![]() What’s right is a matter of intense debate both in Honduras and throughout Latin America, where Zelaya’s forced removal and the subsequent soap-opera return have generated emotions ranging from outrage and indignation to pride and defiance. “He said he respects that I’m doing for my country what I think is right, and that he’ll do for his country what he thinks is right.” “He told me, ‘I understand this will end my functions with the Zelaya government, but this is the decision I have taken’,” Reina said. Reina says Flores called him July 3, five days after the coup. And my first job in the Zelaya government was viceminister of foreign affairs, so I was his boss.” He added, “During President Zelaya’s inauguration, he was in charge of the ceremony and I was one of the coordinators. Afterward, when he was minister of foreign affairs, I was his chief of cabinet.” He was my boss in London when I was the deputy chief of mission at our embassy there and he was ambassador. “Roberto Flores was a respected diplomat here. “I don’t know if I can call us friends now,” he said with obvious regret. Reina mused about the deterioration of his once-solid friendship with the man he replaced as ambassador. The crisis in Honduras has left Reina and Flores, former close friends, in the unfamiliar position of being on opposing teams. 22 address to the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.Flores denied a request for a one-on-one interview. “The government in Tegucigalpa has taken the view that the succession that took place was constitutional and that it followed procedure,” Flores said during a Sept. In the interim, former Ambassador Flores has been shuttling between Washington and Tegucigalpa, lobbying on behalf of the Micheletti government. Hopefully, they won’t do anything foolish like trying to take Zelaya out of the Brazilian Embassy.” ![]() “I think pressure will increase very decisively, and the coup leaders are also losing support within their own group because their position is weakening day by day. One employee who was in charge of the embassy’s website even sabotaged the site and disabled all the passwords, though Reina’s team has since been able to put the site back online (“The international community is very well aware how this military government works,” he said. Since Zelaya’s ouster, six of the embassy’s 12 staffers have abandoned their jobs and gone back to Honduras. Right now, I’m working for the principle of restoring democracy in Honduras,” said Reina, during an interview at the half-empty Honduran Embassy, located on the fourth floor of the Intelsat building off Connecticut Avenue “For any career diplomat, Washington is one of the top posts in the world. ![]() ![]() Within days of his exile, Zelaya appointed Reina to replace Ambassador Roberto Flores, who quickly declared his loyalty to Micheletti and resigned his post.Ī 40-year-old Liberal Party loyalist who arrived here on July 9, Reina has been awaiting State Department confirmation as ambassador for nearly two months. In the three months following Zelaya’s ouster, the Honduran Embassy in Washington has become a microcosm of the drama that’s been playing out back home. Reina warns that the “illegal” government of de facto President Roberto Micheletti won’t win the standoff. Nothing could be further from the truth, retorts Reina, who is now acting as Zelaya’s Ambassador to the United States.įrom Washington, D.C., Reina continues to stand by his beleaguered boss, who remains holed up in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa after sneaking back into Honduras on Sept. Yanked from his bed by troops acting on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court, the leftist president – still in his pajamas – was bundled into a military aircraft and flown against his will to neighboring Costa Rica.Īll this happened on the day Zelaya’s government was supposed to hold a nonbinding referendum on constitutional reforms that critics – including many in his own party – say was part of a coordinated effort by leftists to consolidate power and turn Honduras into a populist dictatorship resembling Venezuela under Hugo Chávez. Reina’s boss, President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, wasn’t as lucky. We didn’t know what was happening,” Reina said, recalling the dramatic events of June 28.Īfter making some phone calls and scrambling for information, Reina finally fled to the Spanish Embassy in Tegucigalpa, which gave him refuge. “The president’s secretary told me soldiers had surrounded the president’s house and that shots were being fired at his daughter’s house. on the morning of Latin America’s first coup d’état of the 21st century, Honduran Information Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina was awakened by an urgent phone call.
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