President Villeda Morales and Rodas Alvarado attended the historic ceremony together with other cabinet officials, El Progreso mayor Salvador Salgado Mangandi, and other figures.
Former president and Nationalist strongman Tiburcio Carías Andino had remarked in a speech that the Armed Forces were the inheritors of "nacionalismo", bringing the military to his side.
For this reason, Air Force Colonel Oswaldo López Arellano took the presidency in the coup, fearing that the campesino protests would spread and wanting to halt the infiltration of communism he saw in their ideology.
[9] On returning from exile, Rodas Alvarado and other Liberal leaders such as Villeda Morales and Óscar Armando Flores Midence, supported the candidacy of Jorge Bueso Arias, who lost the 1971 elections to National Party candidate Ramón Ernesto Cruz Uclés, who was ushered in to the presidency by General Oswaldo López Arellano the following year.
Years later, Rodas Alvarado retired from political life and settled into his estate in Choluteca Department to work in his agricultural businesses until his death on 10 July 1979.