Ecuador, 2005 — auto-coup attempt
Event Summary
The dataset records an event on 15 April 2005 coded as an auto coup episode in Ecuador during the crisis that brought down President Lucio Gutierrez, the former army colonel who had led the January 2000 coup and then won the presidency in 2002. Gutierrez's downfall came after he moved to entrench his power by manipulating the judiciary: in December 2004 his allies in Congress illegally dismissed and packed the Supreme Court, and the new court then annulled corruption cases against his ally, the exiled former president Abdala Bucaram, allowing Bucaram to return. This blatant assault on judicial independence, denounced as an attempted power grab, triggered mass protests in Quito, the movement of the forajidos, or outlaws, who filled the streets demanding Gutierrez's ouster.
As the protests swelled in April 2005, Gutierrez declared a state of emergency on 15 April in a bid to hold on, dissolving the very Supreme Court he had packed, but the maneuver failed to quell the unrest. On 20 April, Congress voted to remove him for abandoning his post, the military withdrew its support, and Gutierrez fled, taking refuge in the Brazilian embassy. His vice president, Alfredo Palacio, assumed the presidency.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
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
13004152005
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Lucio Gutierrez's April 2005 emergency maneuvers failed and he was removed amid mass protests.
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
Wikipedia
New York Times
Bahrain News Agency- UPI Arabia 2000
UPI NewsTrack
Wall Street Journal
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 →