Honduras, 15 Years After the Coup: An Interview With Ousted President Manuel Zelaya

Deconstructed

The Intercept

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4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2024

⏱️ 78 minutes

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Summary

On June 28, 2009, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a military coup. In response to Zelaya's push for a poll to gauge public interest in constitutional changes, the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest him. He was then sent to Costa Rica in his pajamas.

The coup led to nearly 13 years of right-wing rule, marked by collusion with drug trafficking organizations, widespread privatization, violence, repression, and a significant migrant exodus. During this period, the Honduran left organized a strong resistance movement. In 2022, Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife and a leader of the anti-coup resistance, was elected president, signaling a major shift in the country's history.

In this episode of Deconstructed, Zelaya sits down for an exclusive interview with journalist José Olivares to discuss the 15th anniversary of the coup, the ensuing resistance movement, the right-wing and drug trafficking organizations' control, and the U.S. government's role and influence. Host Ryan Grim and Olivares delve into Zelaya's interview, recent developments in Honduran history, and present the full Spanish-language interview with Zelaya.

Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site News. This program was brought to you by a grant from The Intercept.

To read the full English-language transcript of Zelaya's interview, visit DropSiteNews.com or TheIntercept.com.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to
0:04.0	to Deconstructed. I'm Ryan Grimm and as I mentioned in the last two
0:07.5	podcast episodes. Jeremy Skahill and I have left the intercept and have launched
0:12.0	a new independent news organization with some support
0:14.8	from the intercept called drop site news.com. I'm joined today by former deconstructed
0:22.0	producer Jose Olivaris who was now working with us over at
0:26.6	Dropsite news he's going to be talking to me today about a fascinating interview that he
0:32.1	was able to land down in Honduras with the former
0:36.4	Honduran president Manuel Zelaya who, as some of you may recall, was ousted in a 2009 military coup with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time
0:47.4	immediately recognizing the new military government or at least recognizing the pathway to keep that military government in power until the
0:55.0	until the new elections put into place is often referred to and I think
0:58.8	accurately as a US-backed coup though it is still quite murky how much involvement the U.S. itself directly
1:07.0	had and whether it was purely driven by the right wing in Honduras, which then took power for the next 12 years.
1:14.5	Since then, Zelaya's wife, a Shea Mora Castro, has come back to power on a Democratic
1:20.8	socialist platform bringing Zelaya kind of back into the presidential
1:26.3	fold. The left in Honduras is still surging and is likely to maintain the presidency in the next election.
1:34.0	So recently in Honduras there was a celebration of the
1:38.8	reconquest of power by the left in Honduras 15 years after the coup was a it was a ceremony to mark
1:44.9	the kind of the 15th anniversary of that coup. Jose Olivares was in Honduras for it
1:50.8	and there he was able to interview
1:53.0	foreign president Zelaya.
1:54.6	So Jose, thank you so much for joining us
	...

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