The Legacy of the 2009 Coup and US Interventionism in Honduras
Image Description: Protests break out condemning the 2009 coup d’etat in Honduras. Image Credits: CEJIL.
Written by: Kristin Nagy & Lucia Armengol.
16 years ago today, Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was deposed and forcibly exiled from the country through a military coup. The US’s direct and indirect support for the coup, and the right-wing regime that followed it, was one of the most significant instances of United States interventionism in Central America in this century, but certainly not the only instance still impacting the region today. The 2009 coup d’etat deepened militarization and state repression, gravely weakened the rule of law, and worsened living conditions for every-day Hondurans. Today, Honduran communities, especially those who defend land, life, and human rights, continue to live with the legacy and consequences of this violent period in Honduran history.
The Events of the Coup
In the months leading up to the coup, there was conservative opposition to the Zelaya Administration and an emerging constitutional crisis. In February 2009, President Zelaya announced that he intended to place a non-binding referendum on the ballot regarding the possibility of holding a National Constituent Assembly to reform the constitution.
By March 2009, both the Congress and the Attorney General expressed their opposition to the referendum, arguing that it was unconstitutional. The opposition was led by Roberto Micheletti, the president of the National Congress and a member of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party. The opposition argued that Zelaya was using the referendum to seek re-election, as the Constitution prohibited presidents from serving for more than one term. Those in favor of the referendum countered that popular participation in a rewrite of the Constitution would help combat inequality and oligarchal rule, enabling the refounding of Honduras for all. In May 2009, the Administrative Litigation Court ruled to nullify all executive decrees related to the referendum,, and in June 2009, the Supreme Court upheld that ruling.
On June 26, 2009, amid the growing constitutional conflict and two days before the referendum was scheduled to be held, the Supreme Court secretly ordered General Romeo Vásquez Velasquez to arrest President Zelaya. Then, early in the morning on June 28, 2009, soldiers under the command of General Vásquez stormed the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa and kidnapped President Zelaya. He was taken to Soto Cano, a US military base in Honduras, and forced onto a plane that sent him to San José, Costa Rica. US officials claim they did not know who was on the plane that morning, but Zelaya’s private secretary had called the US ambassador that morning to inform him of Zelaya’s kidnapping.
In the afternoon, the National Congress accepted a falsified letter of resignation from Zelaya and instituted Roberto Micheletti as interim president. The military shut off power in Tegucigalpa, television and radio stations were blocked, and a 9 P.M. curfew was set in an effort to slow down word of the military coup. Political allies of Zelaya were detained, including the Foreign Minister and the mayor of San Pedro Sula. The Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan ambassadors were also detained and beaten by the Honduran military. In the days following the coup, protests supporting Zelaya were met with immense violence and suppression by the Micheletti government. At least twenty demonstrators were killed, thousands of people were arbitrarily detained, and Honduran police used excessive force to quell resistance to the coup government. Despite this repression, social movements maintained 180 straight days of street protests against the coup in Tegucigalpa, denouncing the coup and demanding a restoration of democracy and human rights in Honduras.
US Interventionism in Central America
In the wake of June 28, international governments and organizations unequivocally condemned the events as a military coup and demanded Zelaya be restored to power. The United States, however, was slower to respond. While then-President Obama condemned the events as a coup in the direct aftermath, the US did not go as far as calling it a military coup due to Hillary Clinton’s continued push for US military aid to Honduras. A 2017 report exposed knowledge of and support for the coup by US Defense Department officials; Pentagon officials knew of meetings between the Supreme Court and the military the night before the coup, and multiple former State and Defense Department employees reported internal conversations in favor of the coup and failure to take action for the reinstatement of Zelaya. It is clear that in the wake of the coup, the priority of the US was not to restore democracy, but to keep Zelaya from returning.
The military who had deposed Zelaya and repressed protests had received extensive training from the US – including General Romeo Vasquez, a leading general who had graduated from the US Army’s School of the Americas, a long-time training facility for dictators and soldiers complicit in violence in Latin America. Hillary Clinton has since stated that “the national legislature in Honduras and the national judiciary actually followed the law in removing President Zelaya” and that the goal of the US in the aftermath of the coup was to “render the question of Zelaya moot” by pushing for new elections. Despite international and domestic calls for the reinstatement of Zelaya, the US supported the 2009 elections which began twelve years of right-wing post-coup rule and blocked efforts at the Organization of American States to call for free elections.
Image Description: Pictured the Soto Cano Air Base in Comayagua, Honduras. Image Credits: Joint Task Force Bravo.
The United States’ tacit, and later direct, acceptance of the coup was significantly influenced by US interests in the region, to which Zelaya was perceived as a threat. Zelaya had expressed plans to convert Soto Cano Air Base, a center of US military presence in Central America since the Cold War era, into a fully civilian airport. This directly threatened the United States, which wanted to protect its interests and strategic position in the region, namely through the largest military base in the region – the Soto Cano Air Base in Comayagua. The US chose to ignore concerns related to the downfall of democracy and violations of human rights, downplaying the coup in an effort to maintain their military presence and ensure that their interests were protected.
The US was also highly concerned about their corporate interests; Zelaya was seen as less friendly to US businesses’ extractivist projects, and failed to permit the massive foreign investment that would come under his successors. Zelaya attempted to enter Honduras into a multinational trade agreement with Venezuela which was framed as a way to decrease economic dependence on the US in Latin America; the partnership barely lasted a year before Zelaya was deposed.
Today, US presence at the Soto Cano Air Base continues to ratify military cooperation between both countries, with Honduras becoming a key frontline in the US war on drugs. This cooperation has resulted deadly in the past, namely during the 2012 joint drug interdiction “Operation Anvil” between the Honduran armed forces and the DEA in Ahuas, Moskitia. DEA agents ordered the firing of live rounds at Miskitu Indigenous civilians, killing four and severely injuring three others. No US official has been brought to justice in this case. US support for violence and destabilization of democracy and self-determination has an extended history in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and throughout Latin America, motivated by the protection of both capitalist ideology and corporate extractivism. US interventionism continues to sustain violence, inequity, and instability in Honduras and Central America.
The extensive presence of US businesses in Central America consist of their own form of interventionism, often perpetuating human rights abuses against communities with the support of financial institutions in the Global North. More recently, President Trump has returned to older patterns of intervention and outright imperialism, praising the authoritarian Bukele government in El Salvador and threatening to invade Panama and strike Mexico unilaterally. Interventions in Central America are only one example of a historical pattern of imperial conquest by the United States, in which profit extraction and the governments that enable it are protected above the sovereignty of other nations. While the US may justify today’s policies towards Central America through fears of drugs, gangs, and migrants, these are symptoms of the instability caused by decades of US capitalism and colonialism looming over the region.
Image Description: In 2024, solidarity organizations protested the role of the US and Canada in bolstering the narco-state headed by Juan Orlando Hernandez.
The Echoes of the Coup Today
In 2011, the Honduran Truth and Reconciliation Commission officially determined that the Supreme Court and Congress went beyond their allocated powers in deposing Zelaya and instituting Roberto Micheletti as interim president. Despite this, the destabilizing effects of the 2009 coup are still felt throughout Honduran society 16 years later. The elections of November 2009 began a 12-year period of rule by right-wing golpista, or coup supporting, presidents who championed US political and economic interests above the well-being of Honduran communities.
Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, president from 2010-2014, championed private foreign investment through his “Honduras is Open for Business” campaign, which advocated the idea that increased foreign investment would contribute to social and economic development in Honduras. However, in reality, the expansion of foreign investment in the post-coup era has further enabled inequality, corruption, and abuses against Honduran communities. In 2013, Lobo reformed mining regulations and allowed for the significant expansion of mining operations in Honduras, including allowing open-pit mining operations and the use of cyanide in mines. That same year, the Honduran Congress passed Decree No. 120-2013 establishing the legal framework for the Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs), which allows foreign investors to operate outside of Honduran law. Communities have protested that ZEDEs are a threat to Honduran sovereignty, as it empowers ZEDEs to expropriate land within their zones and is exempt from social and environmental protection provided for by Honduran law.
The third golpista president, Juan Orlando Hernandez (often known as JOH), succeeded Lobo in 2014 and served a term marked by support for US interests and allegations of corruption. In 2017, he successfully ran for re-election and won an unconstitutional second term – exactly what Zelaya was accused of attempting,, through widely suspected fraud and with the complete support of his National Party and of the US government. He was long considered by the US as one of the “most important allies” in Central America and the war on drugs, and was praised by President Trump for “stopping drugs at a level that has never happened.” In reality, JOH and his administration worked hand-in-hand with cocaine traffickers and received millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for allowing cartels to freely transport drugs through Honduras, in what has been called a narcostate or narcodictatorship. A trial in New York City found JOH guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced him to 45 years in prison – however, the trial failed to mention the role of the US in propping up his regime despite widespread corruption and drug dealings.
In 2021, the election of Xiomara Castro, Manuel Zelaya’s wife and a member of the LIBRE party, marked the end of the golpista presidencies and brought hope that Honduran society could evolve past the inequality and violence of the post-coup era. LIBRE was founded after the coup through a coalition between organizations fighting for Zelaya’s reinstatement, as a leftist alternative to the centrist Liberal Party and the right-wing National Party. While Castro’s presidency has led to some positive developments, many social movements have criticized Castro’s government for failing to live up to her promises; violence against human rights defenders has continued and allegations of corruption remain.
While foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere has undergone significant shifts this year under the second presidency of Donald Trump, the US continues to promote its interests at the expense of Central American communities. The extensive presence of US military forces and US companies who exploit Honduran land and labor for their own profit is likely to continue, and perhaps operate with even less accountability in the coming years.
Trump’s Latin America policy is pushed by his revived war on drugs, his desire to counter rival governments with right-wing capitalist power, and his campaign for mass deportation – logics that have justified US support for authoritarianism in the past. His policies threaten to continue the dominance of the United States in Latin America through political and economic force as well as soft power and internal meddling, with little concern for the well-being and sovereignty of those who face the brunt of violence and inequality that results from US interventionism.