Buenos Aires celebrated National Tango Day on Saturday with hundreds of dancers putting their best foot forward on the famed Avenida de Mayo.

Traffic came to a standstill as more than 10 bands performed on stages erected along the avenue to provide a musical backdrop for tango aficionados taking part in the Gran Milonga Nacional (Big National Milonga).

The event is staged each year on the first Saturday of December, ahead of the National Day of Tango which is marked on 11 December and celebrates the birthday of two of the most important and influential tango musicians in Argentina – Carlos Gardel and Antonio Caro.

Latin America is no stranger to coups; there have been three in this new century alone and too many over the course of the 20th century to document here (for those interested, John Pilger’s award-winning documentary The War on Democracy, is a must-see).

The most recent toppling of a democratically elected government in the Western Hemisphere occurred on the night of June 28th in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. President Manuel Zelaya was dragged from his bed, bungled on a plane and forced to seek refuge in neighbouring Costa Rica. The ignominy and illegality of this brutal act highlighted the continued instability in a region which is grappling with some of the worst levels of inequality and poverty on the planet.

President Zelaya was victim of the usual business elite-military conspiracy, a standard characteristic of Latin America over the last 100 years. The timing was interesting as it co-incided with a vote on the extension of the Presidential term and according to the Guardian’s Mark Weisbrot, with the implementation of more socially orientated policies that focused on poverty alleviation. Weisbrot, an experienced analyst of Latin American affairs, commented that the coup “pitted a reform president who is supported by labour unions and social organisations against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite who is accustomed to choosing not only the supreme court and the Congress, but also the president. It is a recurrent story in Latin America.”

The brutality of the coup (killings and beatings of innocent protestors, closure of opposition media) has taken place with barely a word appearing in the British media (both print and television). It might be said this is understandable given the sheer range of issues facing the British Isles from the banking crisis to the widespread flooding. However, the lack of coverage of major international stories such as the financial meltdown in Dubai, the instability in the Middle East, the growing popular movements in Latin America – raises serious questions about the role of the British media when it comes to informing the public of our rapidly-changing world.

The overly Western-centric viewpoint slants the “news” in a particular way and rarely do we catch a glimpse of important events outside of this bubble – the coup in Honduras is a case in point.

The continued abuse of human rights and killings by the Honduran military in an effort to suppress popular demonstrations continue unabated but it would be difficult to know in Britain were it not for cable news and alternative news websites. Some of the events in Honduras have been highlighted by Al Jazeera, which has been consistent in its coverage of the Honduran coup and Latin America generally.

Roberto Micheletti, a prominent supporter of the coup has won the nation’s presidential election. Porfirio Lobo, a rich landowner, received 55 percent of the vote. The election comes five months after the Honduran military ousted the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya. The leaders of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and other Latin American countries say Sunday’s presidential election is invalid because it was backed by the coup leaders and could end any hope of Zelaya returning to power and completing his term, which is due to end in January. But the United States has vowed to recognize the results. No pro-Zelaya candidate ran Sunday due to a boycott of the elections called by Zelaya. Human rights groups reported widespread abuses by the Honduran military and police ahead of Sunday’s vote. In the city of San Pedro Sula, soldiers used water cannons and tear gas to break up a march by 500 unarmed protestors.

One wonders if the British public is aware that Latin America has been unanimous in its condemnation of the Honduran coup vis-à-vis the Organisation of American States (OAS); that the EU has been unequivocal in its opposition, removing its ambassadors and stating the “deep concern over the political crisis in Honduras and the violations of the constitutional order” or that the United Nations moved quickly to condemn the Honduran military for aggressively surrounding the Brazilian Embassy where President Zelaya had taken refuge after a failed effort to return to Tegucigalpa.

We can only hope that greater public awareness and education among our students will lead to demands on our media to provide more extensive analysis of events in Latin America, such as the impact of climate change, the importance of the World Social Forums, the growing move towards global justice, the emergence of greater Latin American integration and the role of India, China and Brazil. These are the events that will shape and determine the course of the 21st century but it would hard to know judging by the British media’s focus on petty criminality as well as saturation sports coverage at one of the most challenging times in human socio-economic development.