Template talk:Americas coup d'état

Date
I was wondering, why the coups listed here start in 1945? Even if we skip the periods of anarchy, war and/or state organization of the XIX century, coups in South America are not a phenomenon of the Cold War. Many of them predate the end of WWII, and even the war itself. And more, even if we left aside the periods of independence or civil wars, anarchy and/or state organization, we can still find notable coups in the XIX century.

Perhaps a better idea would be to list here only the successful coups, and move the failed attempts to a list of all of them. Unlike successful ones, where we can easily set that "X coup is the end of this government and the begin of that other one", failed attempts need to be placed in more detailed context, and a list would help with that purpose better than a navbox. MBelgrano (talk) 15:54, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think that makes sense. I was thinking something similar myself. So start from 1900, and have another template for pre-1900? Rd232 talk 16:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree with the division successful/unsuccessful.
 * But I found difficult to establish a valid criteria for the "starting date" of the template. Military coups are common since the 1930s, but do we have to include previous "inside palace" coup d'états?. There are plenty of them. Furthermore, going back the turn of the century, how can we distinguish between (modern-sense) coup d'états and XIXth-century (civico-)military "rebellions", when Latin American States were not at all well-established? Salut, --IANVS (talk) 04:32, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * A similar issue arises at List of coups d'état and coup attempts vs List of revolutions and rebellions (see talk page of the former). I suppose one answer would be to follow the article names, on the assumption that the article names are based on sources within them. But it would really help to have some kind of guidance to help with consistency; or at least some kind of summary of what is usually (on WP) called a coup, what a rebellion, etc. Rd232 talk 07:48, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * As far as consistency is concerned, using whichever term is most common in material written about the subject is the way to go. Making up our own definitions may provide some consistency, but it also makes it more confusing if someone is looking for an event with a certain name and we rename it to match particular criteria. Also, a coup versus a rebellion can easily be defined as the same thing or totally different things depending on the perspective and individual opinion. It's better to just stick with the names for events used in the references, people expect to find those names, and we don't have to bother creating definitions that only apply to articles on wikipedia. --Xaliqen (talk) 15:46, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Ye-es, but if we could have some kind of guidance on what things are usually called by reliable sources, it would help, eg with organising lists. Rd232 talk 20:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * A Jstor search might help (or similar search of scholarly publications). That way, if an event has multiple names, we could easily determine which one is the most common in scholarly materials. --Xaliqen (talk) 18:04, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Cuban revolution
There have been some attempts to remove the Cuban Revolution from this template, claiming that "A people's revolution is not a coup". But that is not correct, it was a coup. It was an armed revolt that deposed a government and established a new one: that makes it a coup. Who was behind the coup is an issue that does not change its nature. Cambalachero (talk) 13:18, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Not when said armed revolt took years to overthrow the government. 140.198.32.17 (talk) 01:50, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Defining a coup
A few years ago, I made this point over at the List of coups since 2010 talk page, but given the recent developments in Venezuela, I think it needs to be re-examined. Comparing the removal of President Lugo in Paraguay in 2012, the removal of four members of the Honduran Supreme Court in 2013, and the removal of Brazilian President Dilma last year with the Venezuelan Supreme Court's dissolving of the legislature this week, I don't see what sets Venezuela apart. In three of the four cases, you have one branch of government using constitutional means to usurp the power of another branch of government in a highly contentious anti-democratic move. And in the case of Honduras, you have two branches conspiring against the third in an extra-constitutional move. Venezuela has been gradually becoming increasingly authoritarian, and it is in the midst of a terrible economic crisis, so it fits the narrative better, plus the press in the US especially loves to demonize Venezuela. But none of that seems to make what just happened more of a coup than what happened in Paraguay in 2012, Honduras in 2013, or Brazil in 2016. Indeed if we're looking at the overall context, it should be noted that as a result of the coup against the Honduran Supreme Court, President Hernández is now up for re-election – the mere possibility of which resulted in the coup against Zelaya in 2009. -- Irn (talk) 15:02, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

"c"
Aren't those marked "c" in fact failed ones? --Yomal Sidoroff-Biarmskii 08:36, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Good call. This edit seems to have accidentally changed that around. I've gone ahead and fixed that. Cheers, -- Irn (talk) 14:32, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed I did, sorry about that, must have not been paying full attention Lalichii 14:38, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I see what I was doing now, I was trying to swap attempts to successful coups like in the other Templates Template:African coups d'État, Template:Coup d'état Lalichii 14:42, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

RFC on US January 2021 inclusion
I've started an RFC on a related template regarding whether the USA events of January 2021 should be listed as an attempted coup. Please comment on that page. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 01:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Bolivia
what happened in 2019, where the military forced the leader to resign and leave the country through threats, which we now know was caused by false accusations of fraud (plus they won more votes in the next election) is clearly a coup
 * Not included because it remains a subject of dispute. The storming of the U.S. capitol is ommitted for the same reason. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 16:16, 2 May 2021 (UTC)