This paper examines the actions of one Salvadorean priest – Padre David Rodríguez – in one parish – Tecoluca – to underscore the importance of religious leadership in the rise of El Salvador's contentious political movement that began in the early 1970s, when the guerrilla organisations were only just beginning to develop. Catholic leaders became engaged in promoting contentious politics, however, only after the Church had experienced an ideological conversion, commonly referred to as liberation theology. A focus on one priest, in one parish, allows for generalisation, since scores of priests, nuns and lay workers in El Salvador followed the same injustice frame and tactics that generated extensive political mobilisation throughout the country. While structural conditions, collective action and resource mobilisation are undoubtedly necessary, the case of religious leaders in El Salvador suggests that ideas and leadership are of vital importance for the rise of contentious politics at a particular historical moment.

Using interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

This article focuses on the intricate and developing nature of official politics and grassroots activism in post-revolutionary Mexico. It does so by tracing the trajectory of the Pentathlón Deportivo Militar Universitario, a right-wing youth movement that emerged in Mexico in 1938. By locating the group within both the international and domestic emergence of youth movements in the early twentieth century, the article shows how the study of Pentathlón's formation, objectives and later evolution can significantly enrich our understanding of an important phase in Mexico's post-revolutionary history. Within the context of right wing oppositional politics, analysis of the movement provides a fascinating insight into both the emerging Mexican state's ability to appropriate the radical impulses of the younger generation and the Pentathlón's willingness to accommodate such strategies in order to ensure its own survival.

This article analyses the bilateral economic negotiations between Washington and Havana during the era of the Cuban PRCA (Auténtico) governments led by Ramón Grau San Martín and Carlos Prío Socarrás (1944–52). This work shows that, initially, the PRCA governments took advantage of the economic bargaining capacity that Cuba had developed with Washington during the Good Neighbor era, but after 1947 this declined as the Truman administration's Cold War foreign policy agenda assigned only a marginal position to Latin America and Cuba. Havana's inability to obtain further economic support from the United States had a powerful destabilising effect, complicating Cuba's economic governance and delegitimising the PRCA politically. The study of this episode enhances our comprehension of a period largely overlooked by the historiography on Cuba and our understanding of the demise of the Auténtico project, the last attempt to transform Cuba's social structures in a progressive and democratic manner.

This article examines the division of powers established in a number of constitutional projects presented during the First Mexican Empire (1821–3). The essay rejects the idea, present in much recent historiography, that constitutional debate in Mexico was exclusively shaped by the experience of Spanish government. Instead it argues that the empire's politicians drew on a wide range of theories, ideas and examples from other constitutional systems.