Honduras, Venezuela and Cocaine

The situation in Honduras, where Manuel Zelaya, the president elected in 2005 was ousted a month ago by the country’s military forces in a Supreme Court-approved coup, may appear confusing. But it does not have to be so.

A clear explanation of what happened can be found here. The deposed president called a national referendum by presidential decree last month to change Hondura’s constitution. Some of these changes would have removed limits to the number of times the president can be re-elected (if you’re thinking of Chávez, you’re not mistaken). However, under the existing constitution, only the Supreme Electoral Tribunal has the authority to call referenda; and whoever tries to change the constitution is subject to losing all his or her constitutional powers. The Supreme Court and Attorney General called the referendum unconstitutional and proceeded to remove Mr. Zelaya from office with the assistance of the armed forces.

This is not what’s interesting. What I wanted to know was why Mr. Chávez was so involved in restoring Mr. Zelaya to the presidency—after a few weeks in exile, a defiant Mr. Zelaya crossed the Nicaraguan border into Honduras for a few hours accompanied by Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s foreign minister.

One possible answer of Venezuela’s interest in Nicaragua is drugs. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report this month describing Venezuela as a major corridor for Colombian cocaine. In 2004, about 70 tons of cocaine crossed Venezuela and that number has quadrupled by 2009—a quarter of Colombia’s cocaine is now said to pass through Venezuela. Not to mention that Chávez’ Venezuela has been accused repeatedly with collaborating with the FARC in Colombia, and the main source of income of this terrorist organization comes from drug trafficking.

Where does Honduras come in? The Central American country is a major corridor for cocaine into Mexico. With increased air and sea monitoring, land-based routes are becoming increasingly important.

Venezuela is already collaborating with Nicaragua, which borders south of Honduras and is likewise an important drug transit hub. Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua's president and good buddy of Chavez's is one of the handful Latin American leftist rulers (next to Correa in Ecuador and Morales in Bolivia) accused of doing more than their fair share to strangle the democracies that brought them to power. They have all created constitutional assemblies to rewrite their countries’ constitutions, in a very similar way Zelaya wanted to do it.

I don’t know all things, and that’s OK. I don’t need to know all things because common sense speaks for itself. Here you have a group of leaders being accused of similar charges against democracy and human rights; there’s evidence that these men collaborate with the FARC; they all advocate anti-American sentiments and have conveniently stopped collaborating with the US on drug seizures. We’re not that dumb to ignore the ties that link all these men together, and the reasons behind their almost obsessive cooperation.

How can Venezuela continue to subsidize and literally buy out its people if oil prices are low? In a country where the only effective industry is oil and where the government buys its legitimacy with free money and gifts, how do you stay in power if you budgeted 2009 with oil selling at $120, when in fact it’s selling at half that? Cutting the budget is simply not enough! Not to mention that the more people are disgruntled, the more expensive their taste becomes.