On August 7, 1978 the Honduran military removed General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro from power in a coup and replaced him with a three-member junta led by General Policarpo Paz Garcia, continuing the cycle of military rule that had governed Honduras through the 1970s. Melgar Castro had himself come to power in April 1975 after the Bananagate scandal brought down Oswaldo Lopez Arellano. By 1978 he had lost the confidence of the armed forces high command amid corruption allegations, including claims of ties to drug trafficking, and disputes over the pace of a return to civilian rule.
On August 7, 1978 the military ousted him and installed a junta headed by Paz Garcia together with two other officers. Melgar Castro was not physically harmed. The junta under Paz Garcia went on to oversee elections and a transition that returned Honduras to civilian government at the start of the 1980s.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Target identified in Coup Atlas research: General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, removed by the military on August 7, 1978 and replaced by a junta under Paz Garcia; he was not physically harmed.
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Juan Alberto Melgar Castro (head of state removed)
Policarpo Paz Garcia (general who led the new junta)
The military high command (which ordered the removal)
Sources
A list of coups records that on August 7 to 8, 1978, Juan Alberto Melgar Castro was overthrown by the Honduran military and replaced by a military junta led by Policarpo Paz Garcia and two other officers.
SOURCE REVIEWEDWikipedia, List of coups and coup attempts by countryopen source ↗
Melgar Castro had taken power in the 1975 Honduran coup on 22 April 1975, when Oswaldo Lopez Arellano was ousted amid the Bananagate scandal, and Melgar Castro was himself overthrown by the Honduran military in 1978.
The Honduran military removed Melgar Castro in August 1978 and installed a three-man junta led by General Policarpo Paz Garcia, which continued military rule and oversaw the transition that led to elections and a return to civilian government at the start of the 1980s.
Juan Alberto Melgar Castro served as head of state of Honduras from 1975 until he was deposed in 1978, and he was not killed in the coup, later dying in 1987.
SOURCE REVIEWEDWikipedia, Juan Alberto Melgar Castroopen source ↗
Editorial Note
Arc closer: this August 1978 coup ends the rule of Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, connecting to the April 22, 1975 coup by which he took power over the Bananagate scandal (enriched in batch 27); the same armed forces that installed him now removed him. Fate coding: Melgar Castro was removed and not physically harmed, matching the dataset. Coding note: the dataset labels this a military coup; it was an internal removal by the armed forces high command, installing a three-member junta under Policarpo Paz Garcia. Context: the removal is attributed to lost confidence within the military amid corruption allegations and disputes over the pace of a return to civilian rule; the Paz Garcia junta oversaw the transition to civilian government at the start of the 1980s, recorded as later context. Date nuance: sources give the coup as August 7 (the dataset date) or August 7 to 8, 1978.
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 Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, removed by the military on August 7, 1978 and replaced by a junta under Paz Garcia; he was not physically harmed..
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
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 →