This article contributes to migration and livelihood scholarship by reflecting on global and political dimensions of livelihoods and experiences of illegalisation in Central America. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research with Nicaraguan families and their migrant family members in Costa Rica, the article adopts a translocal livelihood perspective and uses the notion of everyday politics to explore migrants’ mobility practices and nuance the role and reach of illegalisation in relatively accessible South–South migration. In conclusion, the article reinvigorates the notion of ‘everyday politics of mobility’ to incorporate the multi-sitedness, multi-dimensionality and multi-directionality of translocalising livelihoods, offering a lens for future comparison of illegalisation within and beyond the so-called Global South.

Pancho Villa is an intriguing figure of the Mexican Revolution. His popular movement dominated northern Mexico from 1913 to 1915, greatly influencing the revolution's course and the character of modern Mexican politics. As a revolutionary, Villa remains immortalised as a bold and charismatic military leader who rose from poverty to attack the wealthy and powerful while championing peasants' and workers' rights. He also stands as a prominent symbol of national pride, a leader who fought against foreign domination and dared to attack the United States directly. But how ‘revolutionary’ were Villa and the Villista movement? What did they actually accomplish? If Francisco Madero stands for political rights and democracy, Emiliano Zapata for land reform, and Venustiano Carranza for nationalism and the 1917 Constitution, whatdoes Villa represent?

The issue of sovereignty has historically figured prominently in Latin American political discourse. From Simón Bolívar to Benito Juárez in the nineteenth century, to Juan Domingo Perón and Salvador Allende in the twentieth, to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez today, sovereignty and its corollary, the non-intervention principle, have been prominent among the region's watchwords. In the late 1950s a Mexican diplomat declared that ‘intransigent non-intervention’ was the ‘cornerstone of the Inter-American system’. Sometimes imbued with racialist elements, as in José E. Rodó's claim that Latin America had ‘an inheritance of race, a great ethnic tradition to maintain’, or in the recent claim by a Venezuelan general that the Latin American defence of sovereignty is ‘part of the legacy which our aboriginal ancestors have passed on to us through chromosomes’, the discourse on sovereignty and non-intervention has become a Latin American trademark.

Why do new parties split? Scholars of new party schisms shy away from leadership-centred explanations for fear of excessive voluntarism and thus fail to conceptualise differences between leaders systematically. This article challenges that trend, arguing that externally appealing, internally dominant leaders generate cohesion in new parties. It analyses why some externally appealing leaders are internally dominant, while others are not, and argues that this variation can make the difference between schism and survival. The article supports its argument through a representative case study: the fatal (and consequential) schism of Peru's United Left coalition in the late 1980s.

In 1848 the moderado administration of General José Joaquín Herrera staged public ceremonies to honour the ‘polko’ national guardsmen who had died defending Mexico City during the recent war with the USA. Herrera's government attempted to use the rituals to alleviate the pain of defeat and bring together a divided nation, as well as to reorganise the national guard into a military force manned by the well-to-do that would help preserve political stability and social harmony. Herrera's state-building project ultimately failed because the ceremonies could not surmount the tensions that afflicted Mexico. In the long run, the inability to restructure the national guard allowed Mexican statesmen in the late 1800s to disband that military force and to diminish its status in national patriotic discourse.

This article analyses the organisation of the Army of the Andes, created in Mendoza between 1814 and 1817 with the aim of reconquering Chile from the royalists. The first section studies the role of José de San Martín as an informal arbiter in Bernardo O'Higgins’ dispute with José Miguel Carrera. The aim is to explain why San Martín decided to support O'Higgins, and the immediate consequences of this alliance. The second section addresses the main characteristics of the Army of the Andes and the process of militarisation experienced by the local inhabitants. Everyday life in Mendoza became inseparable from the needs of the revolutionary army. The paper then considers the so-called guerra de zapa and the participation of irregular agents. The involvement of spies and guerrilla officers in the revolution increased as warfare intensified. The final section analyses the crossing of the cordillera by the insurgents and the revolutionary triumph of 12 February 1817 at Chacabuco.