If the Latin American left knows anything, it’s the value of political theater. When leftist, coup-ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya tried to return to his country on Sunday in a private jet, buzzing the Tegucigalpa airport before soldiers blocked the runway, many inside the Organization of American States and the Obama Administration considered it a reckless stunt that might hamper a negotiated solution to the crisis. But as it turns out, the aerial spectacle may have aided their cause: it finally coalesced hundreds of thousands of Zelaya supporters on the ground and helped prompt Honduran coup leaders, already facing international condemnation, to reconsider their hard-line stance against any brokered settlement
