Background
Oswaldo López Arellano was born in Danli on 21 June 1921.
Oswaldo López Arellano was born in Danli on 21 June 1921.
He had joined the army in 1939, and was one of the senior colonels when the armed forces ousted Julio Lozano Diaz on October 21, 1956. When Major Robert Galvez Barnes withdrew from the three-member military junta on November 16, 1957, López, then minister of defense, took his vacant seat on the Junta. He continued to serve as minister of defense in the administration of President Ramón Villeda Morales, inaugurated in December 1957.
On October 3, 1963, military forces loyal to López ousted Villeda in the face of the electoral victory of Liberal candidate Modesto Rodas Alvarado, who had talked about ending the military’s budgetary autonomy and ability to nominate candidates for chief of staff. López served as head of a military government that supervised February 1965 elections for a constituent assembly which elected him as constitutional president.
Promoted to general, López appointed Ricardo Zuniga Augustinius as secretary of the presidency and subsequently minister of government. A short-lived war with El Salvador in 1969 demonstrated the military incompetence and corruption of many senior officers and the weak loyalty of many upper-class and middle- class groups to the regime, in contrast to the strong loyalty of organized peasant and trade union groups.
As the 1971 elections for president and Congress approached, the National Party named colorless Ramón Ernesto Cruz. With Zúñiga masterminding the Cruz campaign, the Nationalists won. but Cruz was overthrown by the military, still under the command of López, on December 4, 1972. In an effort to mobilize public support for López’ regime, 29 senior army officers, informally charged with incompetence and corruption were “retired,” and land distribution was speeded up under the December 1974 agrarian reform decree.
President López was finally forced out of office for the last time by his military colleagues on April 22, 1975, in the face of charges he had accepted a $1.25 million bribe from United Brands (formerly United Fruit) to evade the export taxes.
