What were two members of a violent Basque separatist group doing with 11 members of Colombia's narco-Marxist insurgency in a remote corner of southwestern Venezuela in August 2007? According to a blockbuster indictment handed down by a Spanish judge last week, they were participating in a kind of intercontinental terrorist training camp held under the aegis of the Venezuelan military.  

Jorge Castañeda’s lament ("Adios, Monroe Doctrine," December 28, 2009) about U.S. indifference towards Latin America sounds a familiar theme. His claim that “the United States doesn’t seem to care much what happens in Latin America” has been a constant refrain that has dominated analyses of U.S. regional policy since the mid-1970s. The “new passivity” is not, after all, terribly new.  

The ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has provided Latin America with a revelatory moment. Beginning with the Monroe Doctrine--and extending through countless invasions, occupations, and covert operations--Washington has considered the region its backyard. So where was this superpower these past few months, as Honduras hung in the balance? More or less sitting on its hands. The fact is that the United States is no longer willing, or perhaps even able, to select who governs from Tegucigalpa, or anywhere else in the region for that matter. Looking back at the history of the hemisphere, this fact is remarkable--and certainly transformative. For the first time in centuries, the United States doesn’t seem to care much what happens in Latin America.

Francisco Toro and Juan Nagel write the Venezuelan news blog Caracas Chronicles.

The Honduran crisis surely reached its Rococo stage this week after fresh elections organized by the coupsters' regime saw the election of a conservative rancher as president—while Brazil's nearly sainted left-wing president, Lula da Silva, promptly rejected the poll as undemocratic ... a scant few days after welcoming Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Brazil with open arms.

The election of President Lobo has split the international community, and in mostly predictable ways. His victory has been recognized by the U.S., Peru, Panama, Colombia, and Japan, while Spain has announced it will soon re-visit its tough stance. The region's left-wing governments, however, remain staunchly opposed to recognizing any election tinged by association with June's coup.

Brazil is now leading the guys with the pitchforks, a group that includes Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, and the OAS, alongside such shining exemplars of democratic principle as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and the Castro brothers in Cuba. The problem for this group is that Lobo's election comes with the real legitimacy of a vote that was mandated by Honduras’s constitution and had been scheduled and planned long before June's coup. What's more, despite calls for a boycott by deposed president Mel Zelaya, Sunday saw turnout top 60%--slightly higher than the turnout five years ago, when Zelaya himself was elected, and about the same level of participation that saw Barack Obama elected in the U.S. last year.

Francisco Toro and Juan Nagel write the Venezuelan news blog Caracas Chronicles. A version of this post originally appeared there.

The Honduran tragicomedy that has consumed the hemisphere's diplomats for months is at an end (read the details here). Barring the unforeseeable, which is always an iffy thing to do in Honduras, the coupster is out, the mercurial elected president is back in (pending a face-saving vote by Congress and the Supreme Court), and an election to replace him will be held on November 29, as planned.

In light of all this, who was the winner in the Honduran crisis?

Francisco Toro blogs obsessively about Venezuela and the Chávez era at Caracas Chronicles.

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