1982 Guinea-Bissau coup attempt

Guinea-Bissau had declared independent from Portugal in 1973 following a long insurgency which was recognized by Portugal in 1974. A coup in 1980 would overthrow the first president of Guinea-Bissau, Luís Cabral, in favor of FARP General João Bernardo Vieira due to Cabral being a mestiço with black Guineans having grown increasingly disgruntled with perceived mestiço economic and political control.^[1]

Vieira sought to transform FARP's political wing, PIAGC into a genuine Vanguard Party in the Marxist Leninist style, consolidating the party from its highly decentralized and guerilla cell based structure into a hierarchical party to create a class of mobilized political professionals, which would extend the party's influence outside of the capital and into the more rural parts of the countryside.^[2]

However, the existing decentralized power-structure in PIAGC was heavily favored by the more rural Balanta which besides making up a majority of the country's population while Vieira was a Papel, also constituted the vast majority of the PIAGC's political base.^[2] Centralizing power around the urban elite in Bissau had been a goal that the PIAGC's political writers had been striving for since at least 1977, however, was always denied by the party's Balanta base.^[2]

In 1981 Vieira held the "Extraordinary Party Congress" wherein he created a 51-member Central Committee and 16 member Political Bureau to govern the party, all stuffed with his loyalists including 8 of the 9 members of the executive "Revolutionary Council", the ruling Junta that Vieira established after his coup.^[2] Paulo Correia was a military hero from the war for independence, and a Balanta nationalist seeking to make the Balanta the politically dominate ethnic group in the country.^[2][3]

Correia was able to convince the Bra tank battalion, which was stationed to defend Bissau's outskirts, to move against the regime.^[2] The battalion failed to secure the capital due to the presence of other FARP forces, and their commander was executed.^[2][3] Viriato Pan, a Balanta lawyer and the Attorney General was arrested during the coup out of fear he might side with Correia.^[2]