TWELVE years ago, in 2009, I was part of the organising team of a meeting called by the Emergency Committee Against the Coup in Honduras alongside trade unionists, MPs and representatives of Latin American embassies and community groups. 

That summer the Honduran army had forced elected president Manuel Zelaya from office — an outrageous but perhaps unsurprising move when you consider the political direction he sought to take the country in and the long history of attempts to undermine governments in the region that pursued progressive domestic agendas and independent foreign policy approaches.

Despite not coming from a background on the socialist left, Zelaya had used his three years in government to address the needs of millions of citizens who had been failed by decades of free market policies.