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Honduras Development of an Independent Military Identity, 1922-63
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
rapid turnover in governments prevented a weak professional
officer corp from consolidating its position and professionalizing
military service. The country had few military schools; and the
lack of resources, including the poor caliber of students, meant
that a professional cadre of officers never solidified. A severe
inequality in the conscription system also handicapped
professionalization. All able-bodied males between the
ages of twenty-one and thirty were legally required to serve, but
numerous exemptions existed for members of the middle class. The
result was that militia service came to be viewed as a form of
lower-class servitude rather than as patriotic duty.
During the 1930s, the political climate stabilized
under the PNH and its strongman, Tiburcio Carías Andino (president,
1932-49), who took advantage of foreign aid to create a military
apparatus that developed long-term support for his government. The air
corps, which had been established in 1922, was the first of the
armed services to benefit from such aid. A United States Air
Force colonel became the first commandant of the Military
Aviation School founded in 1934, and United States personnel ran the
school until the end of World War II. By 1942 United States-trained
pilots were flying a fleet of twenty-two aircraft. The army's
capabilities also improved with training in counterinsurgency, which proved
helpful to Carías in defending his government from his political
enemies. During World War II, the United States military's
mission
expanded to include support for the professionalization of
the
army. In 1946 Honduran military officers began to receive
advanced
military training at the United States Army School of the
Americas
in the Panama Canal Zone, which nearly 3,000 of them
attended until
the school's closing in 1986. In 1946 the Basic Arms
School was
established, and separate schools for enlisted personnel
and
officers were formed shortly thereafter. In 1952 the
Francisco
Morazán Military Academy was established with aid from the
United
States; it graduated its first class of officers in 1956
(see Recruitment and Training
, this ch.). As academic standards
and
entrance requirements steadily improved during the late
1950s and
early 1960s, the academy attracted a greater number of
intelligent
and ambitious young Hondurans to a military career. In
1947 the
United States Military Assistance Program (MAP) made it
possible
for the Hondurans to create the First Infantry Battalion.
Shortly
thereafter an additional infantry battalion was formed.
What
hitherto had been a conglomerate of local militia units
began to
take on the appearance of a modern national army.
These internal changes led to the emergence of an
independent,
politically conscious, and professionally trained cadre of
Honduran
military officers. In 1956, for the first time in Honduran
history,
the military, as an autonomous institution, intervened
directly in
civilian politics by overthrowing president Julio Lozano
Díaz and
establishing a government headed by a military junta
(see Aborted Reform, 1954-63
, ch. 1). Seeking to preserve its new-found
autonomy
and status, the armed forces introduced provisions in the
1957
constitution to ensure that the armed services would not
have to
submit to the authority of civilian politicians. Among
these
provisions was a requirement that presidential orders to
the
military be transmitted through the commander in chief of
the armed
forces, who, moreover, was granted the right to disobey
the
president if his commands were perceived to violate the
constitution. The new constitution also stripped the
civilian
government of its control over military promotions and
assignments.
By the early 1960s, the Honduran military leadership
was
confident in its position, determined to protect its
institutional
autonomy, and willing to play a greater role in the
national
political arena. This they did in 1963 when air force
general
Oswaldo López Arellano seized power from civilian
president Ramón
Villeda Morales and governed until 1971. López Arellano
seized
power again in 1972 after a short civilian interlude, and
the armed
forces dominated the political scene for the remainder of
the
1970s. From 1954 until 1981, each chief of the armed
forces also
served as president of the country before taking his
retirement
(see Military Rule and International Conflict, 1963-78
, ch. 1).
Data as of December 1993
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