Four in a row!!

Well, today was another quiet day here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. That's four days in a row. The last day we experienced any difficulty was last week's teacher's union strike that blocked the main highway leading north out of the city. That ended with a teacher being shot and killed sometime while the police were trying to clear the demonstrators from blocked the road and another teacher was killed while leaving the funeral of the first. Deposed president "Mel" Zeaya's resistance is claiming that those killings were at the hands of the police or military, but there has been no direct link as of yet. It is just as likely that the shot was fired (there are reports it was just the one shot) from within the demonstrators themselves. The other techer was stabbed up to 27 times. Doesn't sound like the type of killing the police would do, but really, no one will ever really know. They say there is a murder solve rate here in Honduras of less than 2% so an actual arrest and trial are unlikely anyway.

Today, now-president Micheletti anounced that "Manuel Zelaya nunca podrá volver a asumir la Presidencia de Honduras". Translation - Manuel Zelaya can never return and assume the presidency of Honduras. The congress announced that they are willing to open a dialogue about amnesty for the deposed civil servants (presumably including Zelaya). Basically that means that Honduras will not accept him back, but is willing to give him amnesty for his crimes. It really leaves things where they have always been. Ex-president Zelaya will accept nothing less than a full return to the presidency and the entire current government will never let him back. The only difference now the willingness to grant amnesty.

Zelaya left Nicaragua today for a meeting in Mexico with Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Not sure what that is about. I would assume he is continuing his journey to gain support for his return. In Nicaragua, the mayors in the area that Zelaya has been in have asked him to leave as it is creating a mess for them and they are beginning to see Mel's "peaceful resistance" militia provoking insecurity along the border zone.

The OSA is supposed to make a decision Wednesday about sending a "high level commission" (possibly Arias, Spain's vice-president, Ibero-American chairman, Enrique Iglesias, and OSA chairman, Insulza) to Honduras to re-present the San Jose Agreement as a way to resolve the conflict. I keep hoping they would have some dialogue about it so they can compromise instead of assuming that Arias' points "should" be agreeable. We'll see how it goes.

Zelaya's "resistance" movement here still has the 5 day march to San Pedro and Teguc planned for August 5-10.

I keep thinking were in a "calm before the storm" moment right now. Here's hoping I'm wrong!