LET’S CALL IT A COUP: THE CASE OF HONDURAS
Latin America has such a sorry legacy of overthrown governments that one assumes every embassy must have an In Case of a Coup handbook. There are certain depressingly familiar triggers. Presidents chafe at term limits or refuse to accept election results; constitutions are capriciously changed; and the roles of the executive, legislative, and judicial bodies and, above all, the military become jumbled. Neighboring countries have the bad habit of harboring fugitive leaders who never seem to face justice. Those same neighbors nonetheless vote to expel the offending country from regional organizations and self-righteously recall their ambassadors.
The Honduran coup of June 28, 2009, was a six-month diplomatic odyssey, with elements of both drama and farce: a president whisked out of the country in the dead of night in his pajamas, a forged letter of resignation, and plenty of double-talk—not all of it from Honduras—about how the coup had actually preserved democracy. Unlike natural disasters, in which the U.S. goal is to minimize death and suffering in a country and help it rebuild, political crises require a broader range of solutions. Frequently the U.S. has its own favored outcome, a factor that had huge implications in Honduras.
The immediate events of the day in question are the only uncontested aspect. At 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 28, 2009, Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, in office since January 2006, was hustled out of bed by the military and forcibly flown to Costa Rica. The pajama detail became such a consistent part of the narrative that when Zelaya later met Secretary of State Clinton, he joked that as a result of the Honduran coup all Latin American presidents had learned to sleep with their clothes on and their bags packed.44
Zelaya was replaced by Roberto Micheletti, the president of the Honduran National Congress and next in the line of succession. Micheletti, who served from June 28, 2009, through January 27, 2010, was cold-shouldered by the United States and most other nations and international organizations as a de facto president who had deposed a democratically elected one. However, the back story and cast of characters are important. The left-wing Zelaya had outraged Honduran conservatives by forging alliances with Raúl Castro of Cuba, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. He raised suspicions when he called for a poll to gauge public interest in his plan to change the constitution, a change that would allow presidents to serve two terms. Critics saw this as a means of unlawfully remaining in power. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling blocking the referendum, and the Honduran Congress, attorney general, and human rights ombudsman all agreed that Zelaya had violated the law. Nonetheless, Zelaya pushed on with his plan for a June 28 poll that would in turn authorize a full referendum and requested that the military prepare ballot boxes. The ranking general refused and Zelaya fired him, which led to the resignations of the defense minister and several other officials. Both the high court and the Congress ruled that the firing was unlawful, triggering the crisis that led to the coup.
The trail of U.S. embassy cables reveals a remarkable behind-the-scenes effort to get Zelaya reinstated, an effort that cost the United States some diplomatic capital along with the ire of conservatives back home, who argued that the coup came in the nick of time to rescue Honduras from Venezuela’s path. The cables also reveal the limits of even the most intense U.S. pressure, as one initiative after another failed to accomplish the Obama administration’s stated goal of returning Zelaya to office.
The deposed president embarked on peregrinations worthy of a deposed monarch, hobnobbing with anyone who would give him a platform from which to rally supporters. Zelaya gained more prominence as a deposed president than he had ever achieved while in office. Consider this portion of his exhausting itinerary: After being summarily deposed on June 28, he landed in Costa Rica but moved on to Nicaragua a few hours later to represent Honduras at a regional meeting; he then flew to New York to make a speech before the UN on June 30. On July 5, he tried to land in Honduras aboard a Venezuelan aircraft while twelve thousand supporters swamped the airport. His plane circled, but the sight of military vehicles on the tarmac dissuaded him from landing.45 He ended up back in Nicaragua and later El Salvador, where he was joined in a press conference by the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the presidents of El Salvador, Argentina, Ecuador, and Paraguay.46 He met Secretary of State Clinton in Washington on July 7, who persuaded him to work with the mediation of Óscar Arias Sánchez, the Costa Rican president and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987.47
Zelaya stayed for a time in Managua and then staked out a spot on the Nicaraguan side of a border town. He finally snuck back into his own country on September 20 and holed up in the Brazilian embassy, where his entourage created chaos for his hosts. In the aftermath of U.S.-brokered elections, which he advised his followers to boycott, Zelaya made an unsuccessful attempt to flee to Mexico on December 9 and was finally granted safe passage to the Dominican Republic on January 27, the day of the inauguration of the next Honduran president, conservative Porfirio Lobo Sosa. Throughout this period, his supporters protested at rallies that sometimes turned violent, leading to injuries and some deaths, and sparking fears of descent into civil war.
Zelaya was a controversial figure from the outset of his presidency, clashing with Honduran conservatives and media over his populist policies, even before he launched his plan for a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. Clinton described him as “a throwback to the caricature of a Central American strongman, with his white cowboy hat, dark black mustache, and fondness for Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro.” 48 Many American conservatives applauded the coup. They saw Zelaya as the most recent in a disturbing trend of left-wing Latin American leaders: Lula da Silva in Brazil, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and of course Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. They also saw Chávez’s hands (and money, and mischief) all over Zelaya. Venezuela had reportedly printed the ballots that would have been used for the referendum. The embassy reported that Chávez was so eager to see Zelaya restored to office that he arranged for food, weapons, and supplies to be brought into Honduras from Nicaragua for the use of Zelaya’s supporters, leading many Hondurans to believe that “Zelaya is planning to return to retake the presidency violently, and with Venezuelan support.” 49
The embassy reported that the coup divided the Honduran public almost evenly. The opposition insisted the action was in defense of democracy against a would-be dictator. The Supreme Court president and the human rights commissioner both spoke in favor of the coup, as did members of Congress from the opposition and Zelaya’s own party. The Roman Catholic archbishop of Honduras, Cardinal Oscar Andrew Rodriguez, endorsed the coup on live television and implored Zelaya not to return for the good of the country.50
The coup also divided opinion outside Honduras. The majority of the international community was unswayed by pro-coup arguments. The UN called for Zelaya’s immediate and unconditional restoration. Faced with an ultimatum from the OAS to restore Zelaya, de facto President Micheletti withdrew from the group (a move of dubious legality) on July 2. The European Union recalled its ambassadors, and both the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank “paused” their loans to the country. The embassy reported that virtually all Honduran political and personal contacts “displayed a high degree of naiveté over how the coup would be perceived by the international community.” 51
Nowhere did the quarrel play out more erratically than in the United States, where gyrating opinions on the coup illustrated the disparate perceptions among Washington, the embassy, and the American body politic. Conservatives charged that the State Department mishandled it from the start; liberals said that Clinton’s efforts to restore constitutional order, many of which are documented in the WikiLeaks cables, resulted in a tainted new government, a horrific upswing in human rights violence, and deeper poverty for an already impoverished nation. Honduran coup supporters were heartened by comments from prominent U.S. Republicans
and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, which declared the coup “strangely, well, democratic,” giving Hondurans hope that the U.S. government might interpret the crisis as something more benign than a true coup.52 Their hopes were short-lived.
Was it a coup? President Obama was pretty clear, saying on June 29 that “the coup was not legal” and could “set a terrible precedent.” Clinton was more nuanced, saying the situation “had evolved into a coup,” but that the United States was “withholding any formal legal determination.” Clearly playing for time, she added, “We’re assessing what the final outcome of these actions will be. Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we are able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome.” 53
American political commentators seized on Honduras as the first real test for Obama and Clinton’s foreign policy. The theme of the Obama administration siding with Latin American leftists like Zelaya was picked up by the right. Commentator Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote that Hondurans were being “pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, [and] Hillary Clinton.” 54 The New Republic said Clinton’s Honduras policy was “a mistake in search of a rationale.” 55
Writers on the left were not much kinder. Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research railed against what he saw as conflicting statements from the White House and the State Department and assailed the department’s neutrality in its reply to a query from Senator Richard Lugar, which he said appeared to blame Zelaya for the coup.56 Reuters wrote that the Honduran crisis had divided Washington. “Earlier this month, 16 Democratic Congressmen wrote to Obama urging him to freeze the assets of coup leaders. But a group of Republican senators has sought to hold up confirmation of State Department appointments due to the administration’s support for Zelaya, an ally of Venezuela’s leftist president Hugo Chávez.” 57 Despite the Republican encouragement, Hondurans were caught off guard by the mixed reaction in the United States, and the embassy reported, “They have expressed surprise and dismay at the USG response, stating that they feel abandoned by the USG.” 58
The leaked cables reveal that the embassy played an enormous role throughout the crisis, maintaining a frenetic rate of activity as it dealt with realities on the ground as well as in Washington. The embassy was deluged with so many congressional visits in the six months between the coup and the inauguration of Lobo that the New York Times noted, “The situation wasn’t helped by Republican members of the United States Congress who traveled earlier to Tegucigalpa to cheer on the coup makers (they appear far more concerned about Mr. Zelaya’s cozy relations with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez than democracy).” 59 Embassy cables reveal that the ambassador complained to Óscar Arias about how a congressional delegation led by Connie Mack (R-FL) had attended a high-profile meeting with de facto President Micheletti, which “had not been helpful to our efforts to find a democratic and constitutional solution to the crisis, since it gave Micheletti the hope to hang tough and not negotiate on the issue of the quick return of President Zelaya.” 60
A key actor in the crisis was Ambassador Hugo Llorens, an experienced career foreign service officer in charge of an embassy of 450 staff from fourteen U.S. government agencies, 180 Peace Corps volunteers, and at least indirectly responsible for 500 U.S. military personnel at Soto Cano Air Base. (Its presence made it unlikely from the start that the United States would ever completely abandon Honduras.) His embassy’s prolific coverage of the coup and documentation of efforts to restore democracy offers a day-by-day (and sometimes hour-by-hour) description of U.S. diplomacy. His embassy wrote seventy sitreps and many additional cables providing context on human rights, media, political personalities, and ongoing negotiations, totaling more than eight hundred cables in the five months between the June 28 coup and the election on November 29 of a new president.
Llorens’s involvement raises questions as to whether the United States crossed the line from helpful neighbor to agenda-laden interloper. Was the considerable coercion the United States exercised justified? Was the stated U.S. aim of restoring Zelaya to office ever feasible or worthwhile?
The embassy played hardball from the start. At a press conference outside the embassy on the day of the coup, the ambassador condemned it. The first embassy report described the mood in grim terms. Broadcast news was abruptly cut off the air; Internet and landlines were down; there were curfews, arrests, and tear gas. “Black smoke was seen rising from the area around the presidential palace around 8:30, apparently from burning tires. One source at a nearby hotel reported seeing a car burning. A military helicopter has been circling low around the area.” 61
The following day, the embassy reported it was maintaining a no-contact policy with Micheletti and his de facto regime, noting that since the U.S. government did not recognize the regime, the embassy would not send diplomatic notes until further notice.62 By July 8, the embassy announced that a substantial amount of U.S. foreign assistance to Honduras had been suspended, and that much more was under review.” 63
One of the only ambassadors left in the country, Llorens would later call the experience one of the most challenging he had ever faced. The United States could have recalled him, leaving the running of the embassy to a chargé, but would have lost the opportunity to work through the crisis alongside the Hondurans and influence the outcome. The leaked cables suggest that having an ambassador present was an advantage. The intensity of his engagement was remarkable.
The ambassador reported that he spoke with Zelaya “on a daily basis to counter the influence of these radical elements and balance the President’s [Zelaya’s] perspective.” 64 The cables showed he was speaking with Costa Rican mediator Arias almost as frequently, and with members of the entire Honduran political spectrum. He took plenty of criticism for his role. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) said he was “the only one in Honduras who thinks there was a coup.” 65 Juan Carlos Hidalgo of the Cato Institute called him a “proconsul.”
Latin American coups have a way of becoming personal. Llorens housed one of Zelaya’s adult children and his family and repeatedly offered safe harbor to Zelaya’s wife. On July 1 he sent the defense attaché with three vehicles to her country home to bring her and eight family members to the capital. They spent a night at the ambassador’s residence, then moved on to a family home. Weeks later he invited them all to dinner.66 Sadly, none of this solicitude would prevent Zelaya from turning on him months later.
In addition to near-daily sitreps, embassy officers frequently returned to the theme of the illegality of the coup, concluding in one cable, “We believe the military and the Congress conspired in the coup . . . the actions taken to remove the president were patently illegal.” 67 Another cable offered a Who’s Who of the Honduran coup, profiling the key actors. The pivotal cable, “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup,” considered every legal argument and concluded that it was indeed a coup.68
The embassy and the State Department had a vested interest in proving that a coup had occurred. This allowed them to impose a range of sanctions and exert leverage against Honduras, ranging from cutting off significant aid to canceling military exercises and revoking visas of de facto regime members. The heft of U.S. involvement in Honduras gave it far more leverage than more symbolic cut-offs by the EU and other nations. Had the Obama administration determined there was no coup, none of these actions would have been available. They also chose the mediator. No one doubts Arias’s stature, but the initiative to ask him to mediate was Clinton’s.
The cables take for granted that Honduras’s political environment was worse off for having undergone a coup. The fact that some polls indicated a majority of Hondurans supported the coup was distressing to the embassy, which insisted nonetheless that the coup was a setback to Honduran democracy.
Talks under Arias began in Costa Rica on Jul
y 9, and the embassy shifted gears from worrying about the legality of the coup to expressing frustration over intransigence from Micheletti and his team. The cables make clear that Arias saw the ambassador as a key partner. For example, he called Llorens on July 13 to see if Llorens had been able to “soften the position of the de facto regime.” 69 In response, the embassy launched what it called “a full court press to get Micheletti to reinstate Zelaya.”70 In fact, a key part of what became known as the San Jose Accords was Zelaya’s reinstatement—something which never happened. Arias and the ambassador spoke six more times before the end of July. Despite a phone call from Secretary of State Clinton, Micheletti balked at signing any accord, and by late July Zelaya told the ambassador the Arias talks were a failure.
What to do? The ambassador and Arias conferred, and Llorens noted that the United States continued to “pause” economic assistance and had completely suspended military aid. The next step was to pressure regime officials by withdrawing their diplomatic visas, a step urged by both Arias and Zelaya. In fact, visa revocations had begun on July 28 with the top four Micheletti officials. Another round of revocations targeting more Micheletti associates came on September 10; they continued throughout the fall and into the new year.
The embassy also put pressure on Zelaya. The ambassador described to Arias a meeting he had with Zelaya in Managua in which he urged him “to put on his presidential suit,” take the diplomatic offensive, and work for a diplomatic solution on the basis of the Arias plan. He told Zelaya that his activities on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border had earned him bad press coverage. His opponents had labeled him a radical and reinforced the perception of his close ties to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.71 It is unusual for an ambassador to speak this sternly to a head of state, even one who has been deposed.
To the Secretary Page 10