Venezuela, 1992 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 4 February 1992 Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez led a military coup attempt against President Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela, the failed uprising that would transform the country's history. Chavez's clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement 200, drawn from disaffected junior and mid ranking officers, rose against a government reeling from IMF backed austerity, corruption scandals, and the bloody memory of the 1989 Caracazo riots. In the early hours, five army units moved into Caracas to seize the presidential palace of Miraflores, the defense ministry, the military airport, and other targets, aiming to capture Perez as he returned from Davos.
But the coup fragmented: Perez escaped, loyalist forces held, and Chavez, cut off in the Military Museum and unable to broadcast his call for an uprising, surrendered. Allowed to speak on television to tell his comrades to lay down arms, he accepted responsibility and famously said his goals had failed only por ahora, for now. Those two words made him a national figure.
Perez survived but was fatally weakened, impeached the next year, while Chavez rode his fame to the presidency in 1998.
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
10102041992- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-101-1992-02-04
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Carlos Andres Perez survived Chavez's February 1992 coup, but it launched Chavez toward the presidency.
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
Wall Street Journal
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 →