted themselves” into a coup of a democratically elected, sitting President? Sticky Wicket, as our Pals from across the Pond might say.
This is a potentially delicate situation and a rapidly unfolding one. Interviewed in Costa Rica, the Prez called this coup “a kidnapping,” telling Media that Honduran soldiers had unceremoniously yanked him out of bed, assaulting his guards, and, both figuratively and literally, removing him from office. Honduran Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas exhorted the public, urging them to: “fight in the streets” for the Prez to return to Honduras.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, ever at the ready, helpfully chimed in, observing that those who had pulled off the “coup” had done work worthy of “troglodytes,” (No, I don’t know the Spanish word for “Troglodytes”) and, of course, blamed it all on US President Obama, once again proving Chavez worthy of his recent trophy in the International ‘Talk First, Think Later’ Media competition.
Hondurans threw rocks at soldiers and it is not clear as I write who runs Honduras right now. According to the Honduran constitution (the one that its Prez wanted so desperately to have his referendum about), the Honduran Congress should now take over. Once they work it out with the Honduran army, who may have another view. And, once everybody there figures out what exactly to do with our 500 US soldiers stuck right smack in the middle of this ‘Banana Republic’ Mess – apologies if calling Honduras a ‘Banana Republic’ is now politically incorrect – I haven’t had to time to check on that in all the excitement. I meant it in the historical sense of the name. Wikipedia says: “Banana Republic is a pejorative term for a country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture (e.g. bananas), and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy, and corrupt clique.”
I did not know, and perhaps you didn’t either, that the term “Banana Republic” actually was coined by none other than the American impresario of short story telling, O. Henry (1862-1910), in his 1904, “Cabbages and Kings”, a collection of short stories set in the fictional country of “Anchuria,” based O.Henry’s real-life experiences as a fugitive, living in Honduras during the years 1896-97. O. Henry had fled to Honduras to avoid trial on a federal indictment for embezzlement after an audit of the books arising out of his job at Houston’s First National Bank of Austin came up just a wee bit short. Hiding out in a Tegucigalpa hotel for several months, O. Henry wrote “Cabbages and Kings,” coining the term “Banana Republic” to describe the leafy, humid country in which he had sought refuge, and which in those Gilded Age days, like all of 19th Century Central America, was run basically as a Southern Fiefdom for US Banana, Sugar and other agribusiness interests.
O. Henry later served three years of a five-year prison sentence at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. I wonder if O. Henry, certainly a clever enough fellow by any measure, would have some good ideas for precisely how we now extricate our 500 US soldiers, so quickly and with extreme delicacy, from their role being advisors to the Honduran military who just kidnapped their own Prez, and bring them back home right now.