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Honduras Military Rule and Reform
During the autumn of 1972, with the support of the
military,
the two parties attempted to revise the arrangements
between the
parties and the major labor and business groups. These
efforts were
not unsuccessful, and opposition to what was increasingly
perceived
as an ineffectual and divisive administration spread
steadily. The
virtual halting of agrarian reform and the killing of
several
peasants by the military in the department of Olancho had
angered
peasant groups. Labor and business were alienated by the
ineffective efforts to deal with the problems of the
economy. The
PLH felt that its position within the government was
steadily
eroding and that its agreement with the PNH was regularly
violated.
In December peasant and labor organizations announced a
hunger
march by 20,000 individuals to Tegucigalpa to protest the
government's agrarian policies. Supported by a prior
agreement with
the labor movement, the military on December 4, 1972,
overthrew
Cruz in a bloodless coup and once again installed López
Arellano as
the president.
Problems for the López Arellano regime began to
increase in
1974. The economy was still growing at a slow pace, partly
because
of the immense damage caused to the Caribbean coast by
Hurricane
Fifi in September 1974. The storm was the most devastating
natural
disaster in recent Honduran history, claiming 10,000 or
more lives
and destroying a vast number of banana plants. The
disaster also
increased calls for agrarian reform.
The government's greatest problem, however, centered on
another
aspect of the banana industry. Honduras had joined other
bananaexporting nations in a joint agreement to levy an export
tax on
that fruit. The Honduran tax had taken effect in April
1974 but was
suddenly canceled four months later. Shortly thereafter,
reports
began to circulate that the United Fruit Company had paid
more than
US$1 million to Honduran officials to secure the repeal of
the tax.
Prominently implicated in these accusations were López
Arellano and
his minister of economy and commerce.
Reacting to these charges on March 31, 1975, the
military
relieved López Arellano of his position as chief of the
armed
forces, replacing him with Colonel Juan Alberto Melgar
Castro. Just
over three weeks later, they completed the process by
removing
López Arellano from the presidency and replacing him with
Melgar
Castro. These decisions had been made by the increasingly
powerful
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Consejo Superior de
las
Fuerzas Armadas--Consuffaa), a group of approximately
twenty to
twenty-five key colonels of the armed forces who provided
the
institution with a form of collective leadership
(see
Consolidation and Organizational Maturity
, ch. 5).
In July 1976 the border with El Salvador was still
disputed. In
July a minor upsurge of conflict there brought prompt OAS
intervention, which helped to keep the conflict from
escalating. In
October both nations agreed to submit their dispute to
arbitration.
This development raised hopes for a rapid peace
settlement.
Progress, however, proved slow; and tensions were raised
again,
briefly, in 1978, when the Honduran government abruptly
canceled
all permits for travel to El Salvador. The rise of
guerrilla
conflict in El Salvador, plus strong pressures from other
nations,
made a settlement increasingly urgent in subsequent
months. In
October 1980, with Peruvian mediation, the bilateral
General Peace
Treaty was finally signed in Lima, Peru. Trade and travel
were soon
resumed, but numerous problems, including final
adjudication of
some small parcels of territory along the frontier,
remained for
later consideration
(see Central America
, ch. 4).
Relations with Nicaragua had also become more
difficult,
especially after civil conflict had increased in that
nation in the
late 1970s. In March 1978, Honduran soldiers captured
Germán
Pomares, a leader of the Sandinista National Liberation
Front
(Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional--FSLN), the
guerrilla
force fighting against the regime of Anastasio Somoza
Debayle in
Nicaragua. Pomares was held until the end of June, but
Nicaraguan
requests for extradition were denied, and he was
ultimately flown
to Panama. As fighting in Nicaragua escalated in 1978 and
early
1979, Honduras found itself in a difficult position.
Honduras did
not want to support the unpopular Somoza regime but feared
the
Marxist leanings of the FSLN. In addition, beginning in
September
1978, Honduras had become burdened with an ever-growing
number of
refugees from Nicaragua.
Data as of December 1993
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