The Removal of Manuel Zelaya
Soldiers put the president of Honduras on an aircraft in his pyjamas in June 2009 and flew him to Costa Rica. Manuel Zelaya had been elected in 2005 as a conservative landowner and had moved left in office — raising the minimum wage sharply, joining the Venezuelan-led ALBA bloc, and taking cheap oil from Caracas. The immediate dispute was a non-binding poll he had scheduled for 28 June asking whether a question about a constituent assembly should be added to the November ballot. Opponents said it was a device to remove the one-term limit, which the constitution declares unamendable; his supporters said it asked about asking. The supreme court ruled the poll illegal, the electoral tribunal ordered the ballots seized, and the head of the armed forces refused to distribute them and was dismissed and reinstated by the court. The army removed the president before dawn on the day of the poll, and congress read out a resignation letter he says he never wrote. The distinguishing feature is what happened next: the removal was conducted with judicial and legislative cover, which made it harder to describe. The Organisation of American States called it a coup and suspended Honduras; Washington used the word for a week and then stopped, which mattered because the aid rules attach to it. Elections were held in November under the de facto government and the result was recognised. Honduras has had the highest murder rate in the world for much of the period since. Zelaya returned in 2011 and his wife Xiomara Castro was elected president in 2021, which is a considerably longer arc than most such episodes produce. The president elected in 2013 and 2017 was convicted in New York in 2024 of trafficking cocaine.
- Year: 2009 CE
- Category: Coup
