El Salvador, 1972 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
From 25 to 26 March 1972 young left leaning military officers in El Salvador, the Military Youth, attempted a coup to overturn the stolen presidential election of February 1972 and install the reformist opposition candidate Jose Napoleon Duarte as president. Duarte of the National Opposition Union appeared to have won the February vote, but the ruling military party suspended the count and had the legislature declare its own candidate, Colonel Arturo Armando Molina, the winner. On 25 March, Colonel Benjamin Mejia declared the Military Youth in rebellion, seized the National Palace, and captured the sitting president Fidel Sanchez Hernandez, proclaiming a revolutionary junta to install Duarte.
But the air force bombed rebel positions, loyal garrisons counterattacked, and by 26 March the coup had collapsed with around 200 dead. Sanchez Hernandez was freed, Duarte was captured, tortured, and exiled, and Molina took office in July, extending the military dictatorship that would soon give way to civil war.
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
09203251972- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-92-1972-03-25
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Fidel Sanchez Hernandez was briefly captured but the coup failed and he was restored; Molina took office.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; placed under house arrest. 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 →