The coup began before dawn. Major Marcos Pérez Jiménez mobilized troops from the Caracas garrison. Fellow conspirators Carlos Delgado Chalbaud and Mario Vargas secured other key units. By morning, tanks rolled into the capital’s Plaza Bolívar. President Isaías Medina Angarita, returning from a morning ride at the country club, found the military headquarters occupied. He drove to the Miraflores Palace but encountered rebel soldiers. He surrendered without a fight by midday. The entire operation resulted in two deaths and a handful of injuries, most from accidental gunfire.
This was not a popular revolution but a barracks revolt. Medina’s government had allowed political liberalization, legalizing opposition parties and planning for direct presidential elections. The young officers of the Patriotic Military Union despised this civilian progress. They saw the elected government as weak and corrupt. Their manifesto spoke of national renewal, but its substance was martial discipline. The coup ended Venezuela’s last experiment with a peaceful transfer of power for a decade.
The event installed a military junta and began a direct line to the dictatorship of Pérez Jiménez. It established a pattern of military intervention in politics that would define Venezuela for generations. The majors presented themselves as modernizers. Their true legacy was the suppression of the very democratic institutions Medina had cautiously nurtured. The tanks in Plaza Bolívar were not clearing the way for democracy. They were parking on its grave.