Guatemala, 1960 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 13 November 1960 a group of some 120 junior military officers, joined by roughly 3,000 enlisted soldiers, revolted against the government of Guatemalan President Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, seizing the Zacapa military base and much of the eastern military zone and demanding his resignation. The immediate trigger was Ydigoras's secret decision to let the United States train Cuban exiles on Guatemalan soil for the coming Bay of Pigs invasion, an arrangement the officers saw as a betrayal of national sovereignty, compounded by anger at the regime's rampant corruption. The rising was not initially ideological, but it collapsed within about three days after loyalist forces, aided by CIA-flown B-26 bombers disguised as Guatemalan aircraft, struck the rebel bases.
The surviving officers fled to the hills of eastern Guatemala and Honduras and regrouped as the MR 13 guerrilla movement, whose founding is generally taken as the start of the 36 year Guatemalan 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
09011131960- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-90-1960-11-13
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes survived the November 1960 revolt but was overthrown by his own defense minister in March 1963.
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 →