1956 Honduran Constituent Assembly election explained

Constituent Assembly elections were held in Honduras on 7 October 1956.[1] Prior to the elections, President Julio Lozano Díaz established his own party, the Party of National Unity. The elections were allegedly heavily rigged and the PUN won all 58 seats.[2]

Conduct

A group of protesting Liberals were fired on by police in Tegucigalpa.[3]

Aftermath

Shortly after the elections the government announced that the Constituent Assembly would convene on 1 November and that it would elect Julio Lozano Díaz as president with General Abraham Williams Calderón as first vice president.[4] However, a military coup took place on 21 October.[5] The top conspirators included Colonel Héctor Caraccioli, head of the air force, Major Roberto Gálvez Barnes, Minister of Development and General Roque J. Rodríguez, director of the military academy in Tegucigalpa. They organized a military government with Rodríguez as its apparent leader, primarily because of his seniority.[6] Lozano was exiled and Fresh elections were held in September 1957.

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. [Dieter Nohlen]
  2. Nohlen, p410
  3. Thomas P. Anderson (1981) The war of the dispossessed: Honduras and El Salvador, 1969, p59
  4. Web site: HONDURAS: By a Landslide . Time . 22 October 1956.
  5. Anderson, p60
  6. Darío A. Euraque (1996) Reinterpreting the banana republic: region and state in Honduras, 1870-1972, p67