You've got to hand it to Central America. Only a few countries south of our border have packed an entire century with enough coups, puppet governments, and military regime changes to fill half of a library's worth of history. And yet, they're still at it. In the last decade, the tension between the small upper class - generally Creole or Iberian - and the vast, impoverished rural majority - mostly indiginous or mestizo - has spawned the unexpected return of former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and a constitutional crisis in Honduras that has left the nation split down political and racial lines. All of this is familiar to historians of Latin American history, and, just as in the Banana Wars of the first half of last century and the Sandinista skirmishes of 1980s Nicaragua, the United States remains very interested in the political activities of the region.
While there is no major American military presence in this unstable part of the world - or at least none that we know of, yet - there are certainly military and economic brains somewhere to our northeast weighing the options. Before American strategists decide to rush in and stabilize a country like Honduras, even if it is only to ensure citizens' safety and basic services, we need to consider our history in the region. Although the U.S. provides significant humanitarian aid to Honduras, American influence is not welcome after interfering in revolutions in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and other nations throughout the Americas in the past 75 years. If this administration wants to avoid an embarrassment like the Iran-Contra Affair, it should keep its troops out of the region, so the rest of the world knows Teddy Roosevelt's big stick died along with the 20th century.
Central America's constant crawl towards socialism is generally a populist movement, countered by an elite or foreign class afraid to have their wealth redistributed through welfare initiatives. While Ortega's victory in Nicaragua was a relatively legitimate electoral victory, supported by a fair election and significant public support, the unrest in Honduras concerns the leadership of Manuel Zelaya, a left-leaning former president who was deposed and exiled by the military in June (after a questionable political move involving term limits) and replaced by Roberto Micheletti. The move has been internationally condemned as a military coup d'
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