Honduras had a new kind of coup

Ideology might not have been important to Zelaya, but it was to his inner circle, whose members traced their roots to Honduras' small radical left that emerged in the 1970s. They had gone to university together, fought against the brutal military dictatorships of the day, suffered persecution. Eventually they went into human rights or became lawyers, but didn't abandon their goals.

They helped coax Zelaya to the left, and last year he stepped firmly into the Chavez camp by joining a group of Latin America's leftist presidents formed five years ago by the Venezuelan leader and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

With the old left gaining power, the old right leapt into action, with businessmen and the news media at their service, hitting back at Zelaya relentlessly.

Then came an old trauma. Zelaya began speaking of changing the constitution, and his enemies decided he was making a move to end term limits and so he could stay in office -- much as Chavez had done in Venezuela.

The Honduran Constitution bars presidential reelection, a provision born of a history replete with rulers who overstayed their welcome. Most famously, Tiburcio Carias, a military man with close ties to the foreign-owned fruit companies that made Honduras the original banana republic, rewrote the constitution to stay in office from 1933 to 1949.

In March, Zelaya called for a vote June 28 to weigh support for changing the constitution. Initially, the wording of the convocation was innocuous enough, and momentum built behind the "consulta popular," as it was being called. It had a lot of support among a disaffected majority for whom Honduras' 27-year experiment in democracy had failed to improve daily life.

On May 12, the attorney general's office ruled against holding the vote. Zelaya ignored the order and pressed ahead with his campaign.

Congress, led by Roberto Micheletti, a transportation magnate from Zelaya's Liberal Party, also opposed the vote. Honduras' tiny rich class is notoriously loath to share its wealth, and members saw Zelaya's move to tinker with the constitution as the last straw. They organized street protests and a media blitz against the referendum.

"Never had a ruler so frightened the instruments of political and economic power," historian Martinez said.

Pressure mounts

In mid-June, events started to veer precipitously toward disaster.