Honduras 2009 Military Coup (Millionare Manuel Zelaya was elected as conservative neoliberal, but became a left-wing socdem when he was president, a rare case of right-wing to left-wing political transition)

Emails released later show that the 2009 removal was supported by Hillary Clinton’s State Department by not recognizing it as coup in order to maintain U.S. aid to the Honduran people. Clinton and her team worked behind the scenes to stall military and economic efforts by neighboring countries through the Organization of American States to restore Manuel Zelaya to office.

“The OAS meeting today turned into a non-event — just as we hoped,” wrote one senior State Department official, celebrating their success in defusing what they judged would have been a violent or destabilizing restoration. Secretary Clinton helped organize elections where Zelaya would be excluded. In her own words, she “strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot”.

In 2021, Zelaya’s wife Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, who ran for president in two previous Honduras elections, would be elected as Honduras’ first female President. However, by this point in time, the Zelayas were no longer members of the Liberal Party of Honduras and had since formed a separate party called the Liberty and Refoundation party, or LIBRE (Democratic Socialist, Socialist).

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in an interview with Opera Mundi that Hillary Clinton, former US Secretary of State under Barack Obama, thought he was “naïve” and cited her “arrogance” during the episode in which Brazil, together with Turkey, sewed up a nuclear agreement with Iran in 2010.

“I arrived in Doha and went to meet the emir [at the time, Hamad bin Khalifa]. The emir greeted me and said: Lula, I’ve just had a call from Hillary Clinton asking you not to go to Tehran, because the Iranians don’t keep their word, because they’re liars and whatnot. And I was still saying, with Hillary’s arrogance, that, oh, Lula is naive. Do you know how arrogant the Americans are that only they aren’t naive? I said I’m going, I went,” he said.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also told Hillary Clinton he would not be pushed into western-led bid to punish Iran over nuclear issue. And continue to defend Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy.