The Wages of the 2009 Honduran Coup
By 
In 2009, a coup in Honduras overthrew the government of Manuel Zelaya, who was really just a rich caudillo of his own, but who had been sort of starting to ally with Hugo Chavez. This led to widespread condemnation of the coup on the left. It was also an early test of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. The administration did not exactly shine here. There were plenty of people on the left who accused Obama and Hillary Clinton of having supported the coup, but this was mostly overheated rhetoric. But they acquiesed to the coup really fast, largely because they didn’t care. Unlike the 1980s, when Central America was central to U.S. foreign policy, Obama did not want to think about it. He was far more concerned with the Middle East and Asia, which was certainly defensible.
I actually wandered into Honduras the morning of the coup. After being waylaid by guys with machetes on the road leaving Antigua, Guatemala toward Copán, in Honduras (I am 99.999% sure the driver was in on it, but luckily some cars drove up right behind them as they were banging on the windshields with the machetes), we crossed the border and discovered a coup had just happened. We spent the rest of the day visiting the Mayan ruins at Copán, in part because the town had no power at the time due coup disruptions. This day was truly Peak Central America. Well, that’s a story.
In any case, this was before I was writing at LGM, but I did write about it pretty significantly at my old blog (I think actually this was the first time I was ever mentioned in the New York Times for this, though it was probably just some online thing) and my basic point was this–no one really expects the U.S. government to go in and reinstall Zelaya, who again was no hero. But it could do one very powerful thing–deny American entry to the coup leaders, who were all rich Honduran elites who spend as much time in Miami as possible, where they stash much of their ill-begotten money. I maintain this point–this is the ultimate use of soft power. Being denied Miami would have meant almost everything to these people. There really isn’t anywhere in Latin America with anything like that caché for this class of people. The combination of sun, beach, high fashion, Caribbean culture, and far-right politics is what these people value in a place. To deny them that would hit them where it hurts. They don’t care about their nation and they sure don’t care about the masses of poor in their nation. But to not go to high end clothing stores in Miami? Ouch.
But the Obama administration didn’t do this and quickly restored their visas. The reasons behind this mostly had to do with wanting to continue aid programs, or at least that is what the State Department said. But also, the U.S. government wanted to stop the inflow of drugs and a right-wing hack was more likely to obey American demands on this than someone allied with Zelaya.
The problem with this kind of thinking should be obvious before I even explain it. What actually happened to Honduras after 2009 was the massive militarization of the country combined with it becoming a major stopover for drugs heading up American noses and arms, with American guns coming down to fuel the gang violence and American military aid being siphoned off into the hands of the rich. In short, it is a huge disaster. And this was entirely predictable because the thing about right-wing leaders in nations like this is that they are corrupt as all hell and thus more than happy to take American aid and also help the cartels, all for a good bit of cash of course that goes into Geneva bank accounts and Miami real estate.
The story of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández is perfect case study of the short-term thinking of American policymakers who were more than happy to deal with an obviously corrupt and evil operator because he would allow the American military into the country and not play around with Venezuela or Cuba or other nations the U.S. doesn’t like. He’s now been extradited to the U.S. for his unbelievable level of crimes. The portrayal of this mostly makes the U.S. look good of course because our journalists lack curiosity and history.
The trial is a spotlight on the woes of a country plagued by corruption, poverty and lawlessness. And even as Americans debate weaknesses in their own democracy and justice system, Hondurans see American courts as a venue for something unavailable back home: a fair trial and a measure of justice.
Hondurans are a daily presence outside the courthouse. During the first week of the trial, dozens gathered in the cold, chanting through bullhorns and marching with Honduran flags and homemade signs denouncing Mr. Hernández. A woman from Brooklyn hawked $7 homemade tuna-and-turkey sandwiches from a cooler.
Each day, Mr. Hernández is led into a packed courtroom in front of a squadron of Honduran reporters taking notes. Mr. Hernández led his country for eight years until early 2022, when he was extradited to the United States shortly after leaving office.
During the many high-profile trials held in this Lower Manhattan courthouse — including those of former President Donald J. Trump and the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried — network film crews have clustered out front with state-of-the-art news vans equipped with lighting units. At the Hernández trial, newscasters have been recording each day’s events on their iPhones and broadcasting the news via social media.
The proceedings they are beaming home detail a culture of corruption in Honduras, one that allowed huge amounts of cocaine to flow into the United States. Mr. Hernández, who has denied wrongdoing, is accused of running a “narco state” from the capital, Tegucigalpa, raking in millions from violent cartels.
The article goes on in this manner. What it totally misses though, of course, is the extent to which having a scumbag like this at the head of the Honduran government was the logical extension of American foreign policy during the Obama administration. If there’s one thing the Cold War developing world teaches us is that you could get the U.S. to do just about anything for you and break just about every international law there was so long as you could point to the “communists,” who rarely were communists as who you wanted to kill. If Honduras elects a leftist president and the U.S. doesn’t care if far right elements overthrow him, what is the message that is sending to the thugs who did it?
Somewhat amusingly to end this story, Zelaya’s wife Xiomara Castro is now president of Honduras and he is back in the legislature. Kamala Harris attended her inauguration. Outside of the Israel-Palestine disaster, which is very, very bad, it’s hard for me to criticize Biden’s foreign policy.