Oil, Falklands, Malvinas

European Pressphoto Agency - Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, right, is trying to get Latin American leaders to sign a statement backing Argentina's claim to the islands

A British oil rig started drilling in disputed waters off the Falkland Islands on Monday, as Argentina tried to rally support from Latin American nations for a diplomatic statement backing Argentina's claim to the islands and criticizing the U.K. for violating Argentine sovereignty.

The move by British oil companies to initiate exploration off the Falklands has stirred passions over the remote South Atlantic islands to perhaps their highest point since 1982, when Argentina lost a brief war to Britain over control of the islands. No one predicts armed hostilities this time, but nationalist rhetoric has been flying on both sides of the Atlantic. If Britain finds large amounts of oil, relations could get stickier.

Can't see Gordon Brown doing a Thatcher.


Argentina's leftist President Cristina Kirchner was in Cancún, Mexico, on Monday working on a diplomatic response during a previously scheduled summit of Latin American leaders. Mrs. Kirchner was trying to get regional leaders to sign a statement condemning the U.K. and backing Argentina's claim to the islands, known in Spanish as the Malvinas.

Argentina was getting support from some quarters, such as Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chávez. "In case of aggression against Argentina, rest assured that the Argentine nation will not be alone" as it was in the 1982 war, Mr. Chávez said Sunday.

On Univision's broadcast last night a clip was shown of Hugo telling the Queen of England that the era of empires has ended. Wonder if Elizabeth was watching.

Bill Rammell, the U.K.'s minister of state for the armed forces, said the Falklands had a "legitimate right" to develop an oil industry within its waters and that Britain had made Argentina aware of its determination to protect that right.

"We do, we have, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to protect the Falkland Islands—and our counterparts in Argentina are aware of that," he told the House of Commons.

The government has to stand strong; Brown can not afford to look weak. Surely the Tories are holding his feet to the fire.

Mrs. Kirchner had ratcheted up pressure over the islands last week, issuing a decree that ships traveling to the Falklands must first seek permission from Buenos Aires before entering Argentine waters.

This is manna from heaven for Presidenta Kirchner, an external crisis.

Argentina emphasized that it was intent on pursuing its objectives by peaceful means. No one in Argentina seemed eager for a repeat of the shooting war that started in April 1982, when Argentina's dictatorship, facing deepening discontent at home, seized the islands in a surprise attack. The U.K. government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent a naval task force across the Atlantic and retook the Falklands, at the cost of 649 Argentine and 255 British servicemen killed.

In the nearly three decades since the war, Argentina has gone from a military dictatorship to a democracy. Argentine political scientist Rosendo Fraga wrote on Monday that Argentina has cut military spending by a greater amount than any other South American country since Mrs. Kirchner's husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, took office in 2003. Nevertheless, analysts say that putting forth a vigorous diplomatic defense of Argentina's historic claims to the Falklands could help Mrs. Kirchner politically at a time when she has sunk far in the polls because of the flagging economy.

Exactly.


For some Argentines, the oil dispute has reopened an old wound. On Sunday, computer hackers launched a cyber attack on the Web site of the Falklands newspaper Penguin News, posting an Argentine flag, a patriotic march and a manifesto affirming Argentina's claim to the islands. In the U.K., Argentina has been on the receiving end of potshots in the press. The Sunday Telegraph has dubbed Mrs. Kirchner the "Botox Evita."

Hugo's loyalists

February 17, 2010
Purging Loyalists, Chávez Tightens His Inner Circle
By SIMON ROMERO


CARACAS, Venezuela — News travels fast in this city, and rumors even faster. So when a billionaire banker named Ricardo Fernández Barrueco learned that his home had been searched by agents from the feared secret intelligence police, he might have suspected that the rumors of a purge of magnates loyal to President Hugo Chávez were true.

Being one of Venezuela’s richest and most influential men, Mr. Fernández, 44, went to the headquarters of the Disip intelligence police to clear up the matter directly with the agency’s powerful spymaster.


Then a surprising thing happened, especially in a nation that had grown accustomed to the unfettered activities of pro-Chávez tycoons like Mr. Fernández. The self-described socialist revolution of Mr. Chávez notwithstanding, the prominence of these moguls was so well known it inspired a nickname — the Boligarchs — for their fast accumulation of wealth and their ties to the government, which reveres Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century aristocrat who won Venezuela’s freedom from Spain.

Those are great ironies: Bolívar was an aristocrat, and these modern-day Bolívarians are, too.


But instead of dismissing the matter, the intelligence chief imprisoned Mr. Fernández last year and ordered agents to start detaining other pro-Chávez magnates. Some slipped into hiding abroad and are still being sought. Several others and their associates were arrested and put in cells adjacent to Mr. Fernández’s. The purge has revealed a power struggle at the highest levels of government, leading to the fall of some of Mr. Chávez’s military comrades and reports of secret dossiers on businessmen compiled here by intelligence agents from Cuba, Venezuela’s top ally.


At a time when Mr. Chávez struggles with public ire over electricity shortages and an economy in recession, the arrests show his ability to nimbly consolidate power while crisis swirls around him. To do so, Mr. Chávez is using tactics like secret-police raids and expropriations of some of his most powerful supporters’ businesses, relying on a dwindling number of military loyalists to carry out his orders.


“We are witnessing the battle between competing mafias who prospered at Chávez’s heel,” said Ismael García, a leftist legislator who broke with the president in 2007. “Chávez still has the cynicism to camouflage his rule in socialist rhetoric, but anyone with a brain sees that his loyalists are in it for just two things: the power and the money.”

Same old story, new labels.


Some bankers here apparently acquired too much of both. The rise of a shadowy group of pro-government tycoons had for years been an embarrassment to Mr. Chávez as he was promoting anti-capitalist values. Included in the Bolibourgeoisie (another name for the so-called Bolivarian moneyed class) were men like Arné Chacón, a former navy lieutenant who took part in Mr. Chávez’s failed 1992 coup attempt. In newspaper photographs back then, Mr. Chacón, like Mr. Chávez, looked like a skinny idealist. But Mr. Chacón amassed a banking fortune, appearing in newspaper photographs here with more girth and a selection of the more than 40 purebred racehorses he owned.

Now Arné Chacón is just another jailed magnate, joining Mr. Fernández and eight other imprisoned bankers and state regulators as investigations into their activities slowly advance. Mr. Chávez himself announced that officials had seized Mr. Chacón’s properties, including his prized horses. The justification for the imprisonment of Mr. Chacón and other tycoons involved accusations of irregularities in bank acquisitions.


Reports by nongovernmental outlets here point to other motives for the crackdown. Teodoro Petkoff Malec, a former Marxist guerrilla and one of Venezuela’s leading intellectuals who now edits Tal Cual, a left-wing opposition newspaper, reported that a dossier prepared by Cuba’s intelligence service might have crystallized the purge. The intelligence report, Mr. Petkoff said, was delivered to Mr. Chávez by yet another former military officer, Ronald Blanco, now Venezuela’s ambassador in Cuba; he passed it along as a form of retaliation after Mr. Fernández tried to have Mr. Blanco’s brother-in-law ousted from his post as the government’s superintendent of banks, Mr. Petkoff reported.

How Soviet.

Mr. Chávez’s government has remained silent about the existence of a Cuban dossier. The president’s information minister, Blanca Eekhout, did not respond to requests for an interview. But Mr. Chávez has clearly continued the purge, issuing warrants through Interpol for at least nine bankers thought to have fled Venezuela, and seizing 11 of their financial institutions to fold them into a new state banking company under his control. The fallout from the purge continued this month, when Mr. Chávez named a former army captain who took part in his 1992 coup attempt to oversee the seized banks. Mr. Chávez is also relying more on his Cuban allies to address other issues. This month, he brought in Ramiro Valdés, Cuba’s 77-year-old vice president and a founder of its Soviet-inspired state intelligence apparatus in the 1960s, to advise him on the electricity shortages, an appointment that has further angered Mr. Chávez’s critics here.


None of the fallen Boligarchs have gripped the public fascination here like Mr. Fernández, who was arrested at the start of the purge. “Fernández Barrueco made the fundamental mistake of believing he was powerful,” said Juan Carlos Zapata, an investigate journalist who is writing a book on the Boligarchs. “By taking him out, Chávez sent a message to anyone who aspires to power in Venezuela.” Mr. Fernández rose from obscurity to put together a web of 270 companies in industries as diverse as tuna-fishing and banking, amassing a fortune of about $1.6 billion by 2005, according to study by the Caracas affiliate of the KPMG accounting firm. He thrived in rural Venezuela, where Mr. Chávez’s dominance goes largely unchallenged, acquiring an interest in a pro-government newspaper in Barinas, a state that is a Chávez family bastion. Still, Mr. Fernández remained an enigma as his wealth increased. Today, he resides in a military intelligence holding cell.

Other resignations in January from within Mr. Chávez’s ruling cadre followed the bankers’ arrests. Vice President Ramón Carrizalez and Eugenio Vásquez, the minister of public banking, left the government. It remains unclear whether their exit was related to the earlier purge. Those who remain in Mr. Chávez’s good graces provide a glimpse into the president’s priorities. They include former military officers like Diosdado Cabello, who as chief communications regulator engineered the removal last month of RCTV, a television network critical of Mr. Chávez, from cable channels.


As for those swept out by the purge, Mr. Chávez has made few apologies. “I’m not a judge,” he said on national television referring to the arrest of the magnate, Mr. Fernández. “But I have enough evidence to say that he’s a criminal.”

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.

Socialist soap

In his unending quest to control all facets of life, Señor Hugo has a new suggestion, or perhaps more of a directive: stop making capitalist soap operas, and make socialist ones.

Chavez: Venezuela needs ‘socialist’ soap operas
The Associated Press - Monday, Jan. 11, 2010 | 12:26 p.m.

President Hugo Chavez says there's too much capitalism on Venezuelan TV. So he's urging producers to start making films and TV shows that stress socialist values.  Chavez says producers should be making "socialist soap operas."

He said Sunday he recently visited Cuba "and they have soaps there. But they're not capitalist soap operas." Cuba does make some of its own programming. One of Sunday's offerings was "Our History: I Die for the Revolution." But its state-run television channels also airs Brazilian soaps, Walt Disney cartoons and programs such as "Desperate Housewives."

Oops. I Die for the Revolution doesn't stand a chance against Desperate Housewives, one would think.

Chavez-allied producers made a 2004 soap opera called "Love Inside the Barrio" that emphasized socialist values but failed to draw many viewers.

Ay, Hugo

AMERICAS NEWS - JANUARY 9, 2010

Venezuela Says Its Jets Intercepted U.S. Plane

CARACAS -- President Hugo Chávez said he ordered two F-16 jets to intercept a U.S. military plane that twice violated Venezuelan airspace on Friday in what he called the latest provocation in the South American nation's skies. Brandishing a photo of the plane, which he described as a P-3, Mr. Chávez said the overflight was the latest incursion in Venezuelan skies by the U.S. military from its bases on the Netherlands' Caribbean islands and from neighboring Colombia.

So, his foto is good, but the Colombian photos showing FARC camps in Ecuador and Venezuela are fraudulent?

* Venezuela Devalues Its Currency

There was no immediate response from the U.S. Defense Department or the White House.

What are they gonna say?

Separately, Mr. Chávez announced a currency devaluation for the first time since 2005. The president said Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, will now have two government-set rates depending on the use, either 2.60 to the dollar for transactions deemed priorities by the government or 4.30 to the dollar for other transactions. The currency's official exchange rate has been held by the government at 2.15 bolivars to the dollar.


On the plane interception, Mr. Chávez said the F-16s escorted the U.S. plane away after two incursions lasting 15 and 19 minutes each. The perceived threat of U.S. intervention has become a central element of Mr. Chávez's political discourse and a rallying cry for his supporters.

An external threat diverts attention from internal matters.

Foes say the president is hyping the idea of a foreign threat to distract Venezuelans from domestic problems such as a recession and inadequate public services. Mr. Chávez surprised the diplomatic world in December when he accused the Netherlands of abetting potential offensive action against his government by granting U.S. troops access to its islands close to Venezuela.


The Dutch government says the U.S. presence is only for counternarcotics and surveillance operations over Caribbean smuggling routes.

Shoot them down

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, a Dutch site, has story about Colonel Hugo Chávez and his charge of the US flying spy drones over Venezuela. Picture is of Curaçao's Hato Airport.


Dutch MP: Curaçao is US spy base
Published on : 22 December 2009 - 9:34am | By RNW News Desk

Dutch Socialist MP Harry van Bommel has claimed that US spy planes are using an airbase on the Netherlands Antilles island of Curaçao.

Mr Van Bommel has asked Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen whether he is aware that a Boeing RC-135 aircraft has been making regular reconnaissance flights from the Caribbean island's Hato airport over the past few weeks.

Now, if that is indeed the case, is the government supposed to acknowledge it? If not, i sthe Foreign Minister supposed to say, no, I was not aware of what my government is doing?

War on drugs
The flights were the cause of angry reactions by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who accused the Netherlands of colluding with the United States. The Hague government is contributing to rising tensions between Venezuela and Colombia, according to the Venezuelan authorities.

Chávez's tactics are to create hornet's nests and create the illusion that Venezuela is on the verge of being invaded. There is nothing better than an external enemy.

The opposition MP said it is up to the Netherlands to help de-escalate these tensions. He is asking for a ban on American military flights over Colombia from the Antilles. Ostensibly such flights are part of the US "war on drugs" but Mr Van Bommel claims they are also used in a "war on guerrillas". The MP wants to scrap the US-Netherlands Forwards Operations Location treaty enabling the Americans to use airfields in Curaçao and the Antilles for anti-drugs flights.

If, indeed, these flights are being used fro anti-guerrilla purposes, why would either the US or the Colombian government want to stop them?

Shoot them down
Meanwhile President Chávez has ordered his airforce to shoot down any US plane entering Venezuelan airspace. He said on state television that a US drone, an unmanned plane, had attempted to enter from Colombia on Sunday. Since an agreement with the Colombian government was signed in October, the US military have access to seven military bases in Colombia.

What a coup that would be, to have a shot down drone for display. One supposes that Hugo s not going to be giving his friend Obama another copy of Eduaredo Galeano's book any time soon.

Hugo's paranoia

This item is from Pravda: Chavez Laughs in Hillary Clinton's Face and Awards War Prize to Obama

Story starts: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez harshly criticized the US-led politics at the close of ALBA – the summit of leftist Latin American nations – in Havana. Chavez stated that the USA encircled Venezuela with army bases in Puerto Rico, Aruba, Curazao and Columbia, where the US army gained access to seven army bases. The USA will never be able to defeat Venezuela even if Americans build a thousand of bases, the Venezuelan leader said, Itar-Tass reports.

Columbia?

Chavez says Obama should give the Nobel back, plotting attack
Dutch deny Chavez aggression claim

Aljazeera.net - ‎6 hours ago‎

Bart Rijs, a foreign ministry spokesman, said on Friday that none of the territories in the Kingdom of the Netherlands - including Aruba and the Netherland ...

Venezuela: Chávez Accuses Netherlands of Plotting Aggression With the US New York Times

Dutch deny Venezuela's claim of US attack plans The Associated Press

Dutch to quiz Venezuela over "aggression" comment Reuters UK

Fidel's great lesson to Hugo: always keep an external enemy. This is a good one, too: Holland is conspiring with the US to invade Venezuela, and using Aruba as a launching pad. The tourists at the resorts must be hiding surface-to-air missiles in their rooms, too.

Populist president faces dwindling support

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is finding that a weak economy, electricity shortages and a confrontational governing style have undermined support for his government, not three years after taking office in a landslide that highlighted the rise of populist leaders in Latin America.

His governing style might be disliked by the press, and the Journal, but what proof is there that his governing style has undermined popular support?

Polls taken last month show that approval ratings for the 46-year-old socialist have fallen into the mid-40s, well down from the 73% he had soon after taking office in early 2007, pollster Cedatos-Gallup International said Wednesday.

That slide matches the drop in support for leftist allies such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. Lower commodities prices have undermined their ability to sustain spending programs, while rising crime and electricity shortages in resource-rich nations underscore the rampant inefficiency of parts of the public sector.

As the patronage ebbs along with the government coffers, the failure of some statist policies is becoming more evident. Meanwhile, a dearth of private-sector investment has meant some of these sputtering economies have little to fall back on. The nationalist rhetoric and attacks on the opposition no longer resonate as strongly as they did when leftist leaders came to power riding a wave of antipathy toward market-oriented economies.

All three leaders enjoy considerable influence over the legislative and judicial branches, making it harder to blame the opposition when entitlement programs dry up just as unemployment and inflation are on the rise.

Quite true.

¿POR QUÉ NO... BROMEAN?

"Se ha dejado barba, como Fidel", saludó el presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, al rey Juan Carlos, en el Palacio de la Zarzuela, en Madrid. Lejos parece haber quedado el episodio de noviembre de 2007 cuando el monarca exigió al mandatario venezolano guardar silencio | Ver nota

• Page One
• August 15, 2009

Foreign Talent Loads the Bases in Minor Leagues

More Visas Spur Deals From Haiti to India; Korean Teen Scores Big

By JOEL MILLMAN

BOISE, Idaho -- Like many teenagers spending this summer abroad, Hak-Ju Lee is immersing himself in a foreign culture, making friends and tasting exotic food like moose stew. Unlike most teens, however, he's getting paid three-quarters of a million dollars to do it.

Mr. Lee, 18 years old, is a shortstop, and the culture he is experiencing is American minor-league baseball, where major-league teams develop their talent in small towns across the country.

For decades, minor-league rosters seemed the essence of America's heartland. But thanks to growing numbers of foreign players like Mr. Lee, the minors are fast turning into a veritable United Nations.

The Boise Hawks' Imported Talent

View Slideshow

Sean Flanigan for the Wall Street Journal

Hak-Ju Lee is one of 18 international players on the Boise baseball roster.

The gangly infielder is one of three South Koreans playing this summer for the Boise Hawks, an affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. The Hawks' opening-day roster boasted 18 of 25 players from abroad -- mostly Venezuela and the Dominican Republic -- making it one of the most "imported" of all minor-league teams.

Recent changes in U.S. immigration law and growing competition in baseball for raw talent have allowed the minor-league farm system to flourish with imported players. It has been a home run for globalization, but bad news for U.S.-born players, who suddenly have much more competition. Across the minor and major leagues, the total number of foreign-born players is growing fast, to almost 3,500 of the 8,532 players under contract this summer, from 2,964 three years ago.

Boise Hawks' hitting instructor, Ricardo Medina, a native of Panama who translates at team meetings in what has become almost a bilingual program, notes that Mr. Lee and his Korean teammates are getting something else from their summer in Idaho. "I think they may be learning more Spanish than English," he jokes.

The three South Koreans on the Hawks' roster matches the total number playing at the major-league level. Today, 19 Koreans play in the minor leagues, compared with just seven five years ago.

This summer's crop of foreign players in the minors includes baseball's first-ever pros from India, two of them on the Pittsburgh Pirates' Gulf Coast league team. That league's rosters include players from Honduras, Haiti, Russia and the Czech Republic.

Minor League Baseball Becomes Melting Pot

2:33

As a result of unlimited work visas, minor league baseball is seeing a new influx of international players. Joel Millman reports from Boise, Idaho.

Eight teams have minor leaguers from Brazil, including Fábio Murakami, an outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies' Williamsport, Pa., minor-league team, the Crosscutters. Mr. Murakami is one of several South Americans of Japanese descent in the minors, a list that includes Claudio Fukunaga and Lucas Nakandakare, both from Argentina and under contract to Tampa Bay.

One Red Sox farm team boasts an even more exotic tandem: the brothers Crew Tipene Moanaroa, called "Boss," and Hohua Moanaroa, called "Moko." Born in New South Wales, Australia, the Moanaroas are believed to be the first members of New Zealand's Maori tribe to play baseball professionally in the U.S. "Boss" is a first baseman. "Moko" plays outfield.

New Zealand's representative in the minors is Scott Campbell. He plays third base for the Blue Jays' Eastern League affiliate, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

The surge of young foreign players into the U.S. minor leagues began in 2007, a few months after then-president and former major-league team owner George W. Bush signed the Creating Opportunities for Minor League Professionals, Entertainers and Teams Act, known as the Compete Act. It freed the farm systems of major-league teams from having to compete with all U.S. employers seeking H2B work visas for foreign employees, the supply of which usually was exhausted each year by February. Now, teams can import as many prospects as they want.

"There is no longer a limit on work visas," explains Oneri Fleita, the Florida-born director of minor-league development for the Cubs. "So, yeah, you might see more foreign players getting an opportunity."

The Cubs, who signed Korea's Hak-Ju Lee right out of high school, have become one of the most aggressive signers of foreign players. In 2006, 86 players in the Cubs' major and minor-league system were foreign-born. This year, 142 Cubs are imports.

The changes pose a challenge to American teens hoping to make the big leagues. Instead of signing hundreds of U.S. amateurs out of high school -- the traditional business model for stocking minor-league rosters -- teams are drafting fewer U.S. kids and signing more so-called nondraft free agents, the vast majority of them teenagers from Latin America.

Foreign Exchange

See the statistics of the players mentioned in this story:

Hak-Ju Lee (South Korea), Boise Hawks

Fabio Murakami (Brazil), Williamsport Crosscutters

Claudio Fukunaga (Argentina), Gulf Coast League Rays

Lucas Nakandakare (Argentina), Gulf Coast League Rays

Crew Tipene Moanaroa (Australia), Gulf Coast League Red Sox

Hohua Moanaroa (Australia), Gulf Coast League Red Sox

Scott Campbell (New Zealand), New Hampshire Fisher Cats

Eduardo Figueroa (Venezuela), Boise Hawks

George Matheus (Venezuela), Boise Hawks

Eric Gonzalez (Canary Islands), Lake Elsinore Storm

This summer, major-league teams spent over $70 million signing nondraft free agents from outside the country. That is up from $54 million last year, and just under $30 million in 2006, the last year before the Compete Act.

Economics plays a huge role. U.S.-born players drafted out of high school rarely sign a contract to turn pro without a cash bonus, most in excess of $100,000. This summer, the Cubs have forked out more than $6 million in signing bonuses to 26 U.S. prospects, an average of nearly a quarter million apiece.

While some foreign players like Mr. Lee got hefty signing bonuses, the majority do not. Latin players in particular can be had for a lot less -- just $10,000 in the case of Venezuelan pitcher Eduardo Figueroa, one of Mr. Lee's teammates. Third baseman George Matheus, another Hawk from Venezuela, received $15,000 for signing.

Lifting visa limits creates an opportunity for players like Eric Gonzalez, a 22-year-old Spaniard in the San Diego Padres' farm system. Mr. Gonzalez was the last player drafted by the Atlanta Braves in 2005, when he was a 17-year-old high-schooler in the Canary Islands. But under the work-visa cap then prevailing in baseball, the Braves would have had to release another foreign prospect to sign him, Mr. Gonzalez explains, "or else send me somewhere overseas to play, probably Australia."

So Mr. Gonzalez didn't get a shot, and instead polished his skills at the University of South Alabama. Signed by the Padres after graduating last year, he has already whipped through one level of minor-league competition, winning a promotion from the Fort Wayne TinCaps to the Lake Elsinore Storm in July. But the cash rewards will have to wait. "I signed for $1,000, before taxes," laughs Mr. Gonzales, one of two Spaniards in the minors this year. "Basically, I signed in exchange for a plane ticket and a work visa."

In the past, visa restrictions meant many foreign prospects were sent to play for sister teams in places like the Dominican Republic and Australia, where they tried to get enough visibility to fill a coveted visa spot. Nowadays, teams figure they can train foreign talent personally, and give youngsters a chance to learn English and assimilate with U.S.-born teammates.

On both counts, South Korea's Mr. Lee is an enthusiastic student. "Stolen base! Slider! Fastball! Right down the middle!" the teenager recently shouted with a smile, demonstrating the English terms he's mastered since arriving in Idaho.

Much like in an exchange-student program, local families host foreign ballplayers, getting season tickets in return. Mr. Lee lives in a suburban home festooned with heads of antelope and deer and other hunting trophies. He has learned to play Rock Band with his 17-year-old host-family "brother," a ballplayer who is entering his senior year in high school.

His typical teenage observation about life in America: lack of sleep. "Bus ride after game from Vancouver?" he groans, feigning fatigue. "Thirteen hours! Oh, my God. Tired!"

Chávez Loyalists Push to Close Golf Courses

In 2006, a former mayor of Caracas tried but failed to seize control of the 18-hole course at the Caracas Country Club to build thousands of homes for the poor.









President Hugo Chávez’s political movement has found a new target: golf.




President Hugo Chávez says some golf courses could be better used for the poor

Hugo gonna be mad

The U.S., in an apparent softening of its support for ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, won't impose economic sanctions on Honduras and has yet to decide whether Mr. Zelaya's removal from office constitutes a coup.

Diplomacy's gears grind exceedingly slowly.

A letter from the State Department to Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, states that the U.S. "energetically" opposes Mr. Zelaya's June 28 ouster. But the letter also expresses the harshest criticism yet of Mr. Zelaya's own actions that preceded his removal from office, including trying to change Honduras's constitution to potentially stay in power.

Good crisis management: take the opposition's firepower away by agreeing with them, the slowly backtrack. Nicely done.

With Washington unwilling to take drastic steps such as sanctions to restore Mr. Zelaya to power, it seems increasingly unlikely that the leftist politician will return to his seat, analysts said. Honduras's interim government, backed by much of the country's establishment and middle class, appears unwilling to have Mr. Zelaya back, and Washington seems in no mood to force the issue.

What will Mary Anastasia O'Grady and her ilk think now? They'll find something to gripe about.

"In Honduras, Washington's wavering will be seen as a sign that the government can wait it out until the elections and that the costs they are bearing for international isolation, while considerable, are preferable to the risks of allowing Zelaya to return, even for a limited time and with his authority curtailed," said Michael Shifter at the Inter-American Dialogue, a nonpartisan think tank on hemispheric affairs in Washington.

Let's be practical

As rain fell, Honduran police officers blocked a road last week in Jacagalpa, near Nicaragua.











On TV, Honduran Generals Explain Their Role in Coup

Military officials have been feeling increasingly isolated, as those who support Mr. Zelaya accuse them of being traitors and those who support the de facto regime, led by Roberto Micheletti, distance themselves from the decision to expel the president.

Damned for doing by both sides, left stuck in the middle.

“In the end, there is a chance that the civilians will all kiss and make up, and the military is going to be held as the bad guys,” said a high-ranking official in the defense ministry, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the military’s position. “These guys are worried. They are worried about going to jail.”

Yanqi (help me) go home

Honduran police on Sunday stopped Manuel Zelaya's wife, Xiomara Castro, as she tried to get to the border with Nicaragua and join her husband.

This is rich: Zelaya criticizes Secretary of State Clinton for not interfering enough.

President Manuel Zelaya stepped up a growing war of words with Washington, too, accusing the Obama administration of not acting forcefully enough to restore him to power.

And Micheletti's camp criticizes the North American administration for supporting Zelaya. As do right-wingers, of course.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Wall Street Journal's resident Latin American right-winger criticizes: Mr. Zelaya appeared somewhat disappointed that his theatrical re-entry did not provoke a shoot-out. A few hours later he jumped back into Nicaragua where Sandinista President Daniel Ortega has given him shelter.

Seemed?

If Mr. Zelaya keeps this up, the crisis could drag on. But however the standoff is resolved, it is likely to be remembered as a defining moment for U.S. Latin America policy under Barack Obama.

Already?

Mr. Obama’s insistence that Mr. Zelaya be restored to power has strengthened the image of an arrogant and patronizing Uncle Sam disconnected from the region’s reality.

Funny how that works in the collective mind: the same exact words are used by the left for the directly opposite viewpoint.

Hondurans might be more amenable to an Obama democracy lecture if the U.S. showed any interest in standing up to Mr. Chávez and his antidemocratic allies or any grasp of the dangers they present. Instead, since taking office in January the American president has embraced the region’s bad actors only to be subsequently embarrassed by revelations that his new “friends” are actually enemies of liberty and peace.

Embraced? He has stopped being hostile, yes. O'Grady simply supports the Bush doctrine, and considers all else wrong and dangerous.

Having established that making nice with the region’s troublemakers is a priority, Mr. Obama now wants Mr. Zelaya—who was endorsed by the FARC last week—reinstated. If Honduras does not comply, the U.S. is threatening to freeze assets and revoke the visas of interim government officials.

Posturing and diplomacy?

Some Washington watchers figure this bizarre stance is due to the fact that Mr. Obama is relying heavily on White House Counsel Gregory Craig for advice on Latin America.

Some, not all.

Mr. Craig was the lawyer for Fidel Castro—er, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, the father of Elian Gonzalez—during Bill Clinton’s 2000 repatriation to Cuba of the seven-year-old. During the presidential campaign when Mr. Craig was advising Mr. Obama, the far-left Council on Hemispheric Affairs endorsed Mr. Craig as “the right man to revive deeply flawed U.S.-Latin America relations.” In other words, to pull policy left.

Er? Craig is supposed to be soft on communism, then, a dupe.

There is plenty of speculation that Mr. Obama is making policy off of Mr. Craig’s “expertise.” It is not too much to believe. Indeed, if all policy is now being run out of the White House, as many observers contend, then the views of the White House counsel may explain a lot.

Off of? May? Back on the border, meantime, the minuet continues.

Mr. Zelaya did get one piece of good news over the weekend. On Saturday, Honduras's military said in a statement that it would abide by whatever legal solution was reached by civilian powers, leaving the door open to a return by the man it ousted.

But the exiled president, a close ally of Venezuela's populist Hugo Chávez, didn't seem hopeful on Sunday. As he sat with aides and journalists in Nicaragua, a few hundred yards from the Honduran border, he called on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to stop "avoiding the issue" and to pressure what he called the "dictatorship" in Honduras.

Curious he uses the term dictatorship.

"Secretary Clinton should confront the dictatorship with force," he said, according to Reuters. He said he wasn't sure he would attend a meeting with U.S. officials about the crisis in Washington on Tuesday.

So the US should intervene, confronting the government in Honduras with force? O, that would be really smart, and play well. Would Chávez perhaps loan that force a helicopter, or two? For his friend's sake, of course.

Ousted Honduras President Manuel Zelaya talks to his supporters upon his arrival at the land border between Nicaragua and Honduras on Saturday. Mr. Zelaya returned for a second day to Honduras' land border to put pressure on the coup leaders.











Negotiations backed by the U.S. and overseen by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias appear to have hit a stalemate. Honduras's interim government, led by Roberto Micheletti, a former head of Congress, said it would step down and accept a third person to act as interim leader for the remainder of Mr. Zelaya's term. But Mr. Zelaya's camp wants him to return to power and finish his term.




Women carried food for supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya at a military road blockade in El Paraiso Sunday.







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Behind the Honduran Mutiny

A supporter of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya waved a Honduran flag in Tegucigalpa Thursday.

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Yesterday, Hugo's friend and ally stepped onto Honduran soil, and spoke of arriving in peace. Secretary Clinton called his actions "reckless."

a close look at Mr. Zelaya's time in office reveals a strongly antidemocratic streak. He placed himself in a growing cadre of elected Latin presidents who have tried to stay in power past their designated time to carry out a populist-leftist agenda. These leaders, led by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, have used the region's historic poverty and inequality to gain support from the poor, but created deep divisions in their societies by concentrating power in their own hands and increasing government control over the economy, media and other sectors.

Interesting how populists are anti-democratic; they embody the revolution, not the people.

The crisis has put the Obama administration in a difficult spot. Mindful of past U.S. support of coups in Latin America, it condemned the ouster and has led efforts to find a negotiated solution. But its insistence Mr. Zelaya return to power has angered many middle-class Hondurans, who feel the ouster defended the country's institutions from a Chávez-style power grab.

Perfect illustation of a quandary ("predicament: a situation from which extrication is difficult especially an unpleasant or trying one"). Supporting his ouster would have led to much more blustering than followed that very ouster. Opposing it has made many Hondurans very unhappy.

"This is a showdown which will determine if the Chavista model triumphs or not," says Moises Starkman, who advised Mr. Zelaya on special projects and now works for the interim government in the same capacity.

Perfect opportunity to undermine the Chávista model, a fraudulent enterprise that ensconces leaders in power with the veneer of populism hiding their control. Chávez senses, even understands, that.

Little in Mr. Zelaya's background suggested he would become an international symbol of a democratically elected leader forced from office. Mr. Zelaya is a product of Olancho, a violent, macho state in central Honduras that is dominated by pistol-packing landowners who run huge estates. His family, involved in logging and ranching, has been one of the dominant forces in Olancho for decades.

Correa has a handful of college degrees (an MA in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium; an MS in Economics, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Chávez was a career military officer; Ortega was born into a middle-class family that oposed Somoza, and he became a Sandinista leader; Morales grew up herding llamas. Only Zelaya really has a moneyed past, even if in a countryside.

After two years, Zelaya moved left, appointing leftists to his cabinet. In his first year, Mr. Zelaya didn't seem very ideological and spent a lot of time traveling. He was a big spender. On one notable trip to Washington, he took along a large group, including family members. He handed off his infant granddaughter to a startled President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony.

High oil prices in 2007 hurt Honduras. The nation has no refining or storage capacities, and all of its fuel is imported: Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and the local Dipsa -- control the market, importing the fuel directly and distributing it through their own service stations.

Neighboring Nicaragua, which had been getting cut-rate fuel from Caracas since 2005 under a program called Petrocaribe, had no such problems. A brainchild of Mr. Chávez, Petrocaribe sells Venezuelan oil at market prices but allows its 18 member countries to finance a part of the oil at very low interest rates. As of 2007, Petrocaribe had provided $1.2 billion in financing -- similar to the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank's soft loans in that period.

Petrocaribe: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Suriname, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Curiously, both the IADB and Petrocaribe loan money for the purchase of oil.

Mr. Zelaya, who at first had kept his distance from Mr. Chávez, was quickly ensconced in the Venezuelan's tight embrace. He soon copied the Venezuelan's inflammatory rhetoric. In August, Mr. Zelaya joined the ALBA -- a nine-nation trade and political pact that Mr. Chávez designed to counter U.S. influence in the region. Its other members include Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. (Dominica and Bolivia also belong.)

Mr. Chávez didn't go down well in deeply conservative Honduras. "Any Honduran who is against joining ALBA is either an idiot or a traitor," the Venezuelan shouted to the crowds at the ALBA event, where he gave Mr. Zelaya a new nickname: "Comandante Cowboy."

Nice of Chávez to interfere.

former defense minister Edmundo Orellana, a close friend of Mr. Zelaya, who refused to go along with the president ... resigned over the issue ... also believes the soldiers' action in exiling Mr. Zelaya constituted a coup. "It's the worse thing that could have happened," he says.

Increased U.S. Military Presence in Colombia Could Pose Problems With Neighbors

A plan to increase the American military presence on at least three military bases in Colombia, Washington’s top ally in Latin America, is accentuating Colombia’s already tense relations with some of its neighbors.

Purpose?

Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, which are members of a leftist political alliance that is led by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and backed by his nation’s oil revenues, have all criticized the plan, saying it would broaden the military reach of the United States in the Andes and the Caribbean at a time when they are still wary of American influence in the region.

The usual suspects.

Despite a slight improvement in Venezuela’s relations with the United States in recent months, Mr. Chávez has been especially vocal in lashing out at the plan. Speaking on state television here Monday night, he put Venezuela’s diplomatic ties with Colombia under review, calling the plan a platform for “new aggression against us.”

This from the man who threatens Honduras with punishment.

The United States has been negotiating the increase of military operations in Colombia in recent weeks, faced with Ecuador’s decision to end a decade-long agreement allowing E-3 AWACs and P-3 Orion surveillance planes to operate from the Manta Air Base on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast.

Purpose.

Colombia, which has already received more than $5 billion in military and antidrug aid from the United States this decade, has found itself isolated diplomatically as Mr. Chávez presses ahead with his efforts to expand Venezuela’s oil diplomacy while eroding American influence in the hemisphere.

Other countries chafe at Colombia for different reasons. Colombia’s diplomatic relations with Ecuador have soured since Colombian forces carried out a raid on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rebel camp on Ecuadoran territory last year. A festering boundary dispute with Nicaragua has also made for tensions between Colombia and Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, an ally of Mr. Chávez.

Isolated? These three are hardly favorites of any country.

But with Venezuela itself, Colombia remains locked in a complex game of interdependence. Its sales of manufactured and agricultural goods to Venezuela remain resilient despite Mr. Chávez’s occasional outbursts directed at his ideological opposite, Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe. And faced with disarray in its oil industry, Venezuela relies on imports of Colombian natural gas, narrowing the possibility of a severe deterioration in ties between the two countries despite their sharply different views of cooperation with the United States.

All bluster; anti-imperialist bluster, but simply bluster.

State Ruled by Crime and Chávez Family

"This is what anarchy looks like, at least the type of anarchy where the family of Chávez accumulates wealth and power," said Ángel Santamaría, a Barinas cattleman whose 8-year-old son, Kusto, was held for ransom for 29 days.


This is a side that anti-imperialist foreigners who sympathize with and support the Chávez regime don't see because they are drunk with the headiness of the rhetoric of sovereignty and anti-imperialism.






Stretching over vast cattle estates at the foothills of the Andes, Barinas is known for two things: as the bastion of the family of President Hugo Chávez and as the setting for a terrifying surge in abductions, making it a contender for Latin America’s most likely place to get kidnapped. An intensifying nationwide crime wave over the past decade has pushed the kidnapping rate in Venezuela past Colombia’s and Mexico’s, with about 2 abductions per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Interior Ministry.

But nowhere in Venezuela comes close in abductions to Barinas, with 7.2 kidnappings per 100,000 inhabitants, as armed gangs thrive off the disarray here while Mr. Chávez’s family tightens its grip on the state. Seizures of cattle ranches and crumbling infrastructure also contribute to the sense of low-intensity chaos.

While Hugo Chávez is busy building a parallel government to the existing bureaucracy, he is undermining the stability of the society, and using that instability to establish and perpetuate his power.

Barinas offers a unique microcosm of Mr. Chávez’s rule. Many poor residents still revere the president, born here into poverty in 1954. But polarization in Barinas is growing more severe, with others chafing at his newly prosperous parents and siblings, who have governed the state since the 1990s. While Barinas is a laboratory for projects like land reform, urgent problems like violent crime go unmentioned in the many billboards here extolling the Chávez family’s ascendancy.

A familiar tale: born to poverty, no longer poor, his family's rise to affluence a parallel to his rise to power.

The governor of Barinas, Adán Chávez, the president’s eldest brother and a former ambassador to Cuba, said this month that many of the kidnappings might have been a result of destabilization efforts by the opposition or so-called self-kidnappings: orchestrated abductions to reveal weaknesses among security forces, or to extort money from one’s own family.

O, right, it is the opposition that is destabilizing society. Of course. Claro. And they kidnap themselves; how devious are the imperialists.

Barinas is the home region of the family of Hugo Chávez.



In an election last year marred by accusations of fraud, Adán Chávez succeeded his own father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, a former schoolteacher who had governed Barinas for a decade with the president’s brother, Argenis, the former secretary of state in Barinas.

And there's more: Another brother, Aníbal, is mayor of nearby Sabaneta, and another brother, Adelis, is a top banker at Banco Sofitasa, which does business with Adán’s government. Yet another brother, Narciso, was put in charge of cooperation projects with Cuba. The president’s cousin Asdrúbal holds a top post at the national oil company.

But they are serving the people, of course, waging an anti-imperialist campaign to defend the sovereignty of Venezuela.

U.S. Slams Caracas on Drugs

Venezuelan guards escort a man suspected of drug trafficking to a plane for deportation to Colombia in May.






Venezuela is fast becoming a major hub for cocaine trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, according to a report written by the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. The report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office is sure to raise tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. at a delicate moment in the two countries' often testy relations.

Rather than hysterically attack or defend either party, I thought this following sentence interesting, all the more in having been reading Gringo (an 'anti-imperialist' tract by Chesa Boudin that I found tiring in its constant self-righteous lecturing, and put down):

The biggest problem: corruption of Venezuelan officials at all levels, according to the report. Corruption within the Venezuelan National Guard "poses the most significant threat," the report says, because the "Guard reports directly to President Chávez and controls Venezuela's airports, borders and ports." In some cases, the report says, drugs captured by the National Guard and Venezuela's Investigative Police, who are often themselves involved in drug trafficking, aren't destroyed, but are taken by the officials or returned to drug traffickers.

Boudin discussed that very concept, of Chávez constructing (perhaps erecting would be fitting) a parallel government bureaucracy that reports directly to him.

You want irony?

How is this for irony?

When President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica set out to find a negotiated solution to the Honduran political crisis, he hailed it as an opportunity for Central Americans to show they could resolve their own problems, and he established some simple ground rules.

Arias won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. He seemed a good candidate to mediate the Honduran mess.

The ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and the man who leads the de facto government that replaced him, Roberto Micheletti, were each to show up at his house with just four of their closest Honduran advisers.

Simple enough.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Micheletti showed up with six, adding an American public relations specialist who has done work for former President Bill Clinton and the American’s interpreter, and an official close to the talks said the team rarely made a move without consulting him.

Well, now, a public relations specialist at the negotiations?

Then on Friday, with the negotiations seemingly going nowhere, Mr. Arias reached out for American support of his own, telling Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that pressure from the United States was crucial to ending the stalemate.

Por favor, Tía Hillary.

In the two weeks since the coup against Mr. Zelaya, the Obama administration has taken great pains to distance itself from the crisis as part of an effort to make the United States just one of many players in a region that it has long dominated. And Latin American leaders have publicly expressed support for what they describe as Washington’s new spirit of collaboration.

Uncle Sam is now Cousin Sam, in effect, no?

Privately, and not so privately, however, it has become clear that leaders on all sides of this crisis see the United States as the key to getting what they want.

No, still Tío Sam, but avuncular now.

In recent days, Mr. Zelaya and his allies, who include some of the most vocal critics of United States policy in the region, have repeatedly called on Washington to increase its pressure on Mr. Micheletti by recalling its ambassador — the United States is one of the few countries in the region that continues to keep its envoy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital — and by imposing tougher sanctions.

How richly ironic.

Even Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, made a rare call to Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon Jr. on Friday to directly make an appeal he had issued earlier on television.

“Do something,” Mr. Chávez had said to reporters. “Obama, do something.”

Coz I can't do nuthin' sez Hugo. Que rico.

Meanwhile, Mr. Micheletti has embarked on a public relations offensive, with his supporters hiring high-profile lawyers with strong Washington connections to lobby against such sanctions. One powerful Latin American business council hired Lanny J. Davis, who has served as President Clinton’s personal lawyer and who campaigned for Mrs. Clinton for president. And last week, Mr. Micheletti brought the adviser from another firm with Clinton ties to the talks in Costa Rica. The adviser, Bennett Ratcliff of San Diego, refused to give details about his role at the talks.

Surely Davis and the Secretary of State are not talking about details; it wouldn't be proper.

“Every proposal that Micheletti’s group presented was written or approved by the American,” said another official close to the talks, referring to Mr. Ratcliff.

Maybe Hugo should hire Ratcliff's partner. Bluster on both sides, and negotiations behind the scenes, yet little progress.

The officials said Mr. Arias told Mrs. Clinton that the United States had to make clear to Mr. Micheletti that elections held by an illegitimate government would themselves not be considered legitimate. However, one official said that the United States wanted to be careful “not to take a huge public role.” He said the United States indicated that it would quietly make clear to Mr. Micheletti that the $16.5 million it has already suspended in military aid could be expanded to include $180 million in other economic development assistance that is still under review.

Mr. Micheletti’s supporters are pushing back in part by paying hundreds of dollars an hour to well-connected Washington lawyers who have initiated a charm offensive from Washington. On Friday, Mr. Davis was testifying on Capitol Hill in support of Mr. Micheletti’s de facto government.

And on Saturday, Mr. Davis called reporters close to midnight to notify them that Mr. Micheletti had fired Enrique Ortez, whom he had appointed as his foreign minister, for having outraged American officials by referring in a television interview to President Obama as “that little black guy who doesn’t even know where Tegucigalpa is located.”

But Obama does know where power is located.

Honduras today

Supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya clash with soldiers near the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa on Monday.
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Dealing with the first Latin American crisis of his presidency, Barack Obama sought a swift, clear response that would not be interpreted as U.S. interventionism in a region that loathes it. So he condemned a coup in Honduras by turning to the most reliable of friends: democracy.

And is on the same side as Hugo Chávez: opposing the removal of Zelaya. Of course, their opinions differ: Mr. Chávez cast the dispute in Honduras as a wider rebellion by the region's poor against elites. Mr. Chávez threatened to "overthrow" Mr. Zelaya's replacement, Mr. Micheletti. In response, Mr. Micheletti told local Honduras radio: "Nobody scares us."

Overthrow?

Mr. Obama found himself in the unusual situation of siding with Mr. Chávez to a point, describing the situation as a "coup" that was "illegal" and would set a "terrible precedent" were it allowed to stand.

Of course there is a lot of bluster and expressed indignity; yet the actions taken, or not taken, speak louder than the torrents of words. Ten Latin American countries agreed to withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras until Mr. Zelaya is returned to power. Perhaps that could be qualified as only ten.

Of course, right wing opinion in the US is indignant that the Administration is defending the concept of democracyt, rather than exulting in Zelaya's overthrow and exile. Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the WSJ Latin America opinionator, as right-wing as her paper's editorial board, condemns Secretary Clinton, lumping her with Fidel. First, some sarcasm, then, criticism.

Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution. It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

Mel? Perhaps Mary is a good friend of Manuel. Honduras, she states, is being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself.

Mary concludes: The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

True colors? [OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza] The US can not support an overthrow of an elected president; it is called diplomacy. Columnists don't need to exercise it, but nations do.

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More nuanced analysis does exist. Jose Raul Perales, a Latin American scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, said Obama's response to the crisis was prompt and in unison with leaders of the hemisphere and beyond. Obama can bring considerable leverage to the matter and add credibility to an emerging regional response, he said.

But there are still bigger problems in Honduras — the failed democratic institutions that led the nation to resort to a military coup. The conflict came about after a referendum Zelaya had called in defiance of Honduras' courts and Congress, one seen as a way for him to stay in power beyond his term limit. That means even if Obama can help lead a brokered peace, deeper issues remain. "The tensions will persist regardless of the outcome," Perales said.

The fact remains that Zelaya was subverting democracy from within.

Isolation from the international community may not be enough to create cracks in Honduras's political establishment, which appeared to be solidly against Mr. Zelaya. But some analysts said his forced exile was a political mistake by his opponents. "Zelaya did not have overwhelming support to begin with," said John Carey, a Latin America expert at Dartmouth College. "Now the military has alienated every other country in that hemisphere."

More than the military is involved: the Congress and the Supreme Court, too.

Now, a question so far unanswered is: who is Manuel Zelaya?

Roberto Micheletti, a 63-year-old businessman and stalwart Liberal Party member, took the oath of office Sunday to replace another Liberal politician, Manuel Zelaya, 56, a rich rancher who was deposed in a predawn raid that day and exiled to Costa Rica.

A rich rancher? He, then, is part of the elite Hogo Chávez condemns.

Mr. Zelaya is a tall man who sports a trademark Stetson. He studied industrial engineering, but dropped out of college to manage his family's ranches. He served in Congress before running for president in 2006 on a populist platform that blasted the rich and promised to fight crime, corruption and poverty.

His family's ranches. And he blasted the rich?

Mr. Micheletti calls himself a "right-wing progressive" and says he is a good friend of the U.S., which he said has always helped Honduras. Mr. Micheletti has served in political and party posts in five Liberal governments.

Right-wing progressive is indeed a curious phrase.

Coup Rocks Honduras

Honduran soldiers blocked a street near the residence of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in Tegucigalpa on Sunday.

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Honduran soldiers rousted President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and exiled him at gunpoint Sunday to Costa Rica, halting his controversial push to redraw the constitution but spurring fresh concerns about democratic rule across Latin America.

Zelaya wanted to rewrite the constitution, charging that the current one is skewed in favor of national elites (wonder what his stock is). The Army refused to cooperate, and the Supreme Court declared his scheme unconstitutional. He vowed to go on, anyway.

Mr. Zelaya called the action a kidnapping, and said he was still president. The U.S. and other countries condemned the coup. President Barack Obama said he was "deeply concerned" and called on all political actors in Honduras to "respect democratic norms." Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, a close ally of Mr. Zelaya and nemesis of the U.S., said he would consider it an ''act of war" if there were hostilities against his diplomats. "I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert," Mr. Chávez said.

Well, a kidnapping? Yes. Chávez blusters any time he can. An act of war? What is he going to do? Invade?

Honduras's Supreme Court gave the order for the military to detain the president, according to a former Supreme Court official who is in touch with the court.

A former official? Now, if the Court issues an order, is that constitutional?

Later, Honduras's Congress formally removed Mr. Zelaya from the presidency and named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as his successor until the end of Mr. Zelaya's term in January. Mr. Micheletti and others said they were the defenders, not opponents, of democratic rule.

'Tis a quandary.

Supporters of Honduras's President Manuel Zelaya demonstrate in front of a tire bonfire in Tegucigalpa.







Honduras, one of Latin America's poorest countries, was a staging area for the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contra rebels during the 1980s. The country of about eight million people subsists on exports of bananas, shrimp, coffee, apparel and remittances from Hondurans in the U.S.

Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn't recognize any other leader. The U.S. stand was unpopular with Honduran deputies. One congressman, Toribio Aguilera, got prolonged applause from his colleagues when he urged the U.S. ambassador to reconsider. Mr. Aguilera said the U.S. didn't understand the danger that Mr. Zelaya and his friendships with Mr. Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro posed.

Between a rock and a hard place: Zelaya wasn't exactly respecting democracy, but removing him before his term expires isn't deemed acceptable. And many Hondureños did not like Zelaya.

Latin America analysts said the Honduran coup will complicate President Obama's efforts to re-engage a region where anti-Americanism has flourished in recent years. They said Mr. Chávez is likely to seize on the crisis to depict Central America as under attack.

Which is absurd; this is an internal Honduran matter, and Chávez is sticking his nose into it because he wants to exert regional influence.

As a result, analysts said Mr. Obama will need to aggressively call for the reinstatement of President Zelaya, despite U.S. concerns that he is seeking to mirror Mr. Chávez's campaign to secure limitless rule.

"It's very important for the U.S. to come out against the coup and make the point that the U.S. supports democracy unequivocally," said Kevin Casas-Zamora, Costa Rica's former vice president and a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution. "This would prevent Chávez from stealing the show."

Mr. Casas-Zamora and other regional analysts said the coup raised questions about just how much influence Washington actually has in Central America, given the Obama administration's failed effort to avert it. Honduras receives more than $200 million in development aid from Washington annually.

At a Sunday news conference in Costa Rica, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, ousted at gunpoint by the army hours earlier, denounced his exile as a kidnapping.