On April 22, 1975 the Honduran military high council removed General Oswaldo Lopez Arellano from power, ending his second period of rule in the wake of the Bananagate bribery scandal and installing General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro. Lopez Arellano had returned to power in a December 1972 coup, but in early 1975 the US Securities and Exchange Commission exposed that the United Brands Company (the successor to United Fruit) had paid a 1.25 million dollar bribe, with another 1.
25 million promised, to a senior Honduran official in exchange for a reduction in the banana export tax. Lopez Arellano was widely understood to be the unidentified official referred to in the Wall Street Journal's April 9 report. Amid the scandal, the armed forces high council ordered his removal on April 22, 1975, replacing him with the chief of the armed forces, Colonel (later General) Juan Alberto Melgar Castro.
Lopez Arellano was not physically harmed.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Target identified in Coup Atlas research: General Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, removed by the military high council on April 22, 1975 amid the Bananagate scandal; he was not physically harmed, and was replaced by Melgar Castro.
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Oswaldo Lopez Arellano (head of state removed over Bananagate)
Juan Alberto Melgar Castro (armed forces chief who replaced him)
United Brands Company (the firm behind the bribe)
Sources
The 1975 Honduran coup took place on 22 April 1975, with Oswaldo Lopez Arellano being ousted in a military coup led by his fellow General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, prompted in part by the Bananagate scandal exposed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 1975, in which the United Brands Company agreed to bribe President Lopez with 1.25 million dollars and the promise of another 1.25 million upon the reduction of certain banana export taxes.
Oswaldo Lopez Arellano was removed from office as President of Honduras by order of the nation's high military council, having been presumed to be the unidentified official in Honduras referred to in the April 9 Wall Street Journal as recipient of a 1,250,000 dollar bribe from the United Brands Company in return for cutting a Honduran export tax on bananas, and was replaced by General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro.
A list of coups records that on April 22, 1975 Oswaldo Lopez Arellano was overthrown by the Honduran military and replaced by Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, who was himself overthrown in 1978.
SOURCE REVIEWEDWikipedia, List of coups and coup attempts by countryopen source ↗
Due to corruption scandals Lopez Arellano was ousted from government and replaced by Colonel Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, ending the rule he had resumed with his December 1972 coup against President Ramon Ernesto Cruz.
Arc link: this April 1975 removal connects to Lopez Arellano's own December 4, 1972 coup against Ramon Ernesto Cruz (enriched in batch 25); it ends his rule, brought down by the Bananagate bribery scandal. Fate coding: Lopez Arellano was removed by the military high council and not physically harmed, matching the dataset fate. Coding note: the dataset labels this a military coup; it was an internal removal by the armed forces high command amid the corruption scandal, installing the armed forces chief Melgar Castro. Context: Bananagate, the United Brands bribe to cut the banana export tax, was a landmark corporate-bribery scandal; the company's chairman also died by suicide amid the affair, recorded as context. Arc forward: Melgar Castro was himself overthrown in 1978, continuing the military-rule cycle, a separate later event.
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: General Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, removed by the military high council on April 22, 1975 amid the Bananagate scandal; he was not physically harmed, and was replaced by Melgar Castro..
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset, v2.2.2
Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Michael Martin, and Andrea Gerald. 2026. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.2.2. February 17. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V10
“Honduran Army Ousts Leader Named in Bribery Case in U.S. HONDURAN CHIEF OUSTED BY ARMY,” by Alan Riding, April 23, 1975
Chicago Tribune
“Honduras Chief is Ousted,” April 23, 1975
“Honduras Chief Ousted in Coup,” August 8, 1978
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →