Empty streets at night

It was quite different last weekend, but the streets tonight are totally empty in Tocoa.

The ousted president, Manuel "Mel" Zelaya somehow got back into Honduras after some 80 days of circling the country. He's now residing at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, with thousands of supporters in front of the embassy. The de facto government first denied that he was in the country, but shortly after his appearance in public, they installed a night-time curfew from 4pm to 7am for fears of protests.

For those that have no clue of what has been happening: 3 months ago, then-president Zelaya wanted to hold a nonbinding referendum that could be a first step to allow him to be re-elected. But re-election is currently forbidden in the Honduran constitution. Both the legislative power, the Congress, and the judicial power, the supreme court, ruled the referendum illegal.

What happened next is that Mel's opponents entered his house with some court order in the early morning of June 28th, and put him on an air plane to Costa Rica. His opponents call it a legal change of power (because they insist no other way to change presidents is possible in Honduran law), his backers a coup.

Whatever it may be, the reasons behind the coup are clear. There is a fear amongst those who own private businesses, some of whom believe that Zelaya is influenced by Castro, Chavez and the likes, that their businesses will be nationalized.

Now Zelaya is back in the country. He drove trough the mountains, avoiding the police check-points on his way to a small bit of Brazilian territory in Tegucigalpa.

The past days I spoke to quite a few locals about the political situation. The majority of the people seem to be in favor of Micheletti (the de facto president), but what is quite interesting here is that everyone has his opinion about what's happening. And more importantly, is happy to openly tell which side they're on. Nobody is afraid to tell his point of view. Quite different from what we (last year engineering students) experienced in Cuba 2,5 years ago - those fortunated enough to hear the police officer's speech at the Cienfuegos police station after a few hours of detention will know exactly what I'm talking about...

Back to Honduras.
Besides being something entirely new to me, a curfew is actually quite a pain. No restaurants, shops or bars are officially open, meaning you have to beg your way into the kitchen of some restaurant where you see people inside to get some dinner. And because the hotel's restaurant was entirely closed tonight, I had to go out on the streets, which is illegal (but quite adventurous ;-).

Hmm, I just heard on tv that the curfew is extended to tomorrow night 6pm. An entire day in the hotel... Will probably have time to tell you more then.