Honduras and the High Cost of Chavez's Model

The international community roundly and universally condemned the forced expatriation of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya last month. Zelaya's pathetic attempt to return a week later on a flight from Washington deserves equal scorn from anyone legitimately concerned with Honduras' future.

Zelaya's airborne antics didn't exactly assuage those who ousted him because they feared Honduras was becoming another Venezuela under his watch. Zelaya flew aboard a Venezuelan plane piloted by two Venezuelan air force captains and was accompanied by a camera crew from teleSUR, a television network headquartered in Venezuela. The network aired uninterrupted coverage of the event with running commentary by Zelaya in the air and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on the ground. Both encouraged supporters to meet Zelaya at the airport.

You would think that someone interested in defusing an already tense situation in Honduras would have found another way forward. Yet there was Zelaya on a flight to the capital, Tegucigalpa, that was as much publicity stunt as it was revolutionary strike. He was borrowing from Chavez's playbook: To get what you want, heighten division and foment unrest.

Zelaya said his goal was simply to return to Honduras to finish his term in office. But his thwarted attempt should also remind us of the shortsightedness of such tactics, especially in the context of Zelaya's and Chavez's professed intentions to create a more equitable society.

"The Chavista belief is that the way to bring about change is through confrontation," says Jennifer McCoy, the director of the Carter Center's Americas Program. "The entrenched interests of the privileged sectors of society won't willingly agree to give up their privileges, so you have to confront them and defeat them."

"What interests (Chavez) is rebellion in Honduras," says the former Salvadoran guerrilla leader Joaquin Villalobos. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Cuban leaders also wanted change in Latin America, but while they supported insurgencies fighting real dictatorships, "Chavez is interfering with democracies, albeit weak ones," Villalobos says.

In his three and half years in office, Zelaya generally became a champion of the poor and took on the country's traditional elite, even turning against members of his own conservative class. He joined Chavez's generous oil program and the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a leftist economic integration body founded by Chavez and Fidel Castro. Early this year, Zelaya also boosted the minimum wage by 60 percent.

These changes didn't sit well with the Honduran elite, but Zelaya didn't placate them or compromise in exchange for further reform. Instead, he chose a game of chicken, pitting himself and the "people" on one end and the elites on the other as though they had no common interests. This is the Chavez way. Emboldened by Venezuelan petrodollars, Zelaya and his followers felt no need to compromise, which only deepened class polarization in Honduras.

Unfortunately, the coup leaders didn't argue that they were on the side of the people. Instead, they excused their actions by claiming they fought a greater evil: The day of the coup, Zelaya had called for a referendum to reform Honduras' Constitution, and his opponents thought he would use it to remain in power. But the coup leaders chose to protest in a way that was antithetical to democracy.

It is naive to believe the Honduran calamity will deter Chavez's plans to expand his revolution. Still, no one knows how other conservatives in Latin America will respond when placed in similar dilemmas. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has just begun mediating between Zelaya and the coup leaders. If successful, this could help prevent the crisis from becoming a dangerous precedent.

Meanwhile, other Latin American leaders are effecting necessary social change without dividing society in the process.
According to McCoy, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay have made great strides in addressing poverty "through much more reformist routes." Yet inequality is still great in those countries. Venezuela has made greater progress, but it has come at the considerable expense of political unity. It's unclear whether Chavez's leadership style is sustainable.

As Villalobos observed, "Latin America is in urgent need of the center-left." Moderate liberal leaders should encourage change that is gradual and sensible. The alternative Chavista model unleashes "a defensive reaction from conservative forces re-establishing conflicts that we thought had been coming to an end," Villalobos says.

Latin America continues to suffer the greatest inequality in the world. But the coup in Honduras underscores the high cost of addressing it a la Chavez.