Central America’s political climate is not unique. Wherever there is a leader that aspired to be a dictator, there always seems to be a military coup fashioned to topple him, and whenever there is insurmountable civil oppression due to abuses of power, there always seems to be a resulting civil war. Confrontations in Central America are caused by many conflicting interests and powerful factions.

Save for Costa Rica, all countries of Central America have been riddled in their respective histories with powerful military regimes and civil wars during the decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In Guatemala, the conflict lasted 36 years, between 1960 and 1996; in El Salvador, between 1980 and 1992; in Nicaragua, between 1979 and 1990; and in Honduras, violence continued throughout the period of military dictatorships that took place between 1963 and 1980.

The current political upheaval in Honduras is shaping up into yet another civil war in Central America, a civil war that will cast a long shadow in the entire region. If Honduras wants to avert an impending bloodshed, it should hold elections posthaste and not allow Manuel Zelaya to return to power.

Civil war is the population’s reaction and retaliation to a regime’s excessive use of power and grinding poverty. Honduras is the second to the poorest country in Latin America, just a notch higher than the bottom rung occupied by Haiti.

It seems that Zelaya’s supporters, including the United States that insists to return Zelaya to Honduras, thanks to the intercession of one Hugo Chavez, and the EU freezing its scheduled $90m aid to the country to show it denounces those who grabbed power from Zelaya and ousted him, fail to see that Zelaya drove Honduras to the ground and caused his country to degenerate into economic and social degradation.

Civil war is the voice of the people gone shrill.

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