1963 Honduran coup d'état

The 1963 Honduran coup d'état was a military takeover of the Honduran government on 3 October 1963, ten days before a scheduled election. Oswaldo López Arellano replaced Ramón Villeda Morales as the President of the country and initiated two decades of military rule.

Villeda Morales had instituted progressive labor laws and an agrarian reform policy, which prompted accusations of Communist sympathies from the right wing in Honduras and the United States. His intention to expropriate land from United Fruit Company, though never carried out, was a particular source of friction.

Civil–military relations in Honduras had deteriorated since 1957. A coup attempt in 1959, suppressed by students and unionist supporters of Villeda Morales, provoked intense hostility towards the military and the creation of an autonomous presidential guard. Politicians discussed abolishing the military. Modesto Rodas Alvarado, the Liberal Party's candidate for president, ran on a demilitarization platform and was expected to win the election on 13 October. The military acted pre-emptively and seized control of the government.

For much of the 20th century, the economy of Honduras was largely controlled by the United Fruit Company. Beginning with a successful general strike in 1954, workers pushed for better pay, shorter hours, job benefits, unionization, and land reform.

Although Ramón Villeda Morales, a reformist physician with the Liberal Party of Honduras (Partido Liberal de Honduras, PLH) won a plurality votes in the 1954 presidential election, he was 8,869 votes short of a majority and was blocked from becoming president. Vice President Julio Lozano Díaz attempted to seize power, dissolving the legislature and declaring himself interim president. On 7 October 1956, Lozano Díaz held a Congressional election which both of the country's major parties declared unfair and boycotted. This election (in which Díaz's party won every seat) provoked a military takeover on 21 October. In a new election held on 22 September 1957, the PLH won a majority of seats. The new Congress appointed Villeda Morales as President for a six-year term.

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