What Some US Reporters Don't Get About Brazil and the Honduras Crisis

I don't know what is so hard for some observers to understand about that statement, which comes from the elected president of a country that itself was victimized by a military coup d'etat in 1964. Brazil, like every other democracy on the planet, has a legitimate self interest in making sure that no military coup succeeds, especially in its own hemisphere.

Like the 2009 coup in Honduras, the 1964 putsch had a "civilian" gloss when Brazil's vice president ascended to the presidency but under terms dictated by the military. (Much like the top Honduran military lawyer told the Miami Herald in July that "It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That's impossible." That was a smoking gun that demonstrated how the Honduras coup regime's claims to be a "democracy" led by civilians are utter rubbish: When the Armed Forces dictate that the people can't elect a government of the left, or it will always risk a violent coup - which is exactly what that military official said - they are dictating the terms. That's where the word dictatorship comes from.)

Fair and free elections are impossible under such a regime. In recent days, the Honduran coup of "president" Roberto Micheletti has demonstrated, again, that it is incapable democratic governance. Peaceful Hondurans came to the Brazilian Embassy to greet their only elected President, Manuel Zelaya, and they were violently driven away with water cannon tanks, tear gas, billy clubs, and rubber bullets. National Police then followed the dispersed crowd into the popular barrios to wound and maim them, and invaded homes that provided them refuge. That led to scenes like this one in the neighborhood of Hato de Enmedio, and in more than 20 heavily populated slums in and around Tegucigalpa yesterday.

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