Coup Atlas Research Database
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14505291947ConspiracyDissident coup

Bolivia, 1947 — dissident coup conspiracy

Bolivia (BOL)South America, AmericasMay 29, 1947

Event Summary

The dataset records an event coded as a dissident coup conspiracy in Bolivia on 29 May 1947, during the government of President Enrique Hertzog, who had been inaugurated on 10 March 1947 as the first elected president of the conservative sexenio, the six-year restoration of the traditional oligarchic order that followed the violent overthrow and lynching of the reformist President Gualberto Villarroel in July 1946. Hertzog's Republican Socialist Unity Party government faced chronic instability, restive tin miners, and plotting from the ousted Revolutionary Nationalist Movement and the left, which sought to reverse the conservative restoration. No discrete documentation of a distinct coup plot on this specific date appears in accessible English sources, but the sexenio was a period of recurrent conspiracies.

The left's attempts to reassert control failed militarily in the 1949 civil war and legally in 1951 but finally succeeded in the National Revolution of 1952, which brought the MNR to power.

Researched Details

Researched

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

Target identified in Coup Atlas research: President Enrique Hertzog survived and governed during the conservative sexenio; the MNR returned to power only in 1952
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Enrique Hertzog (president of Bolivia, target)
Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR, plotters)
Conservative sexenio governments (target)

Sources

Enrique Hertzog of the Republican Socialist Unity Party was inaugurated as president of Bolivia on 10 March 1947, the first nonmilitary chief executive of the postwar restoration.
SOURCE REVIEWED U.S. State Department, FRUS 1951 vol. II open source ↗
The so-called sexenio were the six years between 1946 and 1952 in which the traditional conservative order briefly returned to power after the death of Villarroel.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, Coups d'etat in Bolivia open source ↗
Attempts by the left to reassert control failed militarily in the 1949 civil war and legally in 1951 but were successful in the 1952 revolution.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, Coups d'etat in Bolivia open source ↗
President Villarroel had been lynched and hanged on 21 July 1946, after which a transitional junta organized the elections that brought Hertzog to office.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, Government Junta of Bolivia (1946-1947) open source ↗

Editorial Note

No discrete documentation of a coup plot precisely on 29 May 1947 in Bolivia was found in accessible English sources this session; the entry records the dataset's coding and the verified context of the early Hertzog sexenio government amid MNR and leftist plotting, with the specific plot unconfirmed and flagged as context only. Continues the long Bolivia coup run in the dataset.

Cross-Reference

Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.

Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:

Cline Center id
14505291947

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

Outcome and Target

Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Enrique Hertzog survived and governed during the conservative sexenio; the MNR returned to power only in 1952.

Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. 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

New York Times

“Bolivian Ex-Minister Seized,” May 29, 1947

New York Herald Tribune

“Vanguard To Be Refitted,” May 29, 1947

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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