Honduras
wasn’t paradise under President Manuel Zelaya. Since
the coup, however, the country has entered a
downward death spiral of drug-related bloodshed and
political revenge killings that crashed the economy,
brought an end to law, order and civil society, and
now has some analysts calling it a “failed state”
along the lines of Somalia and Afghanistan during
the 1990s.
“Zelaya’s
overthrow created a vacuum in security in which
military and police were now focused more on
political protest, and also led to a freeze in
international aid that markedly worsened
socio-economic conditions,” Mark Ungar, professor of
political science at Brooklyn College and the City
University of New York,
told The International Business
Times. “The 2009 coup, asserts [Tulane]
professor Aaron Schneider, gave the Honduran
military more political and economic leverage, at
the same time as the state and political elites lost
their legitimacy, resources and the capacity to
govern large parts of the country.”
El Salvador
and
Guatemala, also narcostates devastated by
decades of
U.S. support for oppressive, corrupt right-wing
dictatorships, are suffering
similar conditions.