While the focus of the latest round of WikiLeaks release of secret cables has focused on the impact of U.S. national security, WikiLeaks also clarifies what happened in Honduras last year. In what now has been spun as “not a coup” as President Porfirio Lobo is set to mark his one year anniversary as President, a released cable from the U.S. Embassy shows that when Manual Zelaya was ousted it was indeed considered an illegal act.

From the cable :

..The Embassy perspective is that there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch…

…There is equally no doubt from our perspective that Roberto Micheletti’s assumption of power was illegitimate…

The cable also called the resignation letter that Zelaya presented as a “fabrication”.
The released cable does not deny the possibility that Zelaya may have engaged in activities which violated the Honduran constitution, but clearly calls into question the legality of how that was handled.
This is revealing given how the coup was played publicly by U.S. officials who essentially legitimized the ousting by accepting the elections which put the now president into power.

Zelaya remains in exile awaiting an opportunity to return to Honduras with immunity. Meanwhile Honduras still has not been brought back into the fold of the Organization of American States (OAS) and according to a report on Univision last night, President Lobo has decided to stop formally asking to be readmitted. Honduras also  was not invited to the Iberoamerican conference, that closed this weekend in Argentina where interestingly enough it was voted that unanimous approval would be needed to suspend a member nation for non-democratic actions, such as a coup.

On the ground, it is Honduran women who have been increasingly facing the brunt of post-coup politics, with cuts to programs for women, to physical and sexual assaults in the streets, to outright murder.