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This article focuses on the political thought and practice of the martyred Jesuit intellectual during the late s. It employs the concept of desencuentros, probing the relationship between linguistic misunderstandings and political division. The article highlights Ignacio Ellacuría's novel analyses of the relationship between the ecclesial and the popular organisations, led by the radical Left. It discusses his political thought in relationship to the author's research on the base communities of northern Morazán. The article also discusses the Jesuit scholar's critical support for the Junta Revolucionario de Gobierno ( October - January ). The concluding section discusses Ellacuría's relevance for contemporary Latin American politics.

The historiography of the Nicaraguan workers' movement suffers from two basic problems: an extreme paucity and dispersion of primary sources and a tendency to compensate with analytic frameworks for what is lacking in substance. The triumph of a revolutionary movement in 1979, genuinely interested in allowing the Nicaraguan people to become ‘dueños de su historia’, has stimulated the search for primary source materials and has awakened the interest of historians in the trajectory of class struggle in Nicaragua. However, if at this moment, we do not confront fundamental methodological problems this new search for the past will offer precious little illumination on the problems of class development and conflict in contemporary Nicaragua.