Philippines, 1987 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 28 August 1987 Colonel Gregorio Honasan led the most serious coup attempt yet against President Corazon Aquino, an assault by members of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement that came close to killing her and left dozens dead. Honasan, a charismatic officer and former aide to the dismissed defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile, had spent months secretly training and indoctrinating commandos at Fort Magsaysay. In the early hours of 28 August his rebels, riding buses, trucks, and three tanks into Manila, attacked Malacanang Palace, seizing parts of Camp Aguinaldo, Villamor Air Base, and several television stations, and mounting coordinated actions in Cebu and elsewhere.
Aquino's son, the future president Benigno Aquino III, was wounded and three of his guards killed in the palace assault. But loyalist forces under armed forces chief General Fidel Ramos counterattacked with artillery and vintage aircraft and, by the end of the day, retook the rebel held sites; the coup collapsed by 29 August. Fifty three people died, many of them civilians.
Honasan escaped by helicopter, and the failed coup pushed Aquino's government to the right.
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
84008271987- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-840-1987-08-27-2
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Corazon Aquino survived Honasan's August 1987 coup, crushed by loyalist forces with 53 killed.
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
Wikipedia
New York 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 →