One year after armored vehicles rammed the wooden doors of Bolivia’s old presidential palace, the country still can’t agree on what happened. Was it an attempted coup—or political theater? The answer may shape August’s election and the historical record.
Tanks, Rumors, and a Two-Hour Siege
It started with a tank in broad daylight.
On June 26, 2024, General Juan José Zuñiga rolled a column of troops into Plaza Murillo, the stone-paved heart of Bolivian power in La Paz. His forces surrounded the Palacio Quemado, and one tank slammed through the building’s front doors. Tourists scattered. Soldiers posed for selfies. Inside, President Luis Arce huddled with advisors, negotiating face-to-face with the general.
Within hours, the siege dissolved. Arce took to live television and dismissed the entire high command. By sundown, Zuñiga had been arrested.
Then came the real shock: on his way to detention, Zuñiga told EFE that Arce himself had orchestrated the entire stunt—giving the green light in private to boost sagging approval ratings amid protests over fuel shortages and dollar scarcity.
María Teresa Zegada, a political scientist at Universidad Mayor de San Simón, says the whole affair fits Bolivia’s long pattern of military flirtation with power. “This country has lived through self-coups, real coups, and theatrical coups,” she told EFE. “The speed with which this collapsed raised a lot of eyebrows.”
A War of Versions—and Sparse Evidence
Since his arrest, Zuñiga has doubled down. Speaking from his jail cell in Cochabamba, he told Perfil and Los Tiempos that Arce had casually given him the go-ahead during a one-on-one meeting. After the interviews aired, prison officials seized his phone, placed him in solitary, and fired the regional warden.
Arce, in his interview with EFE, called the story “absurd.” He framed the events as a close brush with authoritarianism, one that his government faced down to protect democracy.
Retired Colonel Omar Durán, now a security analyst, offers a third interpretation. “This wasn’t a coup. It wasn’t a self-coup either,” he said. “It was an act of insubordination—Zuñiga knew he was about to be replaced and panicked.” Durán believes the general is now angling for a pardon from the next government.
So far, 21 officers and one civilian have been charged with terrorism and armed rebellion. About half are still in pretrial detention. Others are under house arrest or have been released due to a lack of evidence.
In April, several of the accused accepted abbreviated plea deals—two-year sentences they won’t serve behind bars. Legal scholar Luis Paniagua of the Universidad Católica Boliviana notes that the deals reflect both prosecutorial weakness and political caution, stating, “The government doesn’t want to risk losing a high-profile trial.”
The Politics of Memory and an Election Around the Corner
As legal cases dragged on, then–Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo, now a presidential candidate, released a government-produced documentary titled Qué pasó el 26J (What Happened on June 26). The film used court testimony and intercepted calls to paint Zuñiga as the ringleader of a would-be junta made up of right-wing pundits, rogue unionists, and political outcasts.
Prosecutors have since summoned some of the people named. Others call the film defamation. Historian Fernando Mayorga warned in an interview with La Razón that state-backed media has the power to cement versions of history: “When the same visual narrative is repeated enough, it becomes a memory, regardless of what the courts decide.”
Renán Cabezas, an opposition lawmaker allied with former President Evo Morales, called the documentary “a farce to make Arce look heroic.”
Now, with the August 17 presidential election looming, Arce is leaning hard on his version of the story. Surviving a coup, he argues, proves he’s tough enough to lead. But the incident has widened the rift inside the ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), splitting loyalties between Arce and Morales.
Polling from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) shows that 42% of Bolivians are still unsure whether the events of June 26 constituted a real coup, suggesting deep mistrust not only of the military but also of politicians in general.
Defense reforms have stalled while trials drag on. Budgets for upgrading barracks were pushed to 2026, raising alarms from sociologist Jorge Komadina, who warns that resentment in a neglected army could breed future insubordination.
A Door Left Open—and a History Still Unwritten
Today, tourists pause outside the Palacio Quemado, eyeing the patched wooden door through which the tank crashed. Resin covers the splintered cedar, but the damage still shows.
Some guides tell Arce’s version: a president who stood firm in the face of military revolt. Others tell Zuñiga, a general who is made into a scapegoat in a political drama. Aline Quispe, a street vendor who watched the whole scene unfold, is still unsure. “The soldiers looked lost,” she told EFE. “Like they were waiting for orders that never came.”
There’s no transcript. There is no definitive video. No smoking gun. Just overlapping stories and a nation caught in the fog between fact and manipulation.
For now, the plaza where it all happened remains cordoned off, surrounded by plywood. Government officials say a memorial is coming. Historians worry the physical evidence will be erased before the truth is known.
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Until someone talks—or someone proves something—Bolivia’s last coup will remain an open case, its legacy written not in verdicts but in suspicions.
Because in a country where tanks can show up at lunchtime and vanish by dinner, even the truth has trouble staying put.