How do I get rid of Rebels without causing an uprising?

You can try finding the rebel leaders, (if you can't, secret police edict is awesome) and find out what faction they are (environmentalist, communist, capitalist, etc.) and try to do things that will increase your standing with them. (quests,different managers, and buildings)

You will have to build a police station or a dynasty member who has the agent trait to sniff out the roles around town.

Wait till modern times. Build a Drone Command Center. Then you can put kill orders on rebels and their leaders. Couple of months and your island is rebel free.

Actually when you place a kill order on the rebel leader, the rebel threat is lowed. Or at least that's what happens when I do it, maybe it's a patch.

Best method for keeping an uprising away from my experience is: Killing rebel leaders, and banishing ( or arresting, but with banish you get the $$ and it's faster ) Crime Lords. Both of these actions won't affect the general happiness negatively. Oh and also make sure to build an Asylium, and discrediting the leaders of factions that hate your regime, altogether with the Smearing edict.

Good luck.

With this technique I was able to keep a general satisfaction of at least 90% all the time.

SOLUTION: Here's what I found.

FIRST, try to get all happiness factors (food, job, housing, etc) above 50, this reduces number of new rebels to near zero. However, if of the happiness factor fall below 50, they will spawn everywhere like they always do.

SECOND, if you have rebels and want to get rid of them, DON'T KILL OR BANISH THEM. The more you do this, the more you lose because eventually an uprising happens. Instead, build the Supermax Prison (or the Dungeon I'd imagine works too) and arrest them. This doesn't cause uprisings and the rebels are captured and converted back into good little citizens.

LASTLY, there is no way to completely get rid of rebels, even with 100% perfectness. Any attacks are just a regular (annoying) thing in the game and you just have to build a large military to quickly defeat them. Placing 4 Barracks near 2 Army Bases near 6 Guard Towers should do the trick. Rebels will usually go for the guard towers first and be killed.

Hope this helps. ;)

Honestly, I suggest you make democracy a thing. Every 4 years. People won't uprise then, or even make coups, so the only thing you worry about is rebels. Make sure people can protest, or they'll riot instead. Then when a protest happens, you can figure out what they want.

Try to favour all factions a little bit. Make sure people have entertainment. Make sure your military is the one all the way on the bottom of the constitution list because this military is really strong and it's like the US military so rebels are gone faster and people aren't mad. Build a supermax prison and arrest rebels before you kill them if you can. This will basically turn them into normal civilians without making your people mad and you won't lose population.

Another bonus on democracy is cheating. If you're low on votes you can start cheating to gain like an extra 2%-6% of the votes if you're lucky enough. Also, if you're feeling greedy, you can choose a certain skill for your character that will make you get 300% more votes from cheating, but this will also make a lot more rebels, so you might want to refrain. Oh yeah, and make sure everyone can vote, or everyone will just get really pissed and start rioting. Just make sure you don't cheat if you don't have to.

And another bonus is that obviously unlike the US, you can go for as many terms as you want, meaning that you can stay in power forever without any coups or uprisings. Just remember that there will always be rebels. And if people keep protesting asking for more and more and more, then just ignore them and instead check and make sure they can work to get money, make sure they are entertained, make sure they're happy and that they can survive on your Tropico. If they can do all of that, then just let them protest, they usually die down after a while.

And don't choose a small map because then there might not be enough buildings for everyone if you want a big city. Make sure people have a place to live - if people are building ugly shacks, then obviously they've got nowhere to live. At the beginning, you also want to build a lot of farms and mines and stuff so you can get money to make people happy.