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by Charles Hardy / October 3rd 2010

A coup by any other name

On September 30, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador was beaten up by policemen and held hostage in their own hospital. They said they were angry because they felt they weren’t going to be paid as well as they have been. It took the whole day before the head of the Ecuadorian armed forces decided that something was not good about the situation and that the president should be rescued.

The U.S. didn’t call it a coup d’état.  I thought it was.  President Correa said it was.  Others said it was.  The U.S. government didn’t.  

The paperback Merriam Webster Dictionary that I have says that a coup d’état is "a sudden violent overthrow of a government by a small group."  In light of this definition, I am guessing that the U.S. didn’t call it a coup d’état because the U.S. knew what really happened.  It wasn’t a "small group" after all.  

On the other hand, when it comes to defining a coup d’état, I am thinking of a story that Anthony De Mello shared in his book, Song of the Bird, about an egg.  

Nasruddin earned his living selling eggs.  Someone came to his shop one day and said, 'Guess what I have in my hand.'  
 
'Give me a clue,' said Nasruddin.  
 
'I shall give you several:  It has the shape of an egg, the size of an egg.  It looks like an egg, tastes like an egg, and smells like an egg.  Inside it is yellow and white.  It is liquid before it is cooked, becomes thick when heated.  It was, moreover, laid by a hen.'  
 
'Aha! I know!' said Nasruddin.  'It is some sort of cake!' 

De Mello adds the following:  "The expert misses the obvious."  
 
Whatever you want to call what happened in Ecuador the other day, in light of Venezuela’s experience in the past, I expect it to happen again (and not just in Ecuador).  And in spite of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s nice words of support for President Correa, it would be worth remembering that she also had nice words of support for Honduran President José Manuel Zelaya—for a while.

 

by Charles Hardy © 

Charles Hardy is author of ­Cowboy in Caracas:  A North American’s Memoir of Venezuela’s Democratic Revolution,  published by Curbstone Press.  Other essays by Hardy can be found on his personal blog Cowboyincaracas.com.  You may write him at cowboyincaracas@yahoo.com.