Coup in Honduras

On June 28, Honduran soldiers rousted President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and exiled him at gunpoint to Costa Rica, halting his controversial push to redraw the constitution (which the president says benefits the country’s elites) but spurring fresh concerns about democratic rule across Latin America. Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, called the action a kidnapping, and said he was still president. Later, Honduras’s Congress named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as his successor. Although President Barack Obama said he was “deeply concerned” about the situation, critics have argued that the State Department and U.S. Congress financed and advised the Honduran actors and organizations which participated in the coup, and authorized the coup with tacit complicity and refusal to withdraw military support to the Honduran forces.