Sara Miller Llana and Andrew Downie articulate an important observation in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor:
After the Honduran military ousted President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, Mr. Chávez loudly condemned the US for a lukewarm response and said he would send his own forces to Central America to boost his ally if need be.
But when Mr. Zelaya returned to Tegucigalpa after three months in exile on Monday, he conspicuously turned to Brazil for help, not Venezuela. As police fired tear gas at Zelaya supporters on Tuesday, he was holed up in Brazil's embassy, not Venezuela's.
Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim stood behind Zelaya saying Tuesday that his country will not tolerate any actions against the embassy.
It could be a calculated political decision on the part of Zelaya - to distance himself from Chávez, a polarizing figure in Honduras. Though Zelaya denies it, his foes say he was following the steps of his Venezuelan ally, particularly in regard to his alleged desire to change the Constitution to scrap presidential term limits, which was the reason for his ouster. Yet whether calculated or by default, Zelaya's refuge in the Brazilian embassy eclipses any role, for now at least, that Chávez may have hoped to play in this political crisis.
"Seeking asylum with Brazil shows that [Zelaya] thinks Brazil is the neutral voice in the crisis, not the US, Costa Rica, [or] Venezuela. He's essentially throwing in his lot with the party he thinks has the best chance to get him restored to power," says Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, a consultancy based in New York. "It's a tangible representation of a power shift in the region."
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