Word: coupes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Latin American left knows anything, it's the value of political theater. When leftist, coup-ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya tried to return to his country on Sunday in a small Venezuelan jet, buzzing the Tegucigalpa airport before soldiers blocked the runway, many inside the Organization of American States and the Obama Administration considered it a reckless stunt that might hamper a negotiated solution to the crisis. But as it turns out, the aerial spectacle may have aided their cause: it finally coalesced hundreds of thousands of Zelaya supporters on the ground and helped prompt Honduran coup leaders, already facing...
...referendum that allows indefinite re-election. When Zelaya last month defied a Supreme Court ban against a nonbinding plebiscite he'd called on constitutional change, the army whisked him away in his pajamas and flew him to forced exile in Costa Rica. (See pictures of the Honduras coup on LIFE.com...
...diplomats, Zelaya would be immune from prosecution when he's back in Honduras. Likewise Micheletti, who last week had insisted he that he would never negotiate Zelaya's return, and other Zelaya foes, including the military leaders who ousted the President, would not face trial for the coup. "It's designed to keep the potential for violence at a minimum when Zelaya is reinstated," says one diplomat in Washington, who asked not to be identified...
...Costa Rica in his pajamas. Denying that he had stepped down, Zelaya said he would return to take power - to which Micheletti promised he would be arrested for treason. The ousted President said he would return home anyway, along with several other Latin American Presidents who have condemned the coup. Micheletti retorted that their plane would not be allowed to land. And then in the final and fatal exchange, Zelaya sent his supporters in the capital to peacefully take over the airport, and brashly flew into Honduran airspace...
...international community last week for refusing to recognize his authority, took a slightly more conciliatory tone after the protests. While still refusing to reinstate Zelaya, he said he would be open to "good-faith negotiations" with the Organization of American States (OAS), which suspended Honduras on Saturday over the coup. "There are times for dialogue and times for negotiation," Micheletti told reporters at a news conference on Sunday. How readily the OAS will bargain with an administration that came to power via a coup, whose soldiers have now fired on unarmed demonstrators, remains to be seen...