TEGUCIGALPA – Some 3,000 backers of deposed President Mel Zelaya took to the streets of the Honduran capital on Friday in defiance of threats from the de facto regime that police would not tolerate further protests.

Taking part in the march to Congress was Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro, who urged an ongoing mobilization by those opposed to the June 28 coup that removed her husband.

“Every day that there is repression ... the more strength we feel to continue with the marches,” she said, though counseling Zelaya supporters to remain calm and “act in peace.”

“There is much more energy, much more spirit, more anger as well over the repression of completely peaceful protests,” said peasant leader Rafael Alegria, an important figure in the Resistance Front formed after the putsch.

On Thursday, police and troops cleared Zelaya supporters from a main road in Tegucigalpa in an operation that authorities said left six injured, including one man who was shot in the head, while protest organizers said 72 people were hurt and dozens arrested.

Leftist lawmaker Marvin Ponce, also with the Resistance Front, said that 17 of the injured required hospitalization, including independent presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes.

Ponce said that Reyes, a union official, “was arrested, but because of the seriousness of his injuries he was sent to a hospital” under police guard.

The legislator also said that 42 protesters were hurt, 14 of them badly enough to need hospital treatment, in a clash with police Thursday in Comayagua, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Tegucigalpa.

Alegria said coup opponents mounted two roadblocks Friday, one of which, in the western city of Santa Rosa de Copan, was broken up by police.

But another opposition activist, Juan Barahona, acknowledged that threats from the “interim” government of Roberto Micheletti had led organizers to call off a planned strike by teachers and other public employees in Tegucigalpa.

People who support Zelaya – or simply oppose the ouster of an elected president – have mounted demonstrations every day since June 28, when soldiers dragged the head of state from the presidential palace and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.

Until Thursday, the de facto regime had largely tolerated the protests.

Roger Abraham Vallejo, a 38-year-old teacher who was shot in the head by a policeman during Thursday’s violence in the capital, remains in a coma after undergoing emergency surgery, teachers union official Sergio Rivera told Efe.

Rivera said an army patrol burst into the hospital where Vallejo was taken, threatened a score of teachers who accompanied him there and even entered the operating room where surgeons were tending to the wounded man.

During Friday’s march, Xiomara Castro blamed the harsh repression on Honduran armed forces chief Romeo Vasquez, who led the ouster of her husband, albeit with backing from Congress and the Supreme Court.

“It seems the title of general is too big for Romeo Vasquez Velasquez”, she said as her fellow demonstrators chanted “murderers, murderers.”

On the diplomatic front, Zelaya met Thursday in Managua with the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens.

“We’ve asked for more energetic, stronger and more decisive measures from the United States to reverse the process and the negative effects of this coup, which is shameful and humiliating to humanity,” the ousted head of state told a press conference.

Washington on Tuesday announced it was revoking the U.S. visas of four Honduras government officials, including Micheletti.

“What’s happening in Honduras (following the coup) is an act of defiance against the United States itself. It’s a challenge for the international community,” Zelaya said.

He said Llorens reaffirmed Washington’s opposition to the coup and its lack of recognition of the de facto regime and pledged to “step up” efforts to restore the democratic order with “other types of reprisals” that the White House will announce in due time.

“I don’t think the United States has a double standard,” Zelaya said, though he added that there are internal disputes in Washington, mainly involving the “hawks of the reactionary old guard.”

The United States and the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, have been urging both Zelaya and the Micheletti regime to accept the proposals formulated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to resolve the crisis.

The Arias-drafted San Jose Accord calls for Zelaya to return and serve out his term, which ends in January 2010, and for a political amnesty that would protect both the coup plotters and the ousted head of state, accused of various offenses by the junta.

Zelaya would head a national unity government and the presidential and congressional elections set for Nov. 29 would be moved up to October.

Under the Arias initiative, Zelaya would also have to abandon his hopes for a constitutional convention.

Honduran soldiers removed Zelaya from office just hours before voters were supposed to cast ballots in a non-binding plebiscite on the idea of revising the national charter.

Though the coup leaders accused Zelaya of seeking to extend his stay in office, any constitutional change to allow presidential re-election would not take place until well after the incumbent stepped down.

The president made his first attempt to return to the country on July 5, but was thwarted when the Honduran military blocked the runway at Tegucigalpa’s Toncontin International Airport and fired on tens of thousands of Zelaya supporters gathered there, killing at least one person.

Since then, other Zelaya partisans, as well as human rights activists, have been killed or “disappeared.”

Zelaya spent a few hours on Honduran soil last Friday before retreating back into Nicaragua to avert a confrontation with security forces massed along the border. EFE