Closing the Zelaya Chapter in Honduras

Four months after the military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, de facto leader Roberto Micheletti has finally agreed to restore Zelaya to power. Micheletti's change of heart removes the sticking point in negotiations that have frustrated an international community united in its opposition to the coup.

The announcement came the day after Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, and his delegation arrived in Tegucigalpa for talks. The trip marked the first time the Obama administration played a direct role in resolving the crisis. "Implementation of this agreement is going to be complicated and it's going to require the collaboration of the international community," Shannon said in a teleconference on Friday.

Many had hoped that Shannon and his colleagues, exerting the type of pressure only U.S. negotiators can, would be able to obtain this final concession. Restoring Zelaya, after a requisite congressional vote scheduled for the next few days, will legitimize the Nov. 29 presidential election and prevent any further escalation of the crisis that has turned Honduras into something of a pariah nation.

Now, with the crisis apparently resolved and the prospect of a new democratically elected government more certain, will the Zelaya chapter of Honduras' history be closed for good? Or more to the point, will Hondurans forget Zelaya's promise of change and will the discontent that he tapped be assuaged?

The obvious answer would be no. As long as Honduras remains a nation of tremendous inequality, with economic opportunities only for the privileged few, it is just a matter of time before another populist leader threatens the status quo and pledges to end such injustice.

Zelaya's former defense minister, Edmundo Orellana, who resigned just days before the coup, believes the most likely scenario "is not that another Zelaya would emerge but an (Hugo) Chavez," referring to the Venezuelan leader. Before the deal was brokered to restore Zelaya to the presidency, Orellana said in an interview that Honduras is not simply divided but broken. "Here, in the streets, another Chavez is being incubated now," he said.

Something is broken for sure: Honduras has one of the most staggering rates of economic inequality in the world, according to United Nations data. In the rest of the hemisphere, only Colombia and Bolivia have greater inequality.

Yet if there is widespread discontent among Hondurans, it has not been reflected in recent polls. When Hondurans were asked how to solve this historic crisis, they pointed to the same kinds of leaders and political processes that were in place before. According to a recent CID-Gallup poll, three out of four Hondurans believe that the upcoming election, in which voters will choose between two candidates from the two traditional centrist parties -- neither with a radical platform -- is the solution.

Mark Feierstein, partner and vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, who has studied some of the most polarized societies in Latin America in recent years, is convinced that Honduras is "not a revolutionary setting by any means, and it is not going to go the way of Venezuela or Bolivia." In fact, a poll recently commissioned by his firm found that 83 percent of Hondurans surveyed have a negative impression of Chavez.

So is Honduras ripe for a Chavez-like figure or not?
The fact that the answer is not so obvious might be best explained by Honduras' history of political and ideological bridge building.

While popular discontent in the 1970s and 1980s led to the emergence of leftist guerrilla movements and internal conflict in neighboring Central American countries, Honduras remained relatively stable.

Many who are familiar with the history of the region attribute the relative peace during those years to a willingness among certain leaders to reach outside their ideological spheres. In 1972, for instance, a reformist military regime came to power and allied itself with labor groups in support of agricultural and labor reform.

For some Honduran analysts, one of the most disturbing developments in the last four months is that Micheletti's regime seemed to break from that tradition easily, with no qualms about limiting individual freedoms and leaving little room for dissent. Micheletti will soon be history, they hope, and the old two-party system will come back to satisfy the majority and render the emergence of a radical leader unnecessary.

Orellana is not so sure, however. He thinks many Honduran politicians, particularly the current presidential candidates, display a certain naivete. "They trust that this country is divided only between Nationals and Liberals," he said, referring to the country's two traditional political parties. "But I think they are underestimating what is happening in the country now."

The immediate crisis may be over, but it is still unclear how much, and how irrevocably, Honduras has been changed.