In the footsteps of President Zelaya

My own memory of struggling through the Honduran hinterland is rich with mosquitoes, forging rivers, scrambling up hillsides, and struggling through thick forests.

Hugo Chavez tells us that his friend “Mel” – deposed President Manuel Zalaya – did just that in returning to Honduras with four comrades, after three months in exile.

At some point Mel will have had to cross the raging torrents of at least three rivers. I swam several of them a couple of times in the early eighties in chaotic but ultimately successful efforts to reach the “muchachos” – Salvadorian guerrillas at war with the oligarchs and their death squads next door in El Salvador.

Mel will have been spared the attention of death squads – these days they have been displaced by drug gangs. However, the attentions of the Honduran army will have proved no less daunting.

Either way, we now see a strange coalition of relief that Mr Zelaya is home – although “home” now appears to be the Brazilian embassy in the densely populated capital of Tegucigalpa.

Honduras is the poorest country in the Americas – ripe territory for the Chavez brand of radicalism.

The strange coalition I refer to extends from Mr Chavez and his giant neighbour Brazil – President Lula personally approved Mel’s accommodation in his country’s embassy – to the USA. The latter believes it better to have a radical trying to change the constitution to extend his tenure as president, than a makeshift outfit in power manipulating the same constitution to get rid of him.

We are in the midst of a classic Central American stand-off in the heart of land that fuelled some of Graham Greene’s most potent writing.

For the moment I’m just wondering whether Mel proved as fortunate as I was in finding an old water tank to hang onto has we hurtled across the rapids of the Rio Lempa, with three muchachos wielding Kalashnikovs whilst another three paddled.