Background
Ramón Villeda Morales was born on 26 November 1908 in Ocotepeque.
Ramón Villeda Morales was born on 26 November 1908 in Ocotepeque.
Studied medicine at the National University of Honduras, where he was president of the Federation of University Students, and began practicing medicine.
In 1940 he established a private clinic in Tegucigalpa.
After Tiburcio Carias Andino turned over power in December 1948 to Juan Manuel Galvez Duron, who began to relax the Carias dictatorship, Villeda Morales helped reorganize the Liberal Party and emerged as party chairman in 1949. He founded a daily newspaper, El Pueblo, and managed a vigorous campaign in the 1953 municipal elections.
Named Liberal presidential candidate in the October 1954 election, Villeda won a plurality over Carias Andino, the nominee of one faction of the National Party, and over General Abraham Williams, the candidate of a dissident faction of that party. Nationalist deputies refused to attend the session of Congress to choose between the two top nominees, and after President Gálvez went to Panama for medical treatment, Vice President Julio Lozano Diaz proclaimed himself constitutional dictator on December 5, 1954. Lozano exiled Villeda Morales, who went to Costa Rica.
After fraudulent elections on October 7, 1956, which Lozano claimed to have won, a military golpe expelled him and set up a three-man military junta. It appointed Villeda Morales ambassador to the United States. The September 22, 1957 elections gave the Liberal party a smashing victory. On November 16, Congress elected Villeda Morales president, and he was inaugurated on December 11.
On October 3, 1963, ten days before scheduled presidential elections, the armed forces under Colonel Oswaldo López Arrellano ousted Villeda Morales to prevent the election of Modesto Rodas Alvarado, the Liberal candidate, who strongly supported presidential control over the armed forces. Villeda Morales went into exile. He died of a heart attack in New York shortly after López Arrellano appointed him ambassador to the United States.
In 1936 he married Alejandra Bermúdez Milla, a school-teacher from a politically active Liberal family. The two pursued graduate studies in Berlin.