Yanqui, Don't Go Home! Race, Gender, Oil and Honduras

Mostly, it's an opportunity for President Obama to show the upstart Hugo Chavez that, oil or no oil, the United States of America is still, when it wants to be, moral leader as well as the lone superpower in the Western Hemisphere.

Before we rough out the plot lines in our libretto, here are the cast of characters:

José Manuel "Mel" Zelaya Rosales, the elected (and recently deposed) president of Honduras.

Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the (almost estranged) first lady of Honduras.

Roberto Micheletti, the caretaker president and former head of the legislative branch, installed during a June 28 coup that ousted Zelaya.

Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, head of Honduras' armed forces. Much feared.

Isis Obed Murillo Mencia, a pro-Zelaya protestor shot to death by soldiers at the Tegucigalpa airport.

Enrique Ortez Colindres, newly installed foreign minister of Honduras, whose first known official duty was to remove his foot from his own mouth.

Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, whose first known official duty was to remove his foot from Ortez Colindres' derrière.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, former first lady of America, presidential wannabe, and U.S. secretary of state.

President Barack Obama, newbie commander in chief of the U.S. of A. and first African-American elected to that office.

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, who wields great influence in Latin America, mostly because of his nation's oil reserves. He's known mainly for his buffoonish anti-American posturing.

Oscar Arias, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, president of Costa Rica, all-around diplomatic stud.

José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, a rancher's son who favors cowboy boots and white western hats and who goes by his father's nickname of "Mel," is narrowly elected president of Honduras as a member of the ruling Liberal Party. Uncharismatic and not given to grand speeches, Mel's popularity gradually erodes. To bolster his standing, he enters into an alliance of sorts with Venezuelan strong boy Hugo Chavez.

Mel is more interested in Chavez' oil than in imitating his comic-opera verbal assaults on the United States, but Honduran elites become alarmed at his flirtation with Chavez, his populist rhetoric, and his apparent attempts to set the stage for a second term. This last move is a no-no in Honduras, where the constitution seems to preclude even discussion of repealing the one-term limit. Mel tries to circumvent this prohibition by ordering up a non-binding straw vote of the public that he dubs the "Law of Citizen Participation." No one is fooled by this gambit, and congress begins discussion of impeachment. Honduras' Supreme Court rules the proposed referendum unconstitutional, but Mel issued orders to distribute the referendum ballots anyway.

Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who heads Honduras' military, refuses this order, which he considers illegal. Mel fires him. The Honduras Supreme Court orders him reinstated, but Mel won't do it. Before this constitutional crisis can play itself out, the military shows up at the presidential palace the morning of June 28 and orders Mel – who is in nightclothes – to board a plane for Costa Rica. Mel complies. His wife sneaks off to the U.S. embassy with her son, Hector.

Roberto Micheletti, president of the senate, takes the oath of president of Honduras.

World public opinion is unanimous against the Honduran plotters. Mel is their man! As is his wont, Hugo Chavez goes ape, blaming the United States for the coup and vowing to reverse it by force, if necessary. Obama, as is his wont, is much smoother, but nevertheless sides with Venezuela, Cuba, and the left-leaning Organization of American States.

"I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya," says Obama. "As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference."

Mel goes to the United Nations, which takes his side. Various world leaders solemnly vow to accompany Mel back to Honduras. Chavez lends him a plane for the occasion, but when it departs for Tegucigalpa, U.N. officials decide to follow in another aircraft. As thousands of pro-Mel demonstrators amass at the airport, the military radios the pilot, telling him not to land. "If I had a parachute, I would jump," Mel tells a radio interviewer as his plane circles the airport. Apparently, he does not have a parachute. His plane diverts to El Salvador. At least one Honduran soldier fires live ammunition into the crowd, fatally wounding a 19-year-old Zelaya supporter named Isis Obed Murillo Mencia.

Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, a.k.a. "Mrs. Mel," may have had her differences with her husband, but she has a teenage son of her own, and shooting young men is too much for her. Heeding the request of Isis Murillo's family, she decides she's had enough and takes to the streets, leading marches while wearing Mel's trademark white cowboy hat. Mrs. Mel brushes off questions about the state of her matrimony. "In these times of tension, the only thing that we know is we are more united than ever," she says. "Today we are a fractured family because he is in one place and my kids are in another and I'm in another. But all of this has strengthened us."

Apparently concerned he's taking a public relations beating in every corner of the globe, interim president Roberto Micheletti agrees with an American request to let revered Costa Rican President Oscar Arias mediate the mess. President Oscar doesn't have an Oscar, he has a Nobel, and his presence calms the international waters even as it roils senior Honduran politicians.

The Arias Answer is announced by Secretary of State Clinton, and confirmed by Mel after his meeting with Clinton. Mel and Clinton do not hold a joint press conference, which is a good thing. Madam Secretary, sounding like she was born for the role of chief diplomat, makes a point of saying that the negotiations would proceed without preconditions. "I don't want to prejudge what the parties themselves will agree to," she says. "There are many different issues that will have to be discussed and resolved. But I think it's fair to let the parties themselves, with President Arias' assistance, sort out all of these issues . . . The exact nature of that, the specifics of it, we will leave to the parties themselves."

Mel, sounding a bit worried, agrees to mediation, but strikes a different note: "We are not holding a negotiation," he said. "There are things that are non-negotiable -- the restitution of constitutional order in Honduras. This is not negotiable anywhere, not in the position of the OAS, or the United Nations or the U.S. government."

But if former, and perhaps future, President Mel was worried, that is nothing compared to the rump Honduras government's new foreign minister, Enrique Ortez Colindres. Frustrated by what he perceives as America's pro-Mel favoritism, he drops the "n" word on Obama. In a radio interview, Ortez Colindres trots out the term "negrito," (or "little black man") several times while describing Obama. In one interview, he scorns the U.S. president as "this little black man who has no idea where Tegucigalpa is."

Remember that line in "Pretty Woman" when Julia Roberts says, "Big mistake. Big." That about sums it up. The U.S. ambassador, who has already become friendly with Mrs. Mel, does a tap dance on Enrique Ortez Colindres' cabeza. "As the official and personal representative of the president of the United States of America, I convey my deep outrage about the unfortunate, disrespectful and racially insensitive comments by Mr. Enrique Ortez Colindres about President Barack Obama," Hugo Llorens says.

For the first time in awhile, America seems to have the diplomatic upper hand. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is so worried that in his daily rant about how the CIA caused the Honduras coup, he makes a point of saying that he didn't think Obama knew about it, however. In Washington, even conservative Latin American experts are singing the praises of Obama, and, especially, of Clinton.

"Obama is better than the OAS, particularly the dominating Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, a fanatical political partisan who has focused entirely on demands rather than negotiations," Hoover Institution scholar William Ratliff tells Politics Daily. "Now Arias is in -- as he should have been the very day of the intervention. I suspect we are the ones who got him, and that is the best move yet."

"The administration is getting its bearings now as Secretary Clinton is getting involved personally," adds Roger Noriega, former OAS ambassador during the Bush administration. "The decision to endorse a mediator that is more independent – rather than the OAS, which is seen as being controlled by Venezuela – took courage and shows leadership. Her decision to not prejudge (her word) whether President Zelaya should return has reassured Hondurans that the process will at least consider the facts before trying to impose a solution . . . In short, Clinton is threading the needle: She's defending basic principles, she's endorsing negotiations based on facts, and she's saying that we will continue to work multilaterally."

That has yet to play itself out.