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POLITICAL, SOCIAL and legal processes are intricately connected in the army coup which removed President Manuel Zelaya from power at the weekend in Honduras. The resulting political crisis has rapidly become a regional one galvanising radicals in support of the president against more conservative leaders and suspected United States interference.

Mr Zelaya, a landowner from the country’s traditional social elite, came to power in 2006 on a relatively conservative programme. But he gradually became more radical as he encountered the many problems of poverty and underdevelopment facing Honduras, was influenced by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and other Latin American radicals and became more critical of US policy under president George Bush. This broadened his popular appeal, made his rhetoric more populist but also heightened suspicions among established power-holders that he wants to change the state’s constitutional structure which limits him to just one four-year term.