"The Coup"

Peaceful protest in the capitol - Tegucigalpa


Well...between a 7.1 earthquake, and a coup, I think I'll take the coup. Strangly enough, we all got through a military coup with little or no side-effects. Here's the scoop - the president of Honduras has been trying to get the constitution changed so he could stay/be re-elected as president indefinitely - this is on the urging of Chavez, from Venezuela. Well, let's just say he TRIED. After the Supreme Court of Honduras said what he was doing was illegal, and he couldn't hold the election, he just said, "whatever". Upon the heels of that, the head of police was fired as he didn't agree with what was going on, and the heads of many other higher ups were fired as well. On top of that, the whole city was leafletted from overhead planes with flyers stating to stay at home and not be involved in the election. The president continued to ignore all of that, so the country took action. Sunday morning the President was arrested. Still in his pajamas, with guns being fired, they arrested him and flew him to Costa Rica. Interesting choice as Costa Rica has no military. Wonder if they were notified first? Anyway - for about a half day the country had no leader. The VP was on the same side as the President, so he couldn't be put into office. The Cogress read a letter "signed" by the President stating he resigned, which he adamantly denies having written. Ultimately, following their chain-of-command, the leader of Congress became the interum President until the November elections. The U.S. Embassy issued a warning for all U.S. Citizens to remain in their homes yesterday, so we all dutiously did. Although I must say, for 12 youth, and 5 adults, it was a bit of a challengs. But - we watched movies, had gringo church, played music and cards, and the coup passed by without so much as a single shot being fired in La Ceiba. So although this is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, 70% are considered in poverty, little infastructure, the country seems to have come out the other end of a coup in pretty good shape. We have plans to go out to Armenia Bonito today and continue on the work being done at the second house and the last full day of our team! It certainly has been a challenging 10 days - high heat - lots of work - river swims - trip to the Keys - political coup - all in the "normal" week of a missionary :-)