Coup Atlas Research Database
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10111231948SuccessfulMilitary coup

Venezuela, 1948 — military coup

Venezuela (VEN)South America, AmericasNovember 23, 1948

Event Summary

On November 24, 1948, the Venezuelan military overthrew President Romulo Gallegos, the celebrated novelist who months earlier had become the first Venezuelan head of state chosen by direct universal suffrage. The coup was led by his own defense minister, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, together with Lieutenant Colonels Marcos Perez Jimenez and Luis Felipe Llovera Paez. The officers had pressed Gallegos to expel Democratic Action leader Romulo Betancourt and distance himself from the party; when he refused as unconstitutional, troops seized the Miraflores palace, Gallegos resigned and was exiled to Cuba, and a three-man military junta took power.

The nearly bloodless coup ended the three-year democratic experiment known as the trienio adeco and began a decade of military rule that culminated in the dictatorship of Perez Jimenez, not undone until 1958.

Researched Details

Researched

Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.

Target identified in Coup Atlas research: Romulo Gallegos, President of Venezuela (deposed, exiled to Cuba)
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Romulo Gallegos (deposed president, novelist)
Carlos Delgado Chalbaud (defense minister, junta chairman)
Marcos Perez Jimenez (junta member, later dictator)
Luis Felipe Llovera Paez (junta member)
Romulo Betancourt (Democratic Action leader the officers demanded be expelled)

Sources

The 1948 Venezuelan coup took place on 24 November 1948, when Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos Perez Jimenez and Luis Felipe Llovera Paez overthrew the elected president Romulo Gallegos, who had won the 1947 election generally believed to be the country's first honest one.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, "1948 Venezuelan coup d'etat" open source ↗
Gallegos was arrested and overthrown in a coup led by his own minister of defense, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, which initiated a ten-year military dictatorship and forced Gallegos into exile in Cuba.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, "Presidency of Romulo Gallegos" open source ↗
In mid-November the military issued an ultimatum demanding COPEI share power and that Betancourt be exiled; Gallegos refused, and on November 24, after barely ten months in office, the military overthrew him in a nearly bloodless coup, installing a three-man junta headed by Colonel Delgado.
SOURCE REVIEWED OnWar, "Reactionary Coup in Venezuela 1948" open source ↗
A contemporaneous U.S. Embassy dispatch reported Gallegos, on arriving in exile in Havana, blamed reactionary Venezuelan groups and foreign petroleum companies opposed to his fifty-fifty oil profit tax for the conditions leading to the coup.
SOURCE REVIEWED U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Vol. IX, Document 111 open source ↗

Editorial Note

All sources agree on the date, the three coup leaders, the ultimatum over Betancourt, and Gallegos's exile. Wikipedia (two articles), OnWar, and a primary FRUS embassy dispatch were read directly. Perez Jimenez emerged as dictator after the 1950 assassination of Delgado Chalbaud, a later event beyond this record.

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
10111231948

How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.

Outcome and Target

Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Romulo Gallegos, President of Venezuela (deposed, exiled to Cuba).

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
Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset, v2.2.2
Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Michael Martin, and Andrea Gerald. 2026. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.2.2. February 17. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V10
Open dataset DOI ↗
⚑ This citation establishes the coded baseline record; use the claim-level sources above for the researched narrative.

Baseline Source-Document Entries

CSP

Named in the baseline source document; no article citation was recorded.

Luttwak

Named in the baseline source document; no article citation was recorded.

Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

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 →

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Related Records

Venezuela — Military coup, 19581958-01-23SuccessfulSouth AmericaVenezuela — Military coup, 19461946-09-16AttemptedSouth AmericaVenezuela — Military coup, 19461946-12-11AttemptedSouth America