Night of the Tanks
The Night of the Tanks, also known as the Tanquetazo, was a military episode that occurred in Venezuela on 26 October 1988, during the government of Jaime Lusinchi, while he was out of the country and shortly before the general elections in the country, when a column of 26 Dragon armored vehicles (V-100) were mobilized from Fort Tiuna to the area of the Miraflores Presidential Palace in downtown Caracas, for no apparent reason. The army major who ordered the mobilization, Soler Zambrano, argued that he was following orders from superiors in order to protect the security of the acting president, Simón Alberto Consalvi, but later intelligence reports indicated that the mobilization consisted of a thwarted coup d'état.