HONDURAS: The Polite Revolution

In the cobblestone capital of Tegucigalpa this week, military officers shouldered aside Supreme Chief of State Julio Lozano Diaz. The framed election, which Lozano staged to transform himself into a legal President (TIME, Oct. 22), proved too raw for Honduras’ younger, U.S.-trained officers to choke down. All last week Colonel Hector Caraccioli, 34, a U.S.-trained pilot who commands the air force, and Major Roberto Galvez, 31, an engineering officer who studied at Louisiana State University, talked it over with aging (71) Don Julio. Then, lining up support from General Roque J. Rodriguez, 55, commander of the country’s military academy and an old hand at Central American revolutions, they gave Lozano polite overnight notice to resign for the good of the nation.

Sunday morning, air force planes patrolled the skies and troops deployed on the streets. From the military academy on the outskirts of the capital, Colonel Caraccioli telephoned Lozano: the time of decision had come. After holding out for the usual guarantees of life and property for himself and his associates, the old man signed his resignation.

Dour and crotchety, Julio Lozano never had any noteworthy popular support. He rode into the vice-presidency in 1948 under President Juan Manuel Galvez (the rebel major’s father). In 1954, when presidential elections ended in a no-majority stalemate, Lozano happened to be sitting in for the ailing President Galvez, and seized power. Last August, hit one-two by an attempted barracks uprising and a case of high blood pressure, he turned over his authority briefly to a junta headed by General Rodriguez, then persuaded Galvez to stand in again as chief of state and went to Miami for a medical check up and long rest.

He flew back three weeks ago to supervise the election. Scarcely a ballot box was left unstuffed, or an oppositionist unintimidated in Lozano’s electoral effort. For what it was worth, he won. But when his cops topped off the fraud by shooting into a crowd of demonstrators on Election Day, Lozano’s number was up. With the gentle air of friends who know what is best, the general, the colonel and the major eased him out. Said the junta: “We intend to govern democratically.” It was the 13 5th revolution in Honduras’ history-and the first military coup without bloodshed.