JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Weeks of nationwide Gen Z protests in Madagascar sparked by power and water shortages escalated and led to a military coup that forced President Andry Rajoelina into exile. Army officer Col. Michael Randrianirina has been sworn in as the new leader of the Indian Ocean nation.
The colonel is not the first in history to rise from the barracks to the presidential palace.
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FILE - Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, head of the military council, inspects officers during a parade to commemorate Myanmar's 80th Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, March 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
CAPSAT military unit commander Col. Michael Randrianirina waits to be sworn in as President in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Friday, Oct. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
FILE - A group in favor of Gen. Augusto Pinochet celebrate the 50th anniversary of a military coup led by Pinochet, near La Moneda presidential palace, in Santiago, Chile, Sept. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)
FILE - Gen. Kenan Evren, center, stands with the other leaders of the Sept. 12 military coup during a ceremony at the mausoleum of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, in Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 29, 1980. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)
FILE - Former Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings speaks at the final campaign rally for opposition presidential candidate John Atta Mills, in Tema, Ghana., Dec. 5, 2008. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
Here are five other famous military leaders who followed a similar trajectory:
After decades of a gradual, deliberate ascent through the Myanmar military, Min Aung Hlaing was appointed joint chief of staff of the army, navy, and air force, the military’s third-highest position, in 2010. A year later, he was appointed commander-in-chief and would spend the next decade consolidating his power and influence.
Facing mandatory retirement in July 2021, Min Aung Hlaing seized power through a military coup in February that year, declaring a state of emergency, transferring all state power to himself and establishing a military government, the State Administration Council (SAC). Since then he has ruled Myanmar under various titles. The military government has announced plans to hold a general election by year’s end.
Idi Amin began his military career as a cook and served in the British colonial army. After Uganda's 1962 independence, he rose quickly through its military ranks under President Milton Obote’s guidance to become commander of the army. In January 1971, Obote was in Singapore for a Commonwealth summit when Amin took control in a military coup. Obote fled to neighboring Tanzania after the coup, which was the result of the two men’s growing political and personal animosity.
Ugandans initially welcomed Amin’s rise to power, as he promised to release political prisoners and restore democracy. However, his regime rapidly descended into a brutal dictatorship characterized by violence and human rights abuses.
Amin was himself overthrown in April 1979 by an invasion force composed of the Tanzanian military and Ugandan rebels.
Kenan Evren began his military career as an officer from a military academy, rising through the ranks over several decades until he reached the highest rank of general, serving as the chief of the general staff. He led a military coup in Turkey in September 1980 after months of violence between left-wing and right-wing militants that nearly brought the country to civil war.
The leader of the coup took over the presidency and then rewrote the constitution to guarantee the military’s political power. The military dissolved Parliament and ruled through a National Security Council, which Evren was the head of, effectively running the country as a dictator.
His period of sole military rule ended when he formally assumed the title of the seventh president of Turkey in November 1982, after a new constitution was approved by referendum, and he served until November 1989.
In 2012, he was put on trial for leading the coup and later sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against the state.
Jerry Rawlings rose to power through two military coups, first in June 1979 and then in December 1981, before transitioning to a democratically elected president.
Rawlings, a pilot in the Ghanaian Air Force, became well-known for the successful first coup he led. He briefly held the position of ruler of Ghana before ceding it.
In a second coup in 1981, he toppled the civilian government and commanded the Provisional National Defense Council military dictatorship in the early 1990s. Following the drafting of a new constitution in 1992, he was democratically elected as president and held office for two four-year terms, from January 1993 to January 2001.
His legacy is complex, with both praise for his economic reforms and criticism for human rights abuses, including arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances.
Augusto Pinochet was a career military officer who had risen through the ranks and was appointed commander-in-chief of the army by Chile President Salvador Allende in August 1973. The following month, Allende, the democratically elected socialist president, was overthrown in a bloody military coup led by Pinochet. The military surrounded and bombed the presidential palace, La Moneda, where Allende remained until his death by suicide.
In the aftermath, the military imposed a junta where Pinochet emerged to establish himself as its single head before instituting a cruel, 17-year dictatorship. Until 1990, Chileans lived in a period marked by systematic human rights abuses and the implementation of radical free-market economic policies.
FILE - Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, head of the military council, inspects officers during a parade to commemorate Myanmar's 80th Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, March 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
CAPSAT military unit commander Col. Michael Randrianirina waits to be sworn in as President in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Friday, Oct. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
FILE - A group in favor of Gen. Augusto Pinochet celebrate the 50th anniversary of a military coup led by Pinochet, near La Moneda presidential palace, in Santiago, Chile, Sept. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)
FILE - Gen. Kenan Evren, center, stands with the other leaders of the Sept. 12 military coup during a ceremony at the mausoleum of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, in Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 29, 1980. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)
FILE - Former Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings speaks at the final campaign rally for opposition presidential candidate John Atta Mills, in Tema, Ghana., Dec. 5, 2008. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
HAVANA (AP) — Trumpets and drums played solemnly at Havana's airport Thursday as white-gloved Cuban soldiers marched out of a plane carrying urns with remains of the 32 Cuban officers killed during a stunning U.S. attack on Venezuela.
Nearby, thousands of Cubans lined one of Havana’s most iconic streets to await the bodies as the island remained under threat by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The soldiers' shoes clacked as they marched stiff-legged into the headquarters of the Ministry of the Armed Forces and placed the urns on a long table next to the pictures of those killed. Tens of thousands of people paid their respects, saluting the urns or holding their hand over their heart, many of them drenched from standing outside in a heavy downpour.
Thursday’s mass funeral was only one of a handful that the Cuban government has organized over the past half-century.
The soldiers were part of the security detail of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during the Jan. 3 raid on his residence to seize the former leader and bring him to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges.
State television also showed images of more than a dozen people it said were wounded combatants from the raid, accompanied by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez after arriving Wednesday night from Venezuela. Some were in wheelchairs.
Tensions between Cuba and the U.S. have spiked, with Trump recently demanding that the Caribbean country make a deal with him before it is “too late.” He did not explain what kind of deal.
Trump also has said that Cuba will no longer live off Venezuela's money and oil. Experts warn that the abrupt end of oil shipments could be catastrophic for Cuba, which is already struggling with serious blackouts and a crumbling power grid.
Officials unfurled a massive flag at Havana's airport as President Miguel Díaz-Canel, clad in military garb, stood silent next to former President Raúl Castro, with what appeared to be the relatives of those killed looking on nearby.
Cuban Interior Minister Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas called the slain soldiers “heroes” of an anti-imperialist struggle spanning both Cuba and Venezuela. In an apparent reference to the U.S., he said the “enemy” speaks of “high-precision operations, of troops, of elites, of supremacy.
“We, on the other hand, speak of faces, of families who have lost a father, a son, a husband, a brother,” Álvarez said.
The events demonstrate that “imperialism may possess more sophisticated weapons; it may have immense material wealth; it may buy the minds of the wavering; but there is one thing it will never be able to buy: the dignity of the Cuban people,” he said.
Carmen Gómez, a 58-year-old industrial designer, was among the thousands of Cubans who lined a street where motorcycles and military vehicles thundered by with the remains of those killed.
“They are people willing to defend their principles and values, and we must pay tribute to them,” Gómez said, adding that she hopes no one invades her country. “It’s because of the sense of patriotism that Cubans have, and that will always unite us.”
The 32 military personnel ranged in age from 26 to 60 and were part of protection agreements between the two countries.
Officials in Cuba have said they expect a massive demonstration Friday across from the U.S. Embassy to protest the deaths.
“People are upset and hurt ... many do believe that the dead are martyrs” of a historic struggle against the United States, analyst and former diplomat Carlos Alzugaray told The Associated Press.
In October 1976, then-President Fidel Castro led a massive demonstration to bid farewell to the 73 people killed in the bombing of a civilian flight financed by anti-revolutionary leaders in the U.S. Most of the victims were Cuban athletes.
In December 1989, officials organized a ceremony to honor the more than 2,000 Cuban combatants who died in Angola during Cuba’s participation in a war that defeated the South African army.
In October 1997, memorial services were held following the arrival of the remains of guerrilla commander Ernesto “Che” Guevara and six of his comrades, who died in 1967.
The latest mass burial is critical to honor those slain, said José Luis Piñeiro, a 60-year-old doctor who lived for four years in Venezuela.
“I don’t think Trump is crazy enough to come and enter a country like this, ours, and if he does, he’s going to have to take an aspirin or some painkiller to avoid the headache he’s going to get,” Piñeiro said. “These were 32 heroes who fought him. Can you imagine an entire nation? He’s going to lose.”
The remains arrived a day after the U.S. announced $3 million in additional aid to help the island recover from the catastrophic Hurricane Melissa. The first flight took off on Wednesday, and a second flight was scheduled for Friday. A commercial vessel also will deliver food and other supplies.
Cuba had said on Wednesday that any contributions will be channeled through the government.
But U.S. State Department foreign assistance official Jeremy Lewin said Thursday that the U.S. was working with Cuba’s Catholic Church to distribute aid, as part of Washington's efforts to give assistance directly to the Cuban people.
“There’s nothing political about cans of tuna and rice and beans and pasta,” he said Thursday, warning that the Cuban government should not intervene or divert supplies. “We will be watching, and we will hold them accountable.”
Lewin said the Cuban government has a choice to: “Step down or better provide towards people.” Lewin added that “if there was no regime,” the U.S. would provide “billions and billions of dollars” in assistance, as well as investment and development: “That’s what lies on the other side of the regime for the Cuban people.”
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said the U.S. government was “exploiting what appears to be a humanitarian gesture for opportunistic and politically manipulative purposes.”
Coto contributed from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
People line up outside the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces where the remains are on display of the Cuban officers who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured President Nicolas Maduro, as it sprinkles rain in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Military members line up outside the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces where the urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured President Nicolas Maduro, are on display in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Military members pay their last respects to Cuban officers who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, at the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces where the urns containing the remains are displayed during a ceremony in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Soldiers carry urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, at the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (Adalberto Roque /Pool Photo via AP)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
People line the streets of Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, to watch the motorcade carrying urns containing the remains of Cuban officers killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Workers fly the Cuban flag at half-staff at the Anti-Imperialist Tribune near the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in memory of Cubans who died two days before in Caracas, Venezuela during the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
