Coup Atlas Research Database
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14505191950AttemptedDissident coup

Bolivia, 1950 — dissident coup attempt

Bolivia (BOL)South America, AmericasMay 19, 1950

Event Summary

On 19 May 1950 a dissident revolt erupted in La Paz against Bolivia's conservative President Mamerto Urriolagoitia, the first explosion in the capital since the 1946 rising that lynched Villarroel. A schoolteachers' pay strike against the government's currency devaluation ignited a general strike joined by rail, bank, factory, and transport unions, and Socialists, Communists, Trotskyists, and MNR supporters set aside rivalries to back it as crowds surged through the streets denouncing the president. The government rushed in two army battalions from the provinces, routed student rioters from a university strongpoint, and fought into the northern working class districts to crush the revolt.

Urriolagoitia, who put down repeated coup attempts, answered 1950 with decrees outlawing opposition parties and unions, curfews, and newspaper closures, repression that held until the disputed 1951 election and his own Mamertazo self-coup.

Researched Details

Researched

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

Target identified in Coup Atlas research: President Mamerto Urriolagoitia survived the revolt unharmed and remained in office until his May 1951 self-coup handover
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Mamerto Urriolagoitia (president of Bolivia, target)
Striking teachers and union federations (core of the revolt)
MNR, Socialist, Communist, and Trotskyist militants (opposition backing the rising)

Sources

The lid blew off La Paz for the first time since the 1946 revolution when schoolteachers demanding pay to offset the government's currency devaluation touched off a movement in which all dissident elements backed the teachers and rail, bank, factory, and transport unions made it a general strike, before army battalions and police crushed the revolt.
SOURCE REVIEWED TIME, Bolivia: The Revolt that Failed open source ↗
Urriolagoitia crushed a number of coup attempts, and in 1950 issued decrees making opposition parties illegal and outlawing unions, instituting curfews, shutting down newspapers, and branding the MNR as communists in appeals for U.S. support.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, Mamerto Urriolagoitia open source ↗
The Urriolagoitia administration worried less about deviations from constitutional principles in putting down revolts and uprisings, being more prepared to meet force with force, with several bloody clashes between the armed forces and rebellious groups during his tenure.
SOURCE REVIEWED U.S. State Department, FRUS 1951 vol. II open source ↗
After the MNR's Paz Estenssoro led the May 1951 election result, Urriolagoitia resigned on May 16, 1951 and handed the government to a junta of anti-MNR officers under General Hugo Ballivian, which annulled the election.
SOURCE REVIEWED U.S. State Department, FRUS 1951 vol. II open source ↗

Editorial Note

The TIME account matches the dataset's 19 May 1950 dissident coup coding as the La Paz general strike revolt, though the archived article itself is undated in the retrieved text; date alignment rests on the dataset plus the devaluation context, noted. Sits between the 1949 civil war and the 1951 Mamertazo in the Bolivian arc.

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
14505191950

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

Outcome and Target

Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Mamerto Urriolagoitia survived the revolt unharmed and remained in office until his May 1951 self-coup handover.

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
Open dataset DOI ↗
⚑ This citation establishes the coded baseline record; use the claim-level sources above for the researched narrative.

Baseline Source-Document Entries

The Globe and Mail

“La Paz Revolt is Put Dow, Say 100 Dead,” May 22, 1950

New York Times

“Bolivia Seizes 400 as Revolt is Ended: Government Lists 13 Killed but Unofficial Estimates Put Toll Nearer 100,” May 21, 1950

The Sun

“Bolivia Downs Insure Ction: At Least 13 Killed and 112 Hurt in General Strike,” May 21, 1950

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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