Ecuador, 1975 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 31 August to 1 September 1975 the chief of staff of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces, General Raul Gonzalez Alvear, together with his brother-in-law General Alejandro Solis Rosero, led a failed coup, popularly nicknamed the Guerra de la Funeraria, aiming to force the nationalist military president Guillermo Rodriguez Lara to resign. The plotters, backed by conservative business and political interests unhappy with Rodriguez Lara's high oil price and import policies, attacked the presidential palace in Quito with about ten tanks in the early morning. But the coup was poorly planned.
Rodriguez Lara had spent the weekend at his ranch outside the capital and escaped capture; hearing of the revolt, he fled to a loyal army base at Riobamba and rallied loyalist troops to retake the palace by midday. Around thirty people were killed in the fighting. General Gonzalez sought asylum and went into exile in Chile.
Though the coup failed, it exposed deep divisions in the armed forces and led within four months to Rodriguez Lara's removal by the high command in January 1976.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
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
13009011975- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-130-1975-09-01
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Guillermo Rodriguez Lara survived the coup by rallying loyalist troops, but was eased out by the high command months later.
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
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Luttwak
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 →