Coup Atlas Research Database
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16006091956AttemptedMilitary coup

Argentina, 1956 — military coup attempt

Argentina (ARG)South America, AmericasJune 9, 1956

Event Summary

On 9 to 10 June 1956 the retired General Juan Jose Valle led a Peronist military and civilian uprising against the anti-Peronist military government of President Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, whose Revolucion Libertadora had overthrown Juan Peron in September 1955. The rising, prepared as Aramburu's regime banned the Peronist Party, reversed Peron's reforms, and arrested union leaders, was to be signaled by a radio proclamation during a broadcast boxing match, but the government had penetrated the plot in advance and crushed it almost immediately, with only a handful of combat deaths. Aramburu declared martial law and answered with an exceptional wave of summary executions: between 9 and 12 June 1956 some 27 military and civilian participants were shot, including Valle himself at the National Penitentiary and a group of civilians killed extrajudicially in the Jose Leon Suarez massacre.

The severity earned the regime the name la Fusiladora and later motivated the Montoneros' 1970 assassination of Aramburu.

Researched Details

Researched

Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.

Target identified in Coup Atlas research: President Pedro Eugenio Aramburu survived the uprising unharmed; coup leader Juan Jose Valle was executed on 12 June 1956
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Pedro Eugenio Aramburu (military president of Argentina, target)
Juan Jose Valle (retired general, uprising leader, executed)
Raul Tanco (co-leader who escaped via asylum)

Sources

Valle headed a rebellion on 9 June 1956 against Aramburu's dictatorship, which quickly spread through the country but resulted in only seven combat fatalities.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, Juan Jose Valle open source ↗
Between June 9 and June 12, 1956, 27 civilians and military personnel were executed, some illegally during the Jose Leon Suarez massacre narrated in Rodolfo Walsh's Operacion Masacre, and the execution led some to name Aramburu's regime la Fusiladora.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, Juan Jose Valle open source ↗
The authorities had learned of the plot in advance and crushed it before it could gain momentum, executing Valle and rebel soldiers, with supporters across the country waiting in vain for a revolutionary proclamation to be broadcast over the radio during a boxing match.
SOURCE REVIEWED Buenos Aires Herald, Court opens truth trial into Operation Massacre open source ↗
Aramburu was kidnapped and assassinated by the Montoneros in 1970 in retaliation that cited the 1956 execution of Valle and the Peronist militants.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, Pedro Eugenio Aramburu open source ↗

Editorial Note

Exact date match, well documented. The uprising and its exceptionally harsh repression are a landmark of the anti-Peronist Revolucion Libertadora period; follows the September 1955 coup that ousted Peron in the dataset.

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:

Cline Center id
16006091956
Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-160-1956-06-10

How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.

Outcome and Target

Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Pedro Eugenio Aramburu survived the uprising unharmed; coup leader Juan Jose Valle was executed on 12 June 1956.

Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; 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 citation establishes the coded baseline record; use the claim-level sources above for the researched narrative.

Baseline Source-Document Entries

CSP

Named in the baseline source document; no article citation was recorded.

Powell and Thyne

Named in the baseline source document; no article citation was recorded.

Wikipedia

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 →

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