Honduras and the Political Uses of the Drug War https://nacla.org/node/6519 

 Zelaya was still critical of U.S. drug policy, however, and declared that Washington was not doing enough to help Honduras counteract violence and the cartels. Worse, Zelaya charged that the United States was the “chief cause” of drug smuggling in Latin America and the Caribbean. Why?, Zelaya asked. Because, he responded, the United States was a key drug consumer. Moreover, he charged, Ford had been “belligerent,” simply because Honduras pursued diplomatic relations with Caracas, Havana, and Managua. Although Honduras received U.S. aid, Zelaya said, this did not make his country a “vassal” of its northern benefactor.

Meanwhile, ALBA leaders have said the drug spin about Zelaya has been, in fact, all backward: It is the drug smugglers themselves, they maintain, together with the CIA, the Pentagon, and Southern Command, who are really behind the coup in Honduras. Rafael Correa has voiced similar concerns about his own country. Recently, the Ecuadoran president said he had “intelligence studies showing that after Zelaya, the next destabilization effort would be me.”“Honduras was not an isolated occurrence,” Correa said. “A de facto government which is so crude and insulting could not maintain itself without external assistance and it gets this help from powerful groups in the U.S. and the Latin American oligarchy.”