Lozano Díaz, Julio (1885–1957)

Julio Lozano Díaz, president of Honduras (November 1954–October 1956). Vice president under Juan Manuel Gálvez, Lozano Díaz seized the presidency at a time of political ferment and trade-union agitation in Honduras. In 1954 a strike against the United Fruit and Standard Fruit and Steamship companies coincided with a three-way contest for the presidency between the Liberal Party candidate Ramón Villeda Morales, Abraham Williams of the Movimiento Nacional Reformista, and Tiburcio Carías Andino of the Partido Nacional. Although Villeda Morales had garnered nearly 50 percent of the vote, the Carías-controlled Congress refused to sanction a Liberal presidency and Lozano Díaz settled the issue by declaring himself interim president in November 1954. He successfully warded off an attempted coup on 1 August 1956 and orchestrated the victory of his party, the Partido Union Nacional, in the 7 October congressional election. The three opposition parties declared the election fraudulent, and on 21 October members of the Honduran military, led by General Roque J. Rodríguez, brought down the Lozano Díaz dictatorship and established a military junta. He died in Miami on August 20, 1957.

See alsoHonduras .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America: A Nation Divided (1976), pp. 255 and 301.

James A. Morris, Honduras: Caudillo Politics and Military Rulers (1984), esp. pp. 11-12.

Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 7 (1990), pp. 298-299.

Additional Bibliography

Ans, André-Marcel 'd. Honduras: De un liberalismio al otro. Tegucigalpa: Centro de Documentación de Honduras, 1999.

Barahona, Marvin. Honduras en el siglo XX: Una síntesis histórica. Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras, 2005.

Martínez B., Juan Ramón. El asalto al Cuartel San Francisco: El día que la juventud hizo temblar a la dictadura. Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Ediciones 18 Conejo, 2003.

                               Michael A. Polushin