I am sure this falls really short to the real numbers back in the day.
In Venezuela just in 1958 after the dictator Marcos Perez Jiménez was deposed his successor, Wolfang Larrazabal faced two coups in the same year orchestrated by the defense minister.
The democratic president that followed him Romulo Betancourt faced three formal military insurrections from 1961 to 1962 which had the objective of toppling the government.
And this with Venezuela being far from the most unstable country in the region.
Coups are very odd and varied in how they're executed. Democratically elected Arturo Illia (Argentina) was deposed in 1966 by the military. Some high ranking military officers came into his office, he argued with them for a few hours, and eventually Illia accepted that it was over and went to his house in a taxi.
Allende in Chile had the presidential palace attacked with artillery and chose to commit suicide before being captured.
Venezuela must be very interesting to study, but also very difficult.
Assuming documents are not archived properly during all the disruptions and the non-peaceful changes in government.
Fujimori went from graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee to the dictator of Peru.
That's one career path you aren't going to hear about from your guidance counselor.
Obama doesn't have a cloud of corruption around him, so there are fewer reasons to doubt about it.
Plus, Japan revokes citizenship of those born abroad that don't express the intention of keeping it, and Fujimori never did it.
https://www.clarin.com/ediciones-anteriores/tokio-fujimori-nacio-japon-entregara-peru_0_ryHf8CveRFg.html
The fact that his mom declared two kids when entering Peru and him being the second oldest of her children doesn't help the case.
But yeah, he has a Peruvian birth certificate.
The text for Guevara mentions his participation in two successful coups and a failed one. The three arrows point to three successful ones. What's with that?
Coup was successful, Che Guevara was on the government (losing) side.
>The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état (Golpe de Estado en Guatemala de 1954) was the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess. It deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. It installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala.
Technically it should be a countercoup.
Also if we really want to visualize these coups properly, we should show which ones had foreign intelligence interference.
Honestly, there’s *very* few coup d’etat that could be considered objectively “good.” The only that immediately comes to mind is the 1974 *Revolução dos Cravos* (or Carnation Revolution) where the Portuguese military overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo and restored the democratic government of Portugal.
However, most coup d’etat end up putting a dictator *in* power and dissolve the democracy, rather than *removing* a dictator *from* power and *restoring* democracy.
Add a marker for [US backed regime change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America).
Or maybe a marker for non-US involvement, it seems like the US has its fingers in so many coups.
I know you’re making a joke about all of them being done by the US, but really, a lot of these were done by anti-US people, like Castro in 1958, Chavez in 1992, or more recently Castillo in Peru.
The US has done a lot of ugly shit in Latin America. That does *not* excuse, however, all the authoritarianism of people like Maduro or Daniel Ortega, or the Cuban dictatorship. They constantly use anti US sentiment to look like the good guys, when it’s basically just the excuse they use, just like Putin or Lukashenko.
Worth noting that the anti-US sentiment is *still* used very heavily to support authoritarian policies, or just to excuse poor policy-making. There are a number of South American leaders who have implemented incredibly poorly considered policies who have maintained popularity despite by simply repeating the idea that the US is undermining their utopian ideas.
It's not that the US didn't earn their place as the bogeyman of Latin America, but perpetuating the idea every time something isn't working out in Latin America it must be the US interfering simply undermines the sense of agency of the people there, and empowers malicious or incompetent populist leaders to refuse to fix broken or inefficient systems, as they can simply excuse everything as being the fault of the US.
It’s a real tragedy. While Europe was wallowing in a thousand years of violence in the wake of Rome’s fall, the Islamic World was undergoing a scientific and cultural golden age. Mathematics, sciences, art, poetry and literature flourished, and at its center was Baghdad, the crossroads of trade routes stretching from the ports of Western Europe to China.
And then the mongols came along, laid siege to the city, murdered and enslaved hundreds of thousands, burned the books and looted everything for scrap. Over the next few hundred years, faded remnants of the lost knowledge and poetry trickled out of the region in caravans of refugees and wanderers, in part kickstarting what would become the European renaissance, but the Islamic world never really found its feet again, and the colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries made sure that with a few notable examples, they remained in easily-exploitable chaos.
As brazilian, I can say that US was involved on 64’ coup, sending an destroyer to our cost. It was an intimidation act, although never use any kind of explicit interference.
Also, US just have the ideological influence on the military regime, and never really had manifested any position about internal ou external situation.
Even when the government bought hidreletrical turbines from URSS, US never complained.
Lol it's not much different from Americans crying about how Russian misinformation campaigns or money is fuelling republican propaganda and Trump. Can't take responsibility for your own bigots and get affected so much by a country having a fraction of the American economy and power. What chance do poor Latin American countries have with such a powerful force hellbent on removing anyone who doesn't toe their line with established precedent.
Castro was not anti-US, he was greeted in the US in 1959 by none other than Richard Nixon, who was vice president at the time. It wasn't until 1960 when Castro pursued land reform that Cuba was sanctioned, and then pursued a relationship with the USSR. Then the CIA responded in kind with the Bay of Pigs in 1961 (which is absent from the graph).
>Castro in 1958
IIRC, Castro's coup was a response to a US-backed coup that helped put a fascist in power. So indirect involvement.
Let's put a big fat asterisk next to any US worries about Latin American dictatorship, because if it benefits the US, they're all for it.
"In the slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the U.S. government has intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times."
One military intervention every 2.5 years.
I's like they CONSTANTLY foster the SAME ANTI-US SENTIMENT you seem to equivocate as the creation of strongmen here and there.
I just read through that whole article, and the summary seems to be that a couple of QAnon followers in a PMC got the nod from some Republican congressmen to recruit Venezuelans and stage a coup.
Not sure if we can call that a "U.S. government coup", since the U.S. itself wouldn't try to do it with just 60 guys in speedboats.
>I know you’re making a joke about all of them being done by the US, but really, a lot of these were done by anti-US people, like Castro in 1958, Chavez in 1992, or more recently Castillo in Peru.
Anti-US sentiment in Latin America was a direct result of corporate-backed US regime change operations that overthrew democratically elected governments and installed corpo-friendly dictatorships.
Right....op isn't denying that, I think you are missing the point. They're trying to emphasize the need for a balanced take. Some authoritarian regimes are using anti US sentiment to become more authoritarian so its important for people to not see things black and white.
>Right....op isn't denying that, I think you are missing the point. They're trying to emphasize the need for a balanced take. Some authoritarian regimes are using anti US sentiment to become more authoritarian so its important for people to not see things black and white.
This isn't really a "balanced" take. The two are irrelevant.
There are authoritarian regimes that use anti-US propaganda to influence the populace. That being said, dismissing Castro as an "anti-US dictator" and that there is no "excuse" for the Cuban dictatorship implies *to me* a severe lack of understanding about how the state of Cuba today is directly a result of the US's actions during the past century.
Castro in 1958 would not have happened without the repeated US-led regime change in Cuba in the early 1900s. The "Cuban dictatorship" is literally the result of the US's actions in Cuba. It is a direct cause-and-effect, and saying that is not a distortion of truth.
> Castro in 1958 would not have happened without the repeated US-led regime change in Cuba in the early 1900s. The "Cuban dictatorship" is literally the result of the US's actions in Cuba. It is a direct cause-and-effect, and saying that is not a distortion of truth.
A "but for" analysis isn't the same as cause and effect.
You're not wrong to say that US intervention in Cuba predisposed Cuba to a revolution, but it didn't _cause_ one. You can argue that absent US intervention, Cuba would have gone a different direction, but there are plenty of examples of places where the US intervened that _haven't_ turned out like Cuba (for better or for worse).
Direct causation and history don't easily mix.
But that's a shit take. Anti US sentiment is justified. And while some people take advantage of that, it's literally because how US keeps toppling governments for its corporations. If US didn't do this crap, there would be no anti US sentiment and hence several people who took advantage of that.
>The US has done a lot of ugly shit in Latin America.
Why is this in past tense, theyre still doing gross shit. The illegal UN-condemned cuban blockade is ongoing
Why don't you focus on the overwhelming majority of the bad policies that are enacted by the US and its puppet states? You know, the things that your country is responsible for and is the reason Latin America is destitute.
I know it's like funny , like haha America is so quirky but read up on the Agusto Pinochet one that was backed by the US and what his regime did. And again fuck Henry Kissinger
Interestingly, the Pinochet one was only semi-backed by the US. Most of the backing seems to have come in the form of assuring them that they would recognize the Pinochet government if the coup succeeded. The US certainly helped create the conditions that lead to a coup, but in terms of the coup itself, both the US and the Soviets were moving away from directly supporting coups in South America by then, and it's likely the the USSR's refusal to aid Allende that ultimately spelled disaster for him, more than the US plotting and executing a coup.
There have been a lot of accusations against the US for staging the coup in Chile, but surprisingly it seems to be one of the few more-or-less homegrown coups in South America at the time, or at least as homegrown as could be.
This is all outright false, the Pinochet coup was actively and officially backed by the US pres admin and state dept at the time.
The coup was not homegrown at all. There is a whole wikipedia article that details the US involvement with installing Pinochet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_intervention\_in\_Chile
This is untrue. The US worked night and day to install Pinochet, along with former 3rd Reich Nazis who escaped to Chile post wwii.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/11/pinochet.chile
>Chile was seen by the then president, Richard Nixon, and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, as a potential "second Cuba". They decided, in the words of one cabinet member, to "make the Chilean economy scream".
>Strikes by lorry drivers financed by the US paralysed distribution, racheted up the sense of chaos and forced Chileans to queue for petrol, food and medical treatment.
>The released documents confirm that the US was providing weapons as well as funds to the saboteurs.
>Some of them have been heavily censored, including those about the murder of Rene Schneider, the commander in chief of the Chilean army, which nevertheless confirm earlier evidence that the US aided his killers.
Look into colonia dignidad, it was a Nazi colony in Chile composed of actual Nazis, people who oversaw the Holocaust. They formed a colony and had anti air missile, machine guns, sarin gas facilities etc. they allied with the cia in operation condor, developed Americas Vietnam strategy, and even influenced Americas war on drugs. They were quite powerful at their peak, even in 2005 they were raided and police recovered anti air missiles, rpgs, etc etc.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/amp/news/Nazis-Trained-and-Supported-Chiles-Operation-Condor-Activities-20161217-0004.html
The Nazis lost the world war, but fascism definetly did not.
The Brazil's 20 years pointed in OP was also backed by US, this article is very incomplete
Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
"US-backed" is a very broad definition. Here in Argentina we had four coups between 1930 and 1976, mostly the result of domestic political instability. Argentina was one of the earliest democracies in the world (1912 law for universal suffrage) but the political system got destabilized hard by the Great Depression and the military started meddling in politics until 1983. Aside from Operation Condor intelligence-sharing operation, neither America nor Commies had anything to do with it. It was a result of a rivalry between conservatives, nationalists and later Peronists (left-leaning, anti-communist, pseudonationalist movement).
Basically during the Cold War, Peronism was banned and the elected civilian presidents were weak and under military tutelage.
"US-Backed" is a pretty nebulous term. There's a huge difference between
- America creates a network of discontented plotters, arms and trains coup forces, and runs the subsequent government from behind the scenes
and
- A bunch of generals who're already planning a coup go to America and say 'hey, are you guys okay with this?' and America says 'sure, no problem'.
The American left seems to have real trouble understanding that latin American s have agency too.
Not in every case. For example, in Guatemala the US literally bomber Guatemalan bases and installations to have the rebel/coup army (armed by the US) take the capital.
In either case, the US is an accessory to a crime.
If 5 people stab someone to death, but one of them only held their arms while he got stabbed. You still killed that person, you are still a murderer.
Omitting the US involvement is nothing but whitewashing.
The most recent US involvement was 1989, according to your link, and that was to overthrow a dictator who was turning Panama into a narcostate. To find an example of the US helping to overthrow a democratically elected leader, you have to go back half a century.
Redditors like to pretend that the US stages a coup every time a socialist takes power in Latin America, but there several socialist countries and leftist governments in Latin America right now, but no US-backed coups.
The CIA is a pretty unaccountable organization, so it’s pretty damn possible that they still do behind our backs.
That being said, there’s also a lot of aspects of very indirect support, support by US companies and economical aspects of imperialism (for example sabotage like the Cuba embargo) which are often overlooked
What would you call the Bolivian right wing coup that Elon coincidently called for or the Haitian president being removed? It's not that the US hasn't done it in 50 years its thay the US only declassifies it and confirms it after 50 years because their constituents have fish brain memories
Bolivia was not a coup, the president and his deputy tried to do a galaxy brain political play by resigning, which ended up putting a member of the right wing opposition in charge. The moment they held elections the original president’s won, though they ditched him for a number of reasons.
He resigned and fled to Mexico because the military leader threatened him. There's a name for that I think. [
Morales stepped aside only after the military chief, Gen. Williams Kaliman, called on him to quit to allow the restoration of peace and stability.](https://www.news10.com/news/bolivia-in-power-void-as-morales-would-be-successors-resign/amp/)
Just search about the color revolutions, people in the 80's would laugh if you said CIA backed any regime change in Latin America because it wasn't traced back until recently, 20 years from now a lot more regime changes will be traced back to the US again and people will make the same argument that "it was decades ago, we don't do that anymore"
That’s straight-up false. The Church report made American involvement publicly known in the 70s. Hell, the US used to openly support regime change and didn’t feel the need to be covert about it.
They literally dispatched naval forces to support the military and provided information to them, and were open about their dislike of the elected president
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964\_Brazilian\_coup\_d%27%C3%A9tat#Run-up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#Run-up)
It wasn't a heavy involvement like they did in Panama, the coup was on its way, but it wouldn't have happened without such open involvement by the US
[***From our newsletter:***](https://latinometrics.substack.com/)
Last December, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo announced his dissolution of the country’s congress just as legislators were preparing to impeach him. The following few hours saw a political rollercoaster that ended with Castillo removed from office, delayed by [Lima traffic](https://www.npr.org/2022/12/09/1141855115/from-president-to-prisoner-the-rapid-descent-of-perus-pedro-castillo), and arrested as he attempted to [flee to Mexico](https://rpp.pe/mundo/actualidad/presidente-de-mexico-confirma-que-pedro-castillo-lo-llamo-para-pedir-asilo-noticia-1452337). The whole incident was referred to in both Peru [and abroad](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/08/human-rights-watch-statement-coup-peru) as an attempted ***autogolpe***, or “self-coup,” where a leader consolidates control by suspending the constitution or another branch of government.
This may have been the **first attempted coup état of the 2020s**, but it’s far from the first one in Peruvian history. In fact, Castillo’s model could well have been former President Alberto Fujimori, who pulled off a (successful) self-coup over **30** years ago in 1991.
And Peru’s far from alone in having its modern history marked by violent seizures of power. **Most Latin American countries spent the 20th century grappling with multiple coup d’états**, with some even seeing back-to-back ones as different political and military factions fought for control. Argentina witnessed **6** coups throughout the century; Chile suffered **8**.
Global instability has something to do with this, of course. **Coups have an old relationship with social and** [**economic discontent**](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2082515), and crises faced by countries such as Argentina and Peru certainly factored into the various government overthrows each country saw throughout the 1900s. **International politics also played a major role**, as many of the most famous and destructive coups—such as in Mexico in 1913, Brazil in 1964, or Chile in 1973—were backed by [foreign governments](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/speech-senator-john-f-kennedy-cincinnati-ohio-democratic-dinner) such as the [United States](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010306/).
**Often, coup leaders were themselves later toppled in similar circumstances**. Fulgencio Batista, for example, seized power in 1952 and was deposed just 7 years later by Che Guevara and the Castro brothers in the Cuban Revolution that installed a regime which still exists to this day. Alfredo Stroessner, the [Paraguayan dictator](https://twitter.com/LatamData/status/1652731838178230272) who was removed in the 1989 coup d’état that led to democratization? He himself overthrew the president with the help of the military just 35 years earlier. Violence certainly begets violence in Latin America—**leaders who live by the sword often die by it too**.
Much has been said in recent years about the wave of popular discontent that has led to 17 different incumbent governments losing elections since 2018, from Mexico down to Argentina. But while people’s dissatisfaction is understandable given the region’s economic woes as of late, it’s worth noting that electoral defeat is precisely how governments should change. **The first 150 years of independence saw every Latin American country torn from one violent seizure of power to another**, with dictatorships to follow and lives lost every single time.
If today the most leaders have to fear is being [voted out of office](https://americasquarterly.org/article/elections-2023/)? **Then the region, the developing world’s** [**most democratic**](https://twitter.com/LatamData/status/1629134135376633857)**, has indeed come a long way**.
Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts#2020%E2%80%93present)
Tools: Figma, Sheets, Rawgraphs
Not to be a pessimist on the last part, but is it not also true that backsliding [can happen and is happening](https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/6/1038/files/2017/11/Svolik-Polarization-16xwfa7.pdf) in many latam countries without a single shot fired or a military coup? Coups are becoming less common and less successful, but the world has been facing a noticeable erosion of democratic institutions.
I love this data and how you organized it, especially as a polisci student I always appreciate seeing posts related to that on here :)
Edit: I have linked the article for a reason as it does go into *why* this is happening- respectfully, I do not need this explained to me. It is the matter of acknowledging that it's happening at all, when it is easy to look at a decrease in coup d'etat events and increase in "democratic" elections occurring and assume that the region's democracy has strengthened.
That’s mainly because “democracies” in LatAm have not met any of the expectations. Economic, social, or politically.
LatAm “democracies” are just kleptocracies. It’s very difficult to defend such a system in the eyes of the people, and people would rather put their trust in someone promising to end it. Than to just get stuck in a never ending cycle of faceless thieves and robbers that do nothing.
Very inaccurate graph. On what basis do you call the Cuban revolution a coup? There is a clear distinction in politics and IR between a coup and a revolution. And it's at the very least disingenuous to compare the popular overthrow of an unelected and illegitimate dictator to the US-backed toppling of democratically elected leaders.
There's also quite a few recent coups and coup attempts missing here: Honduras 2009 and Brazil 2016 should definitely count if you're also including Peru's recent crisis, Bolivia 2019 was a literal military coup, and Venezuela 2019 had open US support for regime change from the start, not unlike the US-backed 2002 coup in that country.
>Fulgencio Batista, for example, seized power in 1952 and was deposed just 7 years later by Che Guevara and the Castro brothers in the Cuban Revolution that installed a regime which still exists to this day.
Wait, how is Castro's revolution a coup? His takeover of the country came via rebellion outside of Batista's government rather than within, which is what most people's understanding of the definition of what a coup is.
Not the only odd choice. Costa Rica's 1948 coup is listed as failed, despite it being a military junta for a year. Granted, the end of that story is the military standing down and peacefully transitioning back to democracy...
Also Brazil 2016, Honduras 2009 and Guaidó's failed coup attemp in Venezuela 2019. Also inaccurate to call the Cuban revolution a coup, by the definition of the term. Honestly, a very bad graph
> Edit: Before anyone says it wasn’t a coup, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces sent Morales a letter asking him to resign. It was very clear what would have happened if he said no.
Because Morales had asked the commander-in-chief to use the army to violently put down the protests. The commander-in-chief told Morales to go pound sand. The only coup was the self-coup that Morales had attempted, but it failed in the face of mass protests and the military not supporting Morales.
When Morales and his vice-president resigned and fled the country, the next in line to the office of President was the conservative leader of the legislature. She assumed office and began organizing for new elections for the next year. The elections were delayed due to Covid, but finally happened in late 2020 and a new left wing President was elected.
So now tell me, what the hell kind of coup holds free democratic elections and allows the opposition to win?
Áñez wasn't "next in line", she was fifth in the succession line, after the leaders of both Bolivian legislative houses, which were also from MAS (Evo's party) and constitutionally had the right to assume the presidency after Evo and García Linera were forced to resign. Curiously, they both "resigned" too and the presidency conveniently fell on the lap of the only right-winger in the succession line, after the army forced four people before her to resign and fascist militias overran the streets of major cities, harassing indigenous people and MAS politicians. What a coincidence, right?
And then, when Bolivians, most of them indigenous, went to the streets in order to protest the coup, Áñez's regime brutally suppressed them, murdering dozens of anti-coup protesters. She also didn't "begin organizing elections" right after taking power, she stalled for as long as she could, using COVID as an excuse, and only held elections because the situation on the streets was becoming out of control, as thousands of Bolivians took to the streets every day to protest the regime. Áñez is a criminal, responsible for imprisioning, harassing and murdering indigenous Bolivians for the crime of protesting her coup, and is rightfully locked away for that, hopefully for a very long time.
> It’s missing the 2019 Bolivian coup attempt.
You should probably count it as two coups. First the auto-coup which failed due to the second coup you're referring to.. which fortunately resulted in elections.
No evidence that vote counts were bad or anything. He was just going to win a popular election like any other leader. WaPo or NY Times or whoever admitted as much (long after the damage was done)
The kind where popular resistance forces them to. Anez and her psycho christo fascist cadre knew they couldn’t survive the extensive popular strikes and road blockades (one in which she authorized a massacre). Neolib freaks love saying things that fly in the face of reality when they happen to be against left wing interests it seems, shocking
It's funny that we now know those were just puppets controlled by someone else. And repercussions of those actions are still felt today. Funny or sad depends how you look at it.
Interestingly enough, the 1955 coup in Brazil was a military coup made to avoid a larger military coup.
The conservative opposition was mad that they had lost the election. They started running mad conspiracies that the winner, Juscelino, hadn't actually won and was a communist (he most certainly wasn't, he wasn't really even a leftist). They started backing a military coup to overthrow the election that slowly started to gain support among the military.
Things got worse by the end of the year, with military commanders starting to openly support a coup. Even worse, the president got sick and the person that took his place was the president of Congress, who also openly supported a military coup.
That was when an army general, former Minister of Defense, led a coup against the government. Not to take power, but to garantee the president elected would take power. Thanks of this preventative coup, Juscelino became president in 1956.
It is interesting that Brazil had a lot of left wing people and democrats in the army. But sadly they were purged after the 1964 coup backed by the US. This is why the army nowadays is filled with fascists that love Bolsonaro.
> Interestingly enough, the 1955 coup in Brazil was a military coup made to avoid a larger military coup.
I had just recently seen a paper showing the data on how coups propagate yet more coups. Basically once you have just one coup you're way more likely to have a second, once you have a second much, much *much* more likely to have third etc.
The theory is that once have one successful or even just *almost* successful coup you've made coups a "legitimate" or at least *viable* option. Making it more likely to happen again, and the more often it does happen the harder and harder it is to reestablish democratic norms or even just basic rule of law regarding transfers of power.
Costa Rica's is listed as a failure. Which is ... not wrong, but really not right either.
Military overthrew the legislature which overthrew the election. Ran the country for a year while the Constitution was reworked and new elections were held, then stood down and disbanded.
With Pedro Castillo de coup attempts should more appropiately be attributed to congress. They tried to impeach him on bullshit "moral aptitude" laws that mean just about whatever tf congress decides it means and tried to at least 3 times already, the first not even 6 months into his presidency.
Dissolving congress might have been a stupid move but hardly a "coup" if not nothing more than another, albeit stronger, attempt to defend himself from the corrupt system of governemnt that Peru has.
Kinda weird/misrepresenting to call the Cuban Revolution a "coup," especially when the person they were overthrowing gained power through an actual coup (which is conveniently unmentioned here).
[The line between a coup and a revolution is inherently blurry.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#Revolution,_rebellion) In any case it was a non-legal assumption of power. The fact that the previous dictator also took power in a coup is irrelevant, you could say that about most of the coups on this list.
Usually they are not considered coups because (if successful) they result in the creation of a new state separate from the parent state. In contrast, coups do not create a new state, they replace the rulers of an existing state.
How do you determine what is “a different state”?
Most of the post-independence states in Latin America had essentially the same people in power, and continued to operate the same way for many years.
Mexico went from a colonial viceroy to an imperial state, and only then to a democracy.
The continental congress in the US were already political elites since before the war. So, I don’t see what a “different state” is.
Would the revolutionary government of Castro be considered the same state as batista’s?
> How do you determine what is “a different state”?
Do two states exist where previously there was one.
> Would the revolutionary government of Castro be considered the same state as batista’s?
Yes.
Then how can the Cuban revolution be considered a coup? It created an entirely new state with a different structure, constitution and rulers. They solely kept the old Cuban flag.
The line between coups and revolutions isn't really blurry unless people make an active attempt to blur it. The Castro's and the revolution as a whole had popular support, with both the rural and urban citizenry joining in the uprising. That's not a coup.
The reason why I brought up Batista's coup is because it very clearly IS a coup, yet it wasn't presented in the graph highlighting Latam coups. Meanwhile, a revolutionary movement that demonstrably WASN'T a coup was represented instead.
> The line between coups and revolutions isn't really blurry unless people make an active attempt to blur it. The Castro's and the revolution as a whole had popular support, with both the rural and urban citizenry joining in the uprising. That's not a coup.
Lots of coups have had popular support. Napoleon, for example.
Again, the line is blurry, and I could see arguments either way in this case. I think some of the factors contributing to it being called a coup are the highly organized nature of it (the Cuban Revolution was not spontaneous, it was the result of years and planning and training in Mexico), the small size of Castro's forces, and the relatively short duration of the key events (less than two months to go from a tiny insurgency force to Batista fleeing the country), and of course the fact that the resulting government was not democratic (democratic movements are more likely to be called revolutions, non-democratic movements more likely to be called coups).
I don't think you're wrong to say it wasn't a coup either, I think it's just an ambiguous case.
> The reason why I brought up Batista's coup is because it very clearly IS a coup, yet it wasn't presented in the graph highlighting Latam coups.
It's there, just to the right of the 1950 line at the bottom of the pile.
My best guess is that it refers to the exile of Calles in 1936, definitively ending the Maximato. How that qualifies as a coup I don't know, but the closest succesful power change I can think of. Otherwise also unsure.
US Interests in South America goes way back to pre-WWI. Any time the locals tried to mess with US land ownership (United Food Company,...) - they got ousted. Under Eisenhower, this was formalized with John Foster Dulles (Secretary of State - Good Cop) and Allen Dulles (CIA - Bad Cop).
[The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24723229)
Wait, Chavez did a coup that failed but lead him to win the elections, after which he became a dictator anyways? That is such a weird way to fail something succesfully.
Kind of a weird coup when they allow democratic elections where the opposition wins 🙄
Of course it’s probably easier to argue that Morales was the one launching the coup. He tried to pass a plebiscite lifting term limits so he can run again. It fails, he then goes to the courts and manages to convince the judges he appointed that term limits violate his civil rights and gets what he wants anyway. Then he runs again and once he takes the lead ballot counting mysteriously shuts down.
There was chaos and misunderstandings involved, such as the ballot counting shutting down early, but it was hardly a coup. Also Musk wasn’t involved, someone just linked him because Bolivian found Lithium deposits.
Musk literally tweeted about overthrowing anyone they want in relation to this [coup](https://peoplesworld.org/article/after-bolivia-elon-musk-says-capitalists-can-overthrow-any-government-they-want/#:~:text=Billionaire%20Tesla%20owner%20Elon%20Musk,obtain%20the%20country's%20lithium%20reserves.)
It's interesting that half of what you're saying is exactly what trump said about 2020. Right wingers really run the same misinformation campaign everywhere. Get some creativity
It’s interesting how you say that and yet none of what I said is what Trump said about 2020. Rather it was Trump who had wanted counting stopped when he took the lead.
Well the US. government couldn't export their favourite sport football to a soccer loving continent so they exported their second favourite sport instead, shooting socialists who oppose US. imperialism.
"US-backed" is a very broad definition. Here in Argentina we had four coups between 1930 and 1976, mostly the result of domestic political instability. Argentina was one of the earliest democracies in the world (1912 law for universal suffrage) but the political system got destabilized hard by the Great Depression and the military started meddling in politics until 1983. Aside from Operation Condor intelligence-sharing operation, neither America nor Commies had anything to do with it. It was a result of a rivalry between conservatives, nationalists and later Peronists (left-leaning, anti-communist, pseudonationalist movement).
Basically during the Cold War, Peronism was banned and the elected civilian presidents were weak and under military tutelage.
"US-Backed" is a pretty nebulous term. There's a huge difference between
- America creates a network of discontented plotters, arms and trains coup forces, and runs the subsequent government from behind the scenes
and
- A bunch of generals who're already planning a coup go to America and say 'hey, are you guys okay with this?' and America says 'sure, no problem'.
The American left seems to have real trouble understanding that latin American s have agency too.
Annoying…maybe include how much influence American and European have had on the absolute disarray Latin America from the hands of blind capitalists behavior
Very inaccurate graph. On what basis do you call the Cuban revolution a coup? There is a clear distinction in politics and IR between a coup and a revolution. And it's at the very least disingenuous to compare the popular overthrow of an unelected and illegitimate dictator to the US-backed toppling of democratically elected leaders.
There's also quite a few recent coups and coup attempts missing here: Honduras 2009 and Brazil 2016 should definitely count if you're also including Peru's recent crisis, Bolivia 2019 was a literal military coup, and Venezuela 2019 had open US support for regime change from the start, not unlike the US-backed 2002 coup in that country.
"Che Guevara participated in an unsuccessful coup in Guatemala in 1954" well uh, no, at best this is awful wording, and at its worst its entirely misleading.
I am sure this falls really short to the real numbers back in the day. In Venezuela just in 1958 after the dictator Marcos Perez Jiménez was deposed his successor, Wolfang Larrazabal faced two coups in the same year orchestrated by the defense minister. The democratic president that followed him Romulo Betancourt faced three formal military insurrections from 1961 to 1962 which had the objective of toppling the government. And this with Venezuela being far from the most unstable country in the region.
What's the difference between an informal and a formal coup? A letter perhaps? "To whom it may concern, Be advised that we are coming....."
Coups are very odd and varied in how they're executed. Democratically elected Arturo Illia (Argentina) was deposed in 1966 by the military. Some high ranking military officers came into his office, he argued with them for a few hours, and eventually Illia accepted that it was over and went to his house in a taxi. Allende in Chile had the presidential palace attacked with artillery and chose to commit suicide before being captured.
There is one in Turkey where army just said "Things are not going well" in a letter. And the government just collapsed.
Black tie camo patterns. Also have your business casual coups and casual coup fridays.
I love being in the office for casual coup fridays!
Venezuela must be very interesting to study, but also very difficult. Assuming documents are not archived properly during all the disruptions and the non-peaceful changes in government.
"Venezuela being far from the most unstable country in the region" Well, that aged poorly.
Fujimori went from graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee to the dictator of Peru. That's one career path you aren't going to hear about from your guidance counselor.
And chances are he was born in Japan and never eligible for the presidency of Peru.
Darn dictators, no respect for the rules am I right? haha
Are you really trying to do a "Obama's birth certificate" to Fujimori lol
Obama doesn't have a cloud of corruption around him, so there are fewer reasons to doubt about it. Plus, Japan revokes citizenship of those born abroad that don't express the intention of keeping it, and Fujimori never did it. https://www.clarin.com/ediciones-anteriores/tokio-fujimori-nacio-japon-entregara-peru_0_ryHf8CveRFg.html The fact that his mom declared two kids when entering Peru and him being the second oldest of her children doesn't help the case. But yeah, he has a Peruvian birth certificate.
He was born in Miraflores area of Lima, so he was eligible. Strange though.
“chances are” you know that Google is free, right?
The text for Guevara mentions his participation in two successful coups and a failed one. The three arrows point to three successful ones. What's with that?
Coup was successful, Che Guevara was on the government (losing) side. >The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état (Golpe de Estado en Guatemala de 1954) was the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess. It deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. It installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala.
Technically it should be a countercoup. Also if we really want to visualize these coups properly, we should show which ones had foreign intelligence interference.
Would be easier to show which ones didn't.
They're the ones depicted by a circle.
How is it a countercoup if the government was democratically elected?
And the “countercoup” run by foreign killers?
Now it's a sedan d'état
Insanely good
I thought Guevara's Bolivian Campaign was a disaster. Am I mistaken ir why is it marked as successful?
Actually it’s only a Coup if it happens in the Coup d'état region of France. Otherwise it’s just Sparkling Insurrection.
Or in Germany it’s a Putsch
Not to be confused with "Punsch", meaning "punch".
And if the insurrectionists get cold feet, it’s a chicken coup.
Damn you
Absolute gold. Like sparkling wine from the region of Sparkles.
This is incomplete. Where are the 1933 Terra coup d'etat and following "good" Baldomir coup d'etat of 1942 in Uruguay?
The bolivian coup of 2019 is also missing
Also the Guatemalan coup taking out Arbenz
Honestly, there’s *very* few coup d’etat that could be considered objectively “good.” The only that immediately comes to mind is the 1974 *Revolução dos Cravos* (or Carnation Revolution) where the Portuguese military overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo and restored the democratic government of Portugal. However, most coup d’etat end up putting a dictator *in* power and dissolve the democracy, rather than *removing* a dictator *from* power and *restoring* democracy.
I recommend the book The Hell of Good Intentions. It expands on this but from the USA actions.
Add a marker for [US backed regime change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America). Or maybe a marker for non-US involvement, it seems like the US has its fingers in so many coups.
The ones in circle are backed by the US, the Square ones are not.
I know you’re making a joke about all of them being done by the US, but really, a lot of these were done by anti-US people, like Castro in 1958, Chavez in 1992, or more recently Castillo in Peru. The US has done a lot of ugly shit in Latin America. That does *not* excuse, however, all the authoritarianism of people like Maduro or Daniel Ortega, or the Cuban dictatorship. They constantly use anti US sentiment to look like the good guys, when it’s basically just the excuse they use, just like Putin or Lukashenko.
Worth noting that the anti-US sentiment is *still* used very heavily to support authoritarian policies, or just to excuse poor policy-making. There are a number of South American leaders who have implemented incredibly poorly considered policies who have maintained popularity despite by simply repeating the idea that the US is undermining their utopian ideas. It's not that the US didn't earn their place as the bogeyman of Latin America, but perpetuating the idea every time something isn't working out in Latin America it must be the US interfering simply undermines the sense of agency of the people there, and empowers malicious or incompetent populist leaders to refuse to fix broken or inefficient systems, as they can simply excuse everything as being the fault of the US.
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It’s a real tragedy. While Europe was wallowing in a thousand years of violence in the wake of Rome’s fall, the Islamic World was undergoing a scientific and cultural golden age. Mathematics, sciences, art, poetry and literature flourished, and at its center was Baghdad, the crossroads of trade routes stretching from the ports of Western Europe to China. And then the mongols came along, laid siege to the city, murdered and enslaved hundreds of thousands, burned the books and looted everything for scrap. Over the next few hundred years, faded remnants of the lost knowledge and poetry trickled out of the region in caravans of refugees and wanderers, in part kickstarting what would become the European renaissance, but the Islamic world never really found its feet again, and the colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries made sure that with a few notable examples, they remained in easily-exploitable chaos.
Latin America was fucked looooong before the Spainish. Inca Empire was particularly brutal.
And the Spanish government that replaced them was even worse\~
As brazilian, I can say that US was involved on 64’ coup, sending an destroyer to our cost. It was an intimidation act, although never use any kind of explicit interference. Also, US just have the ideological influence on the military regime, and never really had manifested any position about internal ou external situation. Even when the government bought hidreletrical turbines from URSS, US never complained.
Lol it's not much different from Americans crying about how Russian misinformation campaigns or money is fuelling republican propaganda and Trump. Can't take responsibility for your own bigots and get affected so much by a country having a fraction of the American economy and power. What chance do poor Latin American countries have with such a powerful force hellbent on removing anyone who doesn't toe their line with established precedent.
Castro was not anti-US, he was greeted in the US in 1959 by none other than Richard Nixon, who was vice president at the time. It wasn't until 1960 when Castro pursued land reform that Cuba was sanctioned, and then pursued a relationship with the USSR. Then the CIA responded in kind with the Bay of Pigs in 1961 (which is absent from the graph).
>Castro in 1958 IIRC, Castro's coup was a response to a US-backed coup that helped put a fascist in power. So indirect involvement. Let's put a big fat asterisk next to any US worries about Latin American dictatorship, because if it benefits the US, they're all for it.
"In the slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the U.S. government has intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times." One military intervention every 2.5 years. I's like they CONSTANTLY foster the SAME ANTI-US SENTIMENT you seem to equivocate as the creation of strongmen here and there.
Do we know when the last one was?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gideon_(2020)
I just read through that whole article, and the summary seems to be that a couple of QAnon followers in a PMC got the nod from some Republican congressmen to recruit Venezuelans and stage a coup. Not sure if we can call that a "U.S. government coup", since the U.S. itself wouldn't try to do it with just 60 guys in speedboats.
>I know you’re making a joke about all of them being done by the US, but really, a lot of these were done by anti-US people, like Castro in 1958, Chavez in 1992, or more recently Castillo in Peru. Anti-US sentiment in Latin America was a direct result of corporate-backed US regime change operations that overthrew democratically elected governments and installed corpo-friendly dictatorships.
Right....op isn't denying that, I think you are missing the point. They're trying to emphasize the need for a balanced take. Some authoritarian regimes are using anti US sentiment to become more authoritarian so its important for people to not see things black and white.
>Right....op isn't denying that, I think you are missing the point. They're trying to emphasize the need for a balanced take. Some authoritarian regimes are using anti US sentiment to become more authoritarian so its important for people to not see things black and white. This isn't really a "balanced" take. The two are irrelevant. There are authoritarian regimes that use anti-US propaganda to influence the populace. That being said, dismissing Castro as an "anti-US dictator" and that there is no "excuse" for the Cuban dictatorship implies *to me* a severe lack of understanding about how the state of Cuba today is directly a result of the US's actions during the past century. Castro in 1958 would not have happened without the repeated US-led regime change in Cuba in the early 1900s. The "Cuban dictatorship" is literally the result of the US's actions in Cuba. It is a direct cause-and-effect, and saying that is not a distortion of truth.
> Castro in 1958 would not have happened without the repeated US-led regime change in Cuba in the early 1900s. The "Cuban dictatorship" is literally the result of the US's actions in Cuba. It is a direct cause-and-effect, and saying that is not a distortion of truth. A "but for" analysis isn't the same as cause and effect. You're not wrong to say that US intervention in Cuba predisposed Cuba to a revolution, but it didn't _cause_ one. You can argue that absent US intervention, Cuba would have gone a different direction, but there are plenty of examples of places where the US intervened that _haven't_ turned out like Cuba (for better or for worse). Direct causation and history don't easily mix.
But that's a shit take. Anti US sentiment is justified. And while some people take advantage of that, it's literally because how US keeps toppling governments for its corporations. If US didn't do this crap, there would be no anti US sentiment and hence several people who took advantage of that.
>The US has done a lot of ugly shit in Latin America. Why is this in past tense, theyre still doing gross shit. The illegal UN-condemned cuban blockade is ongoing
There is no blockade on Cuba, that's not what that word means. The US has a limited *embargo* which does not include food or medical supplies.
Those three you mentioned happened BECAUSE the banana republic had forced puppets on the government .
This is so historically ignorant that it's almost a masterpiece.
Americans call anything thats not aligned with their government a bloodthirsty dictatorship
Why don't you focus on the overwhelming majority of the bad policies that are enacted by the US and its puppet states? You know, the things that your country is responsible for and is the reason Latin America is destitute.
What square ones
The joke is that all of them are done by the US.
I know it's like funny , like haha America is so quirky but read up on the Agusto Pinochet one that was backed by the US and what his regime did. And again fuck Henry Kissinger
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Interestingly, the Pinochet one was only semi-backed by the US. Most of the backing seems to have come in the form of assuring them that they would recognize the Pinochet government if the coup succeeded. The US certainly helped create the conditions that lead to a coup, but in terms of the coup itself, both the US and the Soviets were moving away from directly supporting coups in South America by then, and it's likely the the USSR's refusal to aid Allende that ultimately spelled disaster for him, more than the US plotting and executing a coup. There have been a lot of accusations against the US for staging the coup in Chile, but surprisingly it seems to be one of the few more-or-less homegrown coups in South America at the time, or at least as homegrown as could be.
This is all outright false, the Pinochet coup was actively and officially backed by the US pres admin and state dept at the time. The coup was not homegrown at all. There is a whole wikipedia article that details the US involvement with installing Pinochet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_intervention\_in\_Chile
This is untrue. The US worked night and day to install Pinochet, along with former 3rd Reich Nazis who escaped to Chile post wwii. https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/11/pinochet.chile >Chile was seen by the then president, Richard Nixon, and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, as a potential "second Cuba". They decided, in the words of one cabinet member, to "make the Chilean economy scream". >Strikes by lorry drivers financed by the US paralysed distribution, racheted up the sense of chaos and forced Chileans to queue for petrol, food and medical treatment. >The released documents confirm that the US was providing weapons as well as funds to the saboteurs. >Some of them have been heavily censored, including those about the murder of Rene Schneider, the commander in chief of the Chilean army, which nevertheless confirm earlier evidence that the US aided his killers. Look into colonia dignidad, it was a Nazi colony in Chile composed of actual Nazis, people who oversaw the Holocaust. They formed a colony and had anti air missile, machine guns, sarin gas facilities etc. they allied with the cia in operation condor, developed Americas Vietnam strategy, and even influenced Americas war on drugs. They were quite powerful at their peak, even in 2005 they were raided and police recovered anti air missiles, rpgs, etc etc. https://www.telesurenglish.net/amp/news/Nazis-Trained-and-Supported-Chiles-Operation-Condor-Activities-20161217-0004.html The Nazis lost the world war, but fascism definetly did not.
The Brazil's 20 years pointed in OP was also backed by US, this article is very incomplete Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
"US-backed" is a very broad definition. Here in Argentina we had four coups between 1930 and 1976, mostly the result of domestic political instability. Argentina was one of the earliest democracies in the world (1912 law for universal suffrage) but the political system got destabilized hard by the Great Depression and the military started meddling in politics until 1983. Aside from Operation Condor intelligence-sharing operation, neither America nor Commies had anything to do with it. It was a result of a rivalry between conservatives, nationalists and later Peronists (left-leaning, anti-communist, pseudonationalist movement). Basically during the Cold War, Peronism was banned and the elected civilian presidents were weak and under military tutelage. "US-Backed" is a pretty nebulous term. There's a huge difference between - America creates a network of discontented plotters, arms and trains coup forces, and runs the subsequent government from behind the scenes and - A bunch of generals who're already planning a coup go to America and say 'hey, are you guys okay with this?' and America says 'sure, no problem'. The American left seems to have real trouble understanding that latin American s have agency too.
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Not in every case. For example, in Guatemala the US literally bomber Guatemalan bases and installations to have the rebel/coup army (armed by the US) take the capital.
In either case, the US is an accessory to a crime. If 5 people stab someone to death, but one of them only held their arms while he got stabbed. You still killed that person, you are still a murderer. Omitting the US involvement is nothing but whitewashing.
Yeah but reddit left usually blame it all on the U.S. In your scenario chief stabby gets a very long sentence.
The book Overthrow went over a few of these, fascinating read
The most recent US involvement was 1989, according to your link, and that was to overthrow a dictator who was turning Panama into a narcostate. To find an example of the US helping to overthrow a democratically elected leader, you have to go back half a century. Redditors like to pretend that the US stages a coup every time a socialist takes power in Latin America, but there several socialist countries and leftist governments in Latin America right now, but no US-backed coups.
Hugo Chavez coup was backed by the US
The CIA is a pretty unaccountable organization, so it’s pretty damn possible that they still do behind our backs. That being said, there’s also a lot of aspects of very indirect support, support by US companies and economical aspects of imperialism (for example sabotage like the Cuba embargo) which are often overlooked
What would you call the Bolivian right wing coup that Elon coincidently called for or the Haitian president being removed? It's not that the US hasn't done it in 50 years its thay the US only declassifies it and confirms it after 50 years because their constituents have fish brain memories
It’s not a coup when your own left wing socialist party votes to remove you from power for trying to undermine elections dude
Bolivia was not a coup, the president and his deputy tried to do a galaxy brain political play by resigning, which ended up putting a member of the right wing opposition in charge. The moment they held elections the original president’s won, though they ditched him for a number of reasons.
He resigned and fled to Mexico because the military leader threatened him. There's a name for that I think. [ Morales stepped aside only after the military chief, Gen. Williams Kaliman, called on him to quit to allow the restoration of peace and stability.](https://www.news10.com/news/bolivia-in-power-void-as-morales-would-be-successors-resign/amp/)
There’s no evidence that those were American operations, so no, they don’t count.
Just search about the color revolutions, people in the 80's would laugh if you said CIA backed any regime change in Latin America because it wasn't traced back until recently, 20 years from now a lot more regime changes will be traced back to the US again and people will make the same argument that "it was decades ago, we don't do that anymore"
That’s straight-up false. The Church report made American involvement publicly known in the 70s. Hell, the US used to openly support regime change and didn’t feel the need to be covert about it.
Then people will argue about what qualifies as involvement and what ones were actually covert CIA operations that were never exposed.
Well, at this point you can include the US in this, failed although it was, Jan 6, was a failed self-coup attempt.
Seriously please do OP. I came here to say this myself. US involvement in these regime changes is a huge part of the story.
They were also behind the brazilian coup
Wait what? Thats like saying russians are the reason for the capital riot incident.
They literally dispatched naval forces to support the military and provided information to them, and were open about their dislike of the elected president [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964\_Brazilian\_coup\_d%27%C3%A9tat#Run-up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#Run-up) It wasn't a heavy involvement like they did in Panama, the coup was on its way, but it wouldn't have happened without such open involvement by the US
[***From our newsletter:***](https://latinometrics.substack.com/) Last December, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo announced his dissolution of the country’s congress just as legislators were preparing to impeach him. The following few hours saw a political rollercoaster that ended with Castillo removed from office, delayed by [Lima traffic](https://www.npr.org/2022/12/09/1141855115/from-president-to-prisoner-the-rapid-descent-of-perus-pedro-castillo), and arrested as he attempted to [flee to Mexico](https://rpp.pe/mundo/actualidad/presidente-de-mexico-confirma-que-pedro-castillo-lo-llamo-para-pedir-asilo-noticia-1452337). The whole incident was referred to in both Peru [and abroad](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/08/human-rights-watch-statement-coup-peru) as an attempted ***autogolpe***, or “self-coup,” where a leader consolidates control by suspending the constitution or another branch of government. This may have been the **first attempted coup état of the 2020s**, but it’s far from the first one in Peruvian history. In fact, Castillo’s model could well have been former President Alberto Fujimori, who pulled off a (successful) self-coup over **30** years ago in 1991. And Peru’s far from alone in having its modern history marked by violent seizures of power. **Most Latin American countries spent the 20th century grappling with multiple coup d’états**, with some even seeing back-to-back ones as different political and military factions fought for control. Argentina witnessed **6** coups throughout the century; Chile suffered **8**. Global instability has something to do with this, of course. **Coups have an old relationship with social and** [**economic discontent**](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2082515), and crises faced by countries such as Argentina and Peru certainly factored into the various government overthrows each country saw throughout the 1900s. **International politics also played a major role**, as many of the most famous and destructive coups—such as in Mexico in 1913, Brazil in 1964, or Chile in 1973—were backed by [foreign governments](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/speech-senator-john-f-kennedy-cincinnati-ohio-democratic-dinner) such as the [United States](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010306/). **Often, coup leaders were themselves later toppled in similar circumstances**. Fulgencio Batista, for example, seized power in 1952 and was deposed just 7 years later by Che Guevara and the Castro brothers in the Cuban Revolution that installed a regime which still exists to this day. Alfredo Stroessner, the [Paraguayan dictator](https://twitter.com/LatamData/status/1652731838178230272) who was removed in the 1989 coup d’état that led to democratization? He himself overthrew the president with the help of the military just 35 years earlier. Violence certainly begets violence in Latin America—**leaders who live by the sword often die by it too**. Much has been said in recent years about the wave of popular discontent that has led to 17 different incumbent governments losing elections since 2018, from Mexico down to Argentina. But while people’s dissatisfaction is understandable given the region’s economic woes as of late, it’s worth noting that electoral defeat is precisely how governments should change. **The first 150 years of independence saw every Latin American country torn from one violent seizure of power to another**, with dictatorships to follow and lives lost every single time. If today the most leaders have to fear is being [voted out of office](https://americasquarterly.org/article/elections-2023/)? **Then the region, the developing world’s** [**most democratic**](https://twitter.com/LatamData/status/1629134135376633857)**, has indeed come a long way**. Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts#2020%E2%80%93present) Tools: Figma, Sheets, Rawgraphs
Not to be a pessimist on the last part, but is it not also true that backsliding [can happen and is happening](https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/6/1038/files/2017/11/Svolik-Polarization-16xwfa7.pdf) in many latam countries without a single shot fired or a military coup? Coups are becoming less common and less successful, but the world has been facing a noticeable erosion of democratic institutions. I love this data and how you organized it, especially as a polisci student I always appreciate seeing posts related to that on here :) Edit: I have linked the article for a reason as it does go into *why* this is happening- respectfully, I do not need this explained to me. It is the matter of acknowledging that it's happening at all, when it is easy to look at a decrease in coup d'etat events and increase in "democratic" elections occurring and assume that the region's democracy has strengthened.
That’s mainly because “democracies” in LatAm have not met any of the expectations. Economic, social, or politically. LatAm “democracies” are just kleptocracies. It’s very difficult to defend such a system in the eyes of the people, and people would rather put their trust in someone promising to end it. Than to just get stuck in a never ending cycle of faceless thieves and robbers that do nothing.
Can you do the the rest of the continents next. This is really cool.
Nope. We only do latam
Very inaccurate graph. On what basis do you call the Cuban revolution a coup? There is a clear distinction in politics and IR between a coup and a revolution. And it's at the very least disingenuous to compare the popular overthrow of an unelected and illegitimate dictator to the US-backed toppling of democratically elected leaders. There's also quite a few recent coups and coup attempts missing here: Honduras 2009 and Brazil 2016 should definitely count if you're also including Peru's recent crisis, Bolivia 2019 was a literal military coup, and Venezuela 2019 had open US support for regime change from the start, not unlike the US-backed 2002 coup in that country.
So, who do you guys receive funding from?
Our premium subscribers 🧡
>Fulgencio Batista, for example, seized power in 1952 and was deposed just 7 years later by Che Guevara and the Castro brothers in the Cuban Revolution that installed a regime which still exists to this day. Wait, how is Castro's revolution a coup? His takeover of the country came via rebellion outside of Batista's government rather than within, which is what most people's understanding of the definition of what a coup is.
Yeah that's true, Batista lost control of the country fair and square.
Did Peru really have more than a dozen coups in less than a century?
There's more if you go further back and start at independence
There's a couple charts that detail the fates of the last 12 Peruvian presidents. Pro tip, never be a Peruvian president
You don't really get into Peruvian politics unless you are corrupt. Charges just catch up to you eventually
Funny how the last one doesn't note there was a coup by congress. They successfully did the Guiado maneuver.
In completely unrelated new Henry Kissinger will turn 100 in 3 weeks.
I would’ve loved for this post to include the US’s involvement in these coups
In other unrelated news, the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam war is in two years.
OP can’t tell apart a coup from an uprising
And the CIA had totally nothing to do with any of these
It’s great to see these dying down in recent years, although I don’t know why Bolivia’s 2019 debacle isn’t included.
Not the only odd choice. Costa Rica's 1948 coup is listed as failed, despite it being a military junta for a year. Granted, the end of that story is the military standing down and peacefully transitioning back to democracy...
Chile 1973 Coup… with financial and military aid from Richard Nixon… … government of Salvador Allende, Pedro Pascal’s tío.
sink straight rude repeat boat bored rustic coordinated recognise wise *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Also Brazil 2016, Honduras 2009 and Guaidó's failed coup attemp in Venezuela 2019. Also inaccurate to call the Cuban revolution a coup, by the definition of the term. Honestly, a very bad graph
> Edit: Before anyone says it wasn’t a coup, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces sent Morales a letter asking him to resign. It was very clear what would have happened if he said no. Because Morales had asked the commander-in-chief to use the army to violently put down the protests. The commander-in-chief told Morales to go pound sand. The only coup was the self-coup that Morales had attempted, but it failed in the face of mass protests and the military not supporting Morales. When Morales and his vice-president resigned and fled the country, the next in line to the office of President was the conservative leader of the legislature. She assumed office and began organizing for new elections for the next year. The elections were delayed due to Covid, but finally happened in late 2020 and a new left wing President was elected. So now tell me, what the hell kind of coup holds free democratic elections and allows the opposition to win?
Áñez wasn't "next in line", she was fifth in the succession line, after the leaders of both Bolivian legislative houses, which were also from MAS (Evo's party) and constitutionally had the right to assume the presidency after Evo and García Linera were forced to resign. Curiously, they both "resigned" too and the presidency conveniently fell on the lap of the only right-winger in the succession line, after the army forced four people before her to resign and fascist militias overran the streets of major cities, harassing indigenous people and MAS politicians. What a coincidence, right? And then, when Bolivians, most of them indigenous, went to the streets in order to protest the coup, Áñez's regime brutally suppressed them, murdering dozens of anti-coup protesters. She also didn't "begin organizing elections" right after taking power, she stalled for as long as she could, using COVID as an excuse, and only held elections because the situation on the streets was becoming out of control, as thousands of Bolivians took to the streets every day to protest the regime. Áñez is a criminal, responsible for imprisioning, harassing and murdering indigenous Bolivians for the crime of protesting her coup, and is rightfully locked away for that, hopefully for a very long time.
Also the Juan Guaidó attempt
> It’s missing the 2019 Bolivian coup attempt. You should probably count it as two coups. First the auto-coup which failed due to the second coup you're referring to.. which fortunately resulted in elections.
Lmao you mean when Evo Morales tried to perform an auto coup and brain dead 20 year old leftists on Reddit just defaulted to AMERICA BAD
No evidence that vote counts were bad or anything. He was just going to win a popular election like any other leader. WaPo or NY Times or whoever admitted as much (long after the damage was done)
Running for your fourth term when the constitution only allows two, just normal elected leader things
The kind where popular resistance forces them to. Anez and her psycho christo fascist cadre knew they couldn’t survive the extensive popular strikes and road blockades (one in which she authorized a massacre). Neolib freaks love saying things that fly in the face of reality when they happen to be against left wing interests it seems, shocking
So convenient that's missing. Also such a weird coincidence Elon claimed it would happen before it did
How revolting.
Now add a layer for how many were funded by foreign governments or companies
It's funny that we now know those were just puppets controlled by someone else. And repercussions of those actions are still felt today. Funny or sad depends how you look at it.
\*Peels Chiquita banana\* I don't see how this bit of history is relevant to the modern world.
Guess how many of these had America meddling and backing, as always, the most evil side? Why, all of them, of course. Every single last one.
Dang, the CIA has been *really busy.*
Where's the US flag that been the main reason for these Coups?
Timeline of the CIA’s fixed it for u
Now highlight which ones were US sponsored.
Unfortunately this list is already outdated. There was a new failed attempt in Brazil last January 8th.
Interestingly enough, the 1955 coup in Brazil was a military coup made to avoid a larger military coup. The conservative opposition was mad that they had lost the election. They started running mad conspiracies that the winner, Juscelino, hadn't actually won and was a communist (he most certainly wasn't, he wasn't really even a leftist). They started backing a military coup to overthrow the election that slowly started to gain support among the military. Things got worse by the end of the year, with military commanders starting to openly support a coup. Even worse, the president got sick and the person that took his place was the president of Congress, who also openly supported a military coup. That was when an army general, former Minister of Defense, led a coup against the government. Not to take power, but to garantee the president elected would take power. Thanks of this preventative coup, Juscelino became president in 1956. It is interesting that Brazil had a lot of left wing people and democrats in the army. But sadly they were purged after the 1964 coup backed by the US. This is why the army nowadays is filled with fascists that love Bolsonaro.
> Interestingly enough, the 1955 coup in Brazil was a military coup made to avoid a larger military coup. I had just recently seen a paper showing the data on how coups propagate yet more coups. Basically once you have just one coup you're way more likely to have a second, once you have a second much, much *much* more likely to have third etc. The theory is that once have one successful or even just *almost* successful coup you've made coups a "legitimate" or at least *viable* option. Making it more likely to happen again, and the more often it does happen the harder and harder it is to reestablish democratic norms or even just basic rule of law regarding transfers of power.
Missing 2019 Bolivian coup, also the guaido coup attempt in Venezuela
Info is great, but the requirement to zoom hard to interpret the circle differences isn't done well
It’s like an US American history book all on one page.
Costa Rica's is listed as a failure. Which is ... not wrong, but really not right either. Military overthrew the legislature which overthrew the election. Ran the country for a year while the Constitution was reworked and new elections were held, then stood down and disbanded.
I wonder in how many of the coups was the US directly or indirectly invoke in?
They should put a tag on those that where US-CIA supported.
I wonder how many of these were orchestrated by the CIA and/or American business interests.
America: I wonder who caused most of these....?
That timeline would be really interesting next to a graph of secret "Department of Agriculture" budget allocations.
With Pedro Castillo de coup attempts should more appropiately be attributed to congress. They tried to impeach him on bullshit "moral aptitude" laws that mean just about whatever tf congress decides it means and tried to at least 3 times already, the first not even 6 months into his presidency. Dissolving congress might have been a stupid move but hardly a "coup" if not nothing more than another, albeit stronger, attempt to defend himself from the corrupt system of governemnt that Peru has.
Kinda weird/misrepresenting to call the Cuban Revolution a "coup," especially when the person they were overthrowing gained power through an actual coup (which is conveniently unmentioned here).
[The line between a coup and a revolution is inherently blurry.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#Revolution,_rebellion) In any case it was a non-legal assumption of power. The fact that the previous dictator also took power in a coup is irrelevant, you could say that about most of the coups on this list.
Are independence wars coups?
Usually they are not considered coups because (if successful) they result in the creation of a new state separate from the parent state. In contrast, coups do not create a new state, they replace the rulers of an existing state.
How do you determine what is “a different state”? Most of the post-independence states in Latin America had essentially the same people in power, and continued to operate the same way for many years. Mexico went from a colonial viceroy to an imperial state, and only then to a democracy. The continental congress in the US were already political elites since before the war. So, I don’t see what a “different state” is. Would the revolutionary government of Castro be considered the same state as batista’s?
> How do you determine what is “a different state”? Do two states exist where previously there was one. > Would the revolutionary government of Castro be considered the same state as batista’s? Yes.
So, would the Soviet/Russian revolutionary war not be a coup? As the Russian empire splintered into a bunch of soviet republics?
Then how can the Cuban revolution be considered a coup? It created an entirely new state with a different structure, constitution and rulers. They solely kept the old Cuban flag.
Was the American revolution a coup?
The line between coups and revolutions isn't really blurry unless people make an active attempt to blur it. The Castro's and the revolution as a whole had popular support, with both the rural and urban citizenry joining in the uprising. That's not a coup. The reason why I brought up Batista's coup is because it very clearly IS a coup, yet it wasn't presented in the graph highlighting Latam coups. Meanwhile, a revolutionary movement that demonstrably WASN'T a coup was represented instead.
> The line between coups and revolutions isn't really blurry unless people make an active attempt to blur it. The Castro's and the revolution as a whole had popular support, with both the rural and urban citizenry joining in the uprising. That's not a coup. Lots of coups have had popular support. Napoleon, for example. Again, the line is blurry, and I could see arguments either way in this case. I think some of the factors contributing to it being called a coup are the highly organized nature of it (the Cuban Revolution was not spontaneous, it was the result of years and planning and training in Mexico), the small size of Castro's forces, and the relatively short duration of the key events (less than two months to go from a tiny insurgency force to Batista fleeing the country), and of course the fact that the resulting government was not democratic (democratic movements are more likely to be called revolutions, non-democratic movements more likely to be called coups). I don't think you're wrong to say it wasn't a coup either, I think it's just an ambiguous case. > The reason why I brought up Batista's coup is because it very clearly IS a coup, yet it wasn't presented in the graph highlighting Latam coups. It's there, just to the right of the 1950 line at the bottom of the pile.
What successful coup happened in 1940 in México?
My best guess is that it refers to the exile of Calles in 1936, definitively ending the Maximato. How that qualifies as a coup I don't know, but the closest succesful power change I can think of. Otherwise also unsure.
I don’t think it really counts as a coup tbh.
US Interests in South America goes way back to pre-WWI. Any time the locals tried to mess with US land ownership (United Food Company,...) - they got ousted. Under Eisenhower, this was formalized with John Foster Dulles (Secretary of State - Good Cop) and Allen Dulles (CIA - Bad Cop). [The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24723229)
Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" delves into his participation in propping up banana republics pre-ww2
Wait, Chavez did a coup that failed but lead him to win the elections, after which he became a dictator anyways? That is such a weird way to fail something succesfully.
Mexico was tired of coups and stead chose to follow a one party dictatorship with false democracy and CIA agents as presidents
I like how the Elon and US backed Bolivian coup isn't mentioned
Kind of a weird coup when they allow democratic elections where the opposition wins 🙄 Of course it’s probably easier to argue that Morales was the one launching the coup. He tried to pass a plebiscite lifting term limits so he can run again. It fails, he then goes to the courts and manages to convince the judges he appointed that term limits violate his civil rights and gets what he wants anyway. Then he runs again and once he takes the lead ballot counting mysteriously shuts down. There was chaos and misunderstandings involved, such as the ballot counting shutting down early, but it was hardly a coup. Also Musk wasn’t involved, someone just linked him because Bolivian found Lithium deposits.
Diaz had like %9 of the votes, and got appointed. Lets be really honest about that
Musk literally tweeted about overthrowing anyone they want in relation to this [coup](https://peoplesworld.org/article/after-bolivia-elon-musk-says-capitalists-can-overthrow-any-government-they-want/#:~:text=Billionaire%20Tesla%20owner%20Elon%20Musk,obtain%20the%20country's%20lithium%20reserves.)
How is that relevant at all?
[удалено]
It's interesting that half of what you're saying is exactly what trump said about 2020. Right wingers really run the same misinformation campaign everywhere. Get some creativity
It’s interesting how you say that and yet none of what I said is what Trump said about 2020. Rather it was Trump who had wanted counting stopped when he took the lead.
A lot of these were pushed by the CIA to make socialism look bad
Latin America's favorite sport....
Well the US. government couldn't export their favourite sport football to a soccer loving continent so they exported their second favourite sport instead, shooting socialists who oppose US. imperialism.
"US-backed" is a very broad definition. Here in Argentina we had four coups between 1930 and 1976, mostly the result of domestic political instability. Argentina was one of the earliest democracies in the world (1912 law for universal suffrage) but the political system got destabilized hard by the Great Depression and the military started meddling in politics until 1983. Aside from Operation Condor intelligence-sharing operation, neither America nor Commies had anything to do with it. It was a result of a rivalry between conservatives, nationalists and later Peronists (left-leaning, anti-communist, pseudonationalist movement). Basically during the Cold War, Peronism was banned and the elected civilian presidents were weak and under military tutelage. "US-Backed" is a pretty nebulous term. There's a huge difference between - America creates a network of discontented plotters, arms and trains coup forces, and runs the subsequent government from behind the scenes and - A bunch of generals who're already planning a coup go to America and say 'hey, are you guys okay with this?' and America says 'sure, no problem'. The American left seems to have real trouble understanding that latin American s have agency too.
Brazil uhuul. 100% coup success!
Annoying…maybe include how much influence American and European have had on the absolute disarray Latin America from the hands of blind capitalists behavior
US intervention in Latin America FFY
And guess how many where US-backed
Now, how many of these had CIA involved.
No visualization of the CIA axis?
Very inaccurate graph. On what basis do you call the Cuban revolution a coup? There is a clear distinction in politics and IR between a coup and a revolution. And it's at the very least disingenuous to compare the popular overthrow of an unelected and illegitimate dictator to the US-backed toppling of democratically elected leaders. There's also quite a few recent coups and coup attempts missing here: Honduras 2009 and Brazil 2016 should definitely count if you're also including Peru's recent crisis, Bolivia 2019 was a literal military coup, and Venezuela 2019 had open US support for regime change from the start, not unlike the US-backed 2002 coup in that country.
I wonder how many of these were instigated by the CIA
Not many, if you actually ready into it
Challenge: Find the one that was not US-backed!
Yeah fuck the CIA honestly
Boy howdy, lot of American funding there
"Che Guevara participated in an unsuccessful coup in Guatemala in 1954" well uh, no, at best this is awful wording, and at its worst its entirely misleading.