In Latin America, armies stage comebacks – but not by coup

Estela Fernández Arteaga was riding a minibus to a doctor’s appointment in La Paz last week when passengers, gaping at their cellphones, started calling out about a coup.

“I tried to stay calm,” says Ms. Fernández, a butcher who lived through military coups and attempted coups as a child. On Wednesday, as Gen. Juan José Zúñiga led troops and tanks to storm the presidential palace in the country’s mountainous administrative capital, many here ran to markets and ATMs to stock up on food and cash, fearful of what was to come.

Bolivians, like many Latin Americans of a certain age, are no strangers