It was a flashback to a nightmare that Latin Americans hoped they had awoken from for good. Heavily armed soldiers burst into the presidential residence in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, in the early hours, arrested the pyjama-clad president, Manuel Zelaya, and bundled him off to neighbouring Costa Rica. Once all too familiar, such events have become rare in Latin America over the past two decades as democracy has put down roots. It was the first coup in the region since the confused ousting of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in 2003, and a brief rising against Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in 2002.

In Honduras the soldiers acted with the support of the courts and the legislature, whose head, Roberto Micheletti, was sworn in as president to serve out the remainder of Mr Zelaya’s term until January next year (see page 43). Even so, as Barack Obama rightly said, the ousting of Mr Zelaya was “illegal” and set “a terrible precedent”. It was universally and emphatically condemned in Latin America. It is vital for democracy in the region that it should be reversed.

But to stop there is to miss some of what is at stake. Mr Zelaya, a businessman, alienated his own party and his country’s political establishment by his decision last year to forge an alliance with Mr Chávez, joining the Venezuelan’s anti-American block. In return, he got aid and political advice. Mr Zelaya felt emboldened to organise a referendum on convening a constituent assembly—the very device Mr Chávez used to establish an autocracy. Since such an exercise violated the constitution and both Congress and the courts were firmly opposed to it, this unleashed a conflict of powers.

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