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Caribbean-Latin America | |||||
Did Zelaya snub Hugo Chávez for Brazil? | |||||
2009-09-24 | |||||
After the Honduran military ousted President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, Mr. Chávez loudly condemned the US for a lukewarm response and said he would send his own forces to Central America to boost his ally if need be. But when Mr. Zelaya returned to Tegucigalpa after three months in exile on Monday, he conspicuously turned to Brazil for help, not Venezuela. As police fired tear gas at Zelaya supporters on Tuesday, he was holed up in Brazil's embassy, not Venezuela's. Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim stood behind Zelaya saying Tuesday that his country will not tolerate any actions against the embassy.
"Seeking asylum with Brazil shows that [Zelaya] thinks Brazil is the neutral voice in the crisis, not the US, Costa Rica, [or] Venezuela. He's essentially throwing in his lot with the party he thinks has the best chance to get him restored to power," says Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, a consultancy based in New York. "It's a tangible representation of a power shift in the region." It is clear that Zelaya and Chávez remain staunch allies.
Mr. Farnsworth says he believes that a prolonged crisis in Honduras works in Chávez's political favor. "So long as it remains unsettled," he says, "he can work with it to somehow blame the United States and promote his own interests."
But Zelaya, perhaps worried about the lack of Honduran support for Chávez's radical brand of leftism and anti-American bombast, appears to have returned the favor by keeping Chávez at arms reach. Chávez's footprint on his return is counterproductive for Zelaya, given the strong rejection that so many in Honduras give the Venezuelan leader, says Kevin Casas-Zamora, the former vice president of Costa Rica and now at the Brookings Institution. It could raise questions about Zelaya's real intent to start a "process of national dialogue," says Mr. Casas-Zamora. "This only confirms in the eyes of the people in government that the person behind the plot of his return is Hugo Chávez." The episode is not likely to stoke tensions between Brazil and Venezuela, though, even as each seeks to hold the mantle of regional leader. Chávez and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are allies and they are clearly on the same side. "Lula has a good relationship with Chávez in spite of the differences in the tone of their discourse," says Cortes. | |||||
Posted by:Steve White |