Shifting the Balance: Obama and the Americas

The Honduran Crisis and the Obama Administration

114 eight The Honduran Crisis and the Obama Administration Kevin Casas-Zamora In the early hours of June 28, 2009, military personnel arrested Honduras’s president Manuel Zelaya at his home in Tegucigalpa. Clad in his pajamas, he was led at gunpoint and put on a plane bound for Costa Rica. His ousting capped months of torrid conflict between Zelaya and nearly every other political actor and institution in Honduras, ranging from the Supreme Court to the Catholic Church. Zelaya’s defenestration sparked a complex political battle with hemisphere -wide implications. The episode threw in the open very significant questions about the geopolitical disputes that are raging in Latin America, the roots of populist authoritarianism in the region, the effectiveness of the Organization of American States (OAS) as guarantor of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and the limits of U.S. influence in Latin America. For the Obama administration, the episode was a stark reminder that it can only ignore the region’s complexities at its peril. In taking stock of the Honduran crisis, one cannot escape the fact that its consequences linger on, despite the swearing in of a new democratically elected government in January 2010, led by President Porfirio Lobo. To this day, Honduras remains suspended from the OAS, and eight Latin American countries, as well as many from other regions, still refuse to grant the new government diplomatic recognition. Simply put, what has taken place is little more than the restoration of a political system with a doubtful allegiance to democratic institutions and whose considerable weaknesses are yet to be addressed. Protecting democracy in Honduras demands substantive reforms 08-0562-8 ch8.indd 114 11/2/10 11:12 AM The Honduran Crisis and the Obama Administration 115 that only the Hondurans can formulate and implement, but that the United States, as the most important foreign actor in the country, can certainly promote . All in all, the Honduran story, as it has unfolded, is not encouraging for either Honduras or U.S diplomacy. What Happened? To understand what happened in Honduras, it is important to explore three fundamental questions. Was it a coup d’état? What were the causes of the meltdown? Why could Zelaya’s overthrow not be reversed? Coup or Constitutional Interruption? Although the events that led to the ousting remain engulfed in controversy, the immediate cause was Zelaya’s attempt to organize a nonbinding referendum (an “opinion poll,” in Zelaya’s words) to decide whether to include an additional ballot in the November 2009 presidential election concerning a proposal to convene a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the country’s 1982 constitution. Zelaya’s critics read this as a thinly veiled attempt to change the absolute ban on reelection imposed by the constitution. Zelaya’s confusing statements about his intentions and, above all, his perceived closeness to Venezuela’s strongman Hugo Chávez—whose own consolidation of power started with the enactment of a new constitution in 1999—made plausible the notion that the Honduran leader simply wanted to stay in the presidency beyond the end of his term in January 2010. The real story was probably more subtle. While it is almost certain that Zelaya was trying to tamper with term limits, he was probably less concerned about prolonging his term than about controlling the levers of power of the next government via the Constituent Assembly and paving the way for his future return to the presidency. In a charged political environment, these subtleties were of little consequence. Through their unrelenting use of the media, the most conservative sectors of the Honduran elite, extremely alarmed by Chávez’s influence and Zelaya’s brash populist style, created a compelling narrative of an authoritarian power grab in the making. This narrative had some objective facts to support it. Neither Zelaya’s nonbinding consultation nor the eventual binding referendum to convene a Constituent Assembly had any clear constitutional or legal backing. In time, all the relevant political and judicial institutions in the country came to publicly oppose Zelaya’s bid. On more than one occasion, the Supreme Court— a notoriously politicized body—deemed the whole enterprise illegal. In what 08-0562-8 ch8.indd 115 11/2/10 11:12 AM 116 Kevin Casas-Zamora had already become a habit of his administration, Zelaya disregarded these rulings and proceeded to organize the nonbinding referendum. Predictably, a conflict between branches of power ensued. It was...