An Ouster Highlights a Yawning Divide in Honduran Society

[Judi Lynn]

August 9, 2009
An Ouster Highlights a Yawning Divide in Honduran Society
By GINGER THOMPSON

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — One woman started a kind of kaffeeklatsch with her high-powered friends that grew into the driving force behind a movement that toppled the Honduran president. The other preferred to stay out of politics until the president’s ouster compelled her to protest.

Armida Villela de López Contreras, a lawyer and former vice president, has become one of the most visible critics of the ousted Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya. And Hedme Castro is one of the thousands of teachers who have banded together to demand Mr. Zelaya’s return.

Between them is a yawning political and socioeconomic divide that still threatens the stability of what was once one of the United States’ principal staging grounds in Latin America during the cold war. And what they have to say about how this country’s political crisis began — and about the sacrifices they are willing to make to defend their views — leaves little hope that it will end any time soon.

To Ms. López Contreras, a prominent member of this country’s small upper class, Mr. Zelaya was ousted because his blossoming leftist alliance with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela had become a threat to Honduran democracy.

She is a founding member of a coalition representing some of the most powerful business and political forces in the country. And she says the coalition members are willing to do, or spend, whatever it takes to keep their country afloat in the face of mounting economic pressure resulting from the rest of the world’s condemnation of the coup.

“Zelaya was suffocating all other powers of government,” Ms. López Contreras said. “Now that he’s gone we are breathing the air of freedom. This is a conquest we are not willing to surrender.”

To Ms. Castro, who lives a solidly working-class existence, Mr. Zelaya was ousted because people like Ms. López Contreras felt threatened by his efforts to lift up the poor — most notably with a 60 percent increase in the minimum wage to about $9.60 a day from about $6 a day. An estimated 60 percent of Hondurans live in poverty.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/world/americas/09honduras.html?ref=world