The June 29 coup in Honduras did not surprise me.

The day before I read in the morning newspaper that General Romeo Vasquez said a coup d’état was “not certain.” He said “we (the military) are seeking the use of reason and not force in order to resolve the conflicts by dialogue.”

As soon as I saw the words, “not certain,” I said to myself immediately that it was one of the options the general was considering. I also felt he was not talking about dialogue but about a monologue that the opposition would present to President Manuel Zelaya.

             The Venezuelan newspaper I bought this morning in Caracas carried two pictures of demonstrators in Iran yesterday.

U.S. President Obama, Venezuelan President Chávez, and Bolivian President Morales will be together for the first time this weekend in Trinidad for the Summit of the Americas. I hope they will become friends for a number of reasons.

At this moment I am pondering one in particular: the personal well-being of Obama as president. I think that in the years ahead he will need the friendship of these two Latin American leaders as much or more than they will need his. I think President Obama is going to have to confront the same kind of opposition that these two men have had to contend with. It won’t be easy and it would be good for Obama to have a support group with whom he could share feelings and frustrations.

For some odd reason, Delta Airlines recently put me in the first class section on a flight from Atlanta to Caracas.

As I sat there uncomfortably comfortably among people who had a lot more money than I ever dreamed of having, the flight attendant managed to make me even more uncomfortable by asking if I would like some wine with my meal. I decided to join the crowd, but said that I would like white wine—everyone else I could see had something red in their glasses. “Of course,” she said, and went to the front of the plane.

      Living in a foreign country often puts a different slant on what is happening in the United States. 
 

I have just finished reading INTERPOL’s report on the computers that the government of Colombia says it found in an encampment of the FARC-EP on March 1. Reading the report I am once again fascinated with what experts can do with computers. But I am shocked that the world’s best known detective agency cannot add three plus three.

Today I swept and mopped the floor. I used scouring powder to clean the bathroom sink, toilet and shower. I did what is called in Spanish “limpieza” or “cleaning.”
But when I heard the word “limpieza” yesterday I shuddered. The person saying the word was coming from Colombia and was speaking about what he felt was necessary to bring peace to the country.

    Since learning of the assassination of the FARC leader, Raul Reyes, in Ecuador Saturday morning, my mind has been spinning.

Today I have been thinking about how much easier is the work of a photographer than that of a writer.  One snaps a picture and the picture is there; the writer has to assemble words to try to convey the same image.  Even short stories require hundreds of individual words, each carrying a variety of meanings and interpretations.

When people ask me about the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, I respond that the Church is very supportive of him.

    In the last six months, three books have appeared on the market that I believe form an excellent introduction to recent Venezuelan history.