The same United Nations that now condemns the coup in Honduras and demands Zelaya’s return occupied Haiti militarily during the coup government of Gérard Latortue, often attacking Haitians demonstrating for Aristide’s return, and occupies it still.

The soldiers who forced Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint from his bedroom to an airbase near Tegucigalpa could not have imagined the response their actions would bring. Not only has practically every government in Latin America condemned the coup d’état they carried out and demanded the reinstatement of Zelaya, but so have the Organization of American States and the United Nations, and, in a more guarded way, so has the United States.

More important in the long run is the resistance of countless Honduran people, who have defied the curfew declared by Roberto Micheletti, named by congress to be interim president, and who are facing down the soldiers now in control of the streets of the capital city.

President Manuel Zelaya was taken prisoner early Sunday morning after some 200 soldiers arrived at the presidential residence and disarmed his guards. Zelaya, still in his pajamas, was transported to an airfield and flown to Costa Rica. His ouster was similar, at least in superficial ways, to the last military coup in Latin America, which deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, for the second time, in February, 2004.

The two countries, despite important ethnic, historical and linguistic differences, are similar as well. They are of about the same size, with populations of around 7.5 million, and they are both among the poorest three or four countries in the hemisphere. Seventy percent of Hondurans live in poverty. The average annual income is $1600. Honduras and Haiti both have historically powerful military forces that have often shown a disposition for brutality. And they have both long been controlled by small wealthy elites.

But the two men are quite different. Aristide, a priest and practitioner of liberation theology, had a long history of direct involvement with the poor before becoming president and had shown great personal courage in their defense on more than one occasion. He received over 70% of the vote in one presidential election, 90% in another. Zelaya, in contrast, is the wealthy landowning son of wealthy landowners. He came to power in 2005 by a narrow margin through the politically centrist Partido Liberal, whose policies he initially supported, favoring CAFTA, for example, the Central America Free Trade Agreement.

Original Source: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13931