Zelaya cannot go back to Honduras with the hat on....

In Latin America good manners dictate that one takes his hat off when meeting with people and/or going indoors. Not doing so leads, among other penalties, to the loss of the presidency. There is a new political school in our region that equates popular appeal with loutishness. This trend started with Hugo Chavez, who decided that Venezuelans would rather identify with a brute rather with someone with refined manners. A real man, he would say, must smell like a goat. To his wife, he would inform on national TV, "get ready, baby, tonight I will give you what you are longing for". He expressed his philosophical differences with Bush by telling him: "Mr. Bush, iu ar a donki, a drunkard". To Condoleeza Rice he would send a message: "I know you have the hots for me but I just can't bring myself to...".
Rafael Correa, although better schooled than the Venezuelan neandertal, would comment after the visit of U.S. Congressman McGovern to Ecuador: "He is a nice person, I thought he was a gangster like all Republicans" [McGovern is a democrat].
Daniel Ortega is probably the gold standard of loutish behavior. He lives in a house that he took forcibly from his current vicepresident (who seems to have forgiven him) and for about 14 years raped systematically his step-daughter, with the complicity of the mother, Rosario Murillo (his wife and real force behind the presidency of Nicaragua).
Evo Morales is more moderate, although he is learning quickly. "In two years" he said, "the government employee who does not speak Quechua will be fired"; or, "The foreign oil companies are thieves"; or, "Alan Garcia is a traitor and the worst president in the world".
Fernando Lugo, the bishop on leave while president of Paraguay, who has been accused by four women to be the father of their children [he has accepted one or two of them already], has declared his admiration for Chavez and says: "If he is a dictator, I want to be a dictator too"
Zelaya, of course, is the newest Chavez recruit. He purports to be a man from the rural backwaters of Honduras and looks and sound the part by behaving in a boorish manner. He has been a rich land and cattle owner for years but now desires both more money and unlimited power.
This epidemics of loutish manners seems to confirm Wittgenstein's ideas about language being firmly interwoven with the fabric of life, making up the boundaries of our own world. In the case of the ALBA club members, their language and manners is clearly the expression of their swinish political attitudes.