When the Movement of Priests for the Third World (MSTM) met in May 1969, they agreed and published their coincidencias básicas, the fundamental political principles that united them as liberationist Christians. Noting the reality of marginalisation, oppression and injustice in the Third World and asserting a commitment to liberation ‘from all servitude’, they proceeded to affirm a loose definition of revolution:

This rather abstract illustration and utopian template hinted at a certain voluntarism, with its exhortation to ‘seek a Latin American socialism’ rather than declaring its real and impending advent. At the same time, the vague theory of revolution gestured towards structural change yet left unclear exactly what it meant. This may seem unfair: the demand for the socialisation of the means of production and power may have been a statement of intent, hinting at the notion of a transfer of power between classes. Nevertheless, certain elements that would normally be expected from revolutions – an explanation of the terms of revolution and explicit class analysis – were missing.

Beginning with a broad agreement could certainly serve as a base for more specific, concrete and committed elaborations. Nevertheless, later MSTM documents, such as the 1973 letter calling for a meeting of the group's regional coordinators to clarify the group's fundamental agreements, lay bare the diffi-culties they faced in building more concrete agreements. The four themes that required clarification were: Peronism, Socialism, the Church and the priests’ ‘lifestyle’. The summary of the coordinators’ meeting in May demonstrated consensus on none of the themes, and the Sixth National Encounter for September of that year was marked by such antagonism that no document was produced for the first time in the MSTM's history. To these sharp disagreements, we can add the diverse experiences and diverging trajectories of the wider liberationist Christian movement.