Paraguay, 1949 — military coup
Event Summary
On January 30, 1949, Paraguayan President Juan Natalicio Gonzalez, a Colorado Party intellectual and poet who had taken office only in August 1948, was overthrown in a military coup led by his own defense minister, Brigadier General Raimundo Rolon, in alliance with rival Colorado figures Felipe Molas Lopez and Federico Chaves. The coup, in which the young artillery commander Alfredo Stroessner also took part, ended Gonzalez's brief and troubled presidency after he survived an earlier failed coup attempt in October 1948. Gonzalez resigned in the early morning of January 30 and went into exile, and Rolon assumed the presidency.
Rolon's own tenure lasted less than a month before he too was pushed aside in favor of Molas Lopez in late February, part of the rapid churn of Paraguayan governments that preceded Stroessner's long dictatorship.
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
15001301949
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Juan Natalicio Gonzalez, President of Paraguay (deposed, fled into exile).
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; fled the country. 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
Washington Post
Los Angeles Times
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 →