A Genuine Banana Coup

Early one morning last February, Eli M. Black, 53-year-old chairman of United Brands Co., plunged to his death from his 44th-floor Manhattan office. Early last week General Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, 53-year-old Honduran chief of state, was overthrown in a bloodless coup. The link between the two men was an alleged $1.25 million bribe that is now being investigated by both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a Honduran commission.

Anticipating the investigations that would inevitably follow Black's suicide, United Brands, a conglomerate with 1974 sales of $2 billion, admitted three weeks ago that it had bribed a top Honduran official last year in order to gain lower banana-export taxes (TIME, April 21); suspicion immediately focused on President Lopez. The Honduran commission has not yet unearthed any hard evidence that pinpoints Lopez, but the fact that he was the only official under investigation who refused to allow a review of his foreign bank accounts was considered sufficient grounds for his dismissal. The force behind the coup was the 25-member Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The Council, which is dominated by young left-wing military officers, had been trying to ease Lopez out of power since last March, when they forced him to resign his position as chief of the armed forces. Last week they named Colonel Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, 44, as new chief of state.

Bloody Fracas. Although Melgar, a former Minister of the Interior and military commander in chief since March, is considerably more conservative than the young officers who placed him in power, he is expected to support their economic and social programs, which include some land reform, a limited nationalization of industry and an eventual return to civilian government. As one Honduran politician put it wryly: "I trust Melgar because he will not be able to rule the country. It will be ruled by the armed forces committee."

Lopez, who first came to power by overthrowing the liberal government of Dr. Ramon Villeda Morales in a bloody 1963 coup, since 1972 had ruled Honduras by decree and without a Congress. During his only elected term in office, from 1965 to 1971, Lopez led his troops in the '69 four-day "Soccer War" with neighboring El Salvador, a bloody fracas that claimed more than 2,000 lives and devastated the nation's economy. He returned to power in 1972 by ousting the elderly, constitutionally elected President Ramon Ernesto Cruz.

No formal charges have yet been filed against Lopez, and there seems to be little public outcry for his punishment. A government worker expressed what seems to be the prevailing sentiment about Lopez last week: "I love my general. He wasn't the best President in the world, but he is the best any of us can remember." At week's end Lopez and his family were reportedly preparing to fly off to exile in Madrid.

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