Two-Time Honduran President

Oswaldo López Arellano, who twice served as president of Honduras and was its top military leader for nearly two decades, died on Sunday in Tegucigalpa, the country’s capital. He was 89. The cause was prostate cancer, his family said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.

Mr. López Arellano was a lieutenant colonel in the Honduran Air Force when he helped lead a military coup that overthrew the dictator Julio Lozano Díaz in 1956. He became minister of defense in a government led by President Ramón Villeda Morales. A provision in the new Honduran Constitution effectively gave the military junta — of which Mr. López Arellano, by then a general, was a part — veto power over Dr. Villeda Morales. In 1963, Mr. López Arellano led a coup against Dr. Villeda Morales and became president himself after leading an interim military government for two years. In 1969, President López Arellano led his country in what came to be known as the  “soccer war”  against El Salvador, because the two countries were then playing hotly contested matches to determine which nation would advance to the World Cup.

Issues transcended sport. Salvadorans were streaming into Honduras seeking land and a better life. After Honduras began evicting the Salvadorans, most of them illegal immigrants, El Salvador invaded Honduras. The five-day war ended inconclusively with several thousand killed, including military forces and civilians.

In 1971, Mr. López Arellano stepped aside to make way for another civilian president but retained a constitutional right to ignore presidential orders. He led a coup less than a year later and again assumed the presidency. In 1975, Mr. López Arellano was himself deposed by a military coup, after evidence emerged that he had taken a bribe, said to total $2.5 million, from the United Fruit Company to cut taxes on bananas.

Curiously, the WSJ obit is quite different, including the reported amount of the bribe: In 1971, Mr. López stepped aside as president to permit elections, but remained head of the armed forces. He returned in December 1972 in a second coup. This time there were few casualties. Mr. López himself was removed from power in a 1975 coup, amid a bribery scandal in which he was implicated in a $1.25 million payment by United Brands Co., the successor to United Fruit Co.

Now, who is to be believed?

Mr. López Arellano was born on June 30, 1921, in Danli, Honduras, and learned fluent English at the American School in Tegucigalpa. He enlisted in the Honduran Air Force, became a pilot and trained in Arizona during World War II. By the time of the 1956 coup, he had risen to chief of security in the Air Force. Mr. López Arellano, who went on from his military and political career to become president of the Honduran national airline, is survived by his wife, Gloria Figueroa, and several children.

Another difference: the Journal has his education thus: A career military officer who attended flight school in the U.S. during World War II, Mr. López served as minister of defense in the late 1950s. He had a reputation for opposing communism at a time when policy makers in Washington feared Cuba would export its revolution around Latin America.

And the Times makes no mention at all about the moon rock Nixon gave López Arellano.

May 18, 2010 - By Douglas Martin - NY Times