The Removal of Manuel Zelaya
On 28 June 2009 Honduran soldiers seized President Manuel Zelaya at the presidential residence and flew him to Costa Rica. The dispute concerned a non-binding poll Zelaya had scheduled on whether to convene a constituent assembly; the Supreme Court and Congress held the poll unconstitutional, and Congress named its own speaker, Roberto Micheletti, as president the same day. The removal's defenders argued it was a constitutional succession ordered by the courts rather than a coup. The manner of it undercut that case: a serving head of state was deported by the army in his night clothes, without trial, which no reading of the Honduran constitution authorised. The Organization of American States suspended Honduras — the first suspension under the Inter-American Democratic Charter adopted eight years earlier, and only the second in the organisation's history after Cuba. Zelaya was not restored. Elections held under the interim government in November 2009 were recognised by the United States and eventually by most of the region, and Honduras was readmitted to the OAS in 2011. The years that followed brought rising homicide rates, the expansion of organised crime into the state, a contested 2017 re-election, and migration north on a scale that reshaped US border politics. In 2022 Zelaya's wife, Xiomara Castro, won the presidency.
- Year: 2009 CE
- Category: Coup
