Venezuela, 1960 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 24 June 1960 an incendiary car bomb was detonated on the Paseo Los Proceres in Caracas as President Romulo Betancourt's motorcade passed on the way to an Armed Forces Day ceremony, in an assassination attempt ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, who had developed an obsessive hatred of Betancourt for denouncing his regime at the Organization of American States. The bomb, packed into a parked Oldsmobile and triggered by radio, killed Betancourt's aide de camp and the head of his military house and severely injured his driver, while Betancourt himself suffered serious burns to his hands. The wounded president delivered a defiant radio address the next day with his hands bandaged, and photographs of the surviving Betancourt circulated worldwide.
The attempt backfired catastrophically for Trujillo: the OAS voted unanimously to sanction the Dominican Republic, the United States broke relations, and Trujillo was himself assassinated eleven months later.
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
10106241960
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Romulo Betancourt survived the car bombing with serious burns and completed his term; the plot's sponsor Trujillo was assassinated in 1961.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; injured. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
Luttwak
Los Angeles Times
New York Times
Newsday
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 →