On 19 April 2018, Nicaraguan students took to the streets to protest against social security reforms by Daniel Ortega's government, which included cutting pensions and raising taxes. The state cracked down on the demonstrators. In the following weeks, more than 300 people were killed in violent clashes with the police. Nevertheless, the government could not silence the students’ voices nor keep people off the streets; clergy, business leaders, campesinos (peasants), and other Nicaraguans spoke out in favour of the students’ demands. On 23 April, these people participated in one of the largest marches in Nicaraguan history, calling for justice and democracy. At the time of writing, it is unclear how the situation in Nicaragua will develop. What this episode clearly shows, however, is that, just as in the past, Central American students still play an important role in shaping the political landscapes of their countries. This makes Heather Vrana's source reader a particularly timely and necessary volume.

The 59 texts she has compiled, which include speeches, memoirs, interviews, communiqués and manifestos, demonstrate that since the first student movements in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua came into being in the 1920s and 1930s, Central American students have continuously been ‘at the forefront of revolutionary anti-colonial nationalist movements’ (p. 2). Guatemalan students, for example, contributed to the overthrow of presidents Manuel Estrada Cabrera and Jorge Ubico in 1920 and 1944. Three decades later, Nicaraguan students formed the backbone of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN), a left-wing guerrilla movement that brought down the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 as part of the first successful armed revolution in Latin America since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Students in El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica, too, shaped the region's history, as they promoted social justice, organised strikes, took up arms and challenged global capitalism, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

By covering student activism from 1929 until the early 1980s, this volume demonstrates that the phenomenon in Central America was not the product ‘of the global conjuncture of the late 1960s’ (p. 2). Rather than the creation of ‘so-called Global 1968’, Vrana argues, Central American students saw themselves as the ‘inheritors of the struggles’ of heroes such as Simón Bolivar, Augusto César Sandino and José Martí (p. 2). Despite this emphasis on the unique regional origins and dynamics of the student movements, the texts in this source reader, particularly those published after the Cuban Revolution, also clearly show that students framed their local activities and national problems in the context of a global struggle – in which young people played a key role – against colonialism, imperialism and dependency. A Costa Rican student, for example, in an article about Mexico, France and Czechoslovakia, notes that ‘latent in all of our societies [was] the cry of the youth’ (p. 233). In the case of Central American student activism, then, the global and the local were not mutually exclusive. Rather, they strengthened, shaped and intensified one another.

Furthermore, the sources in this volume, originally published in Spanish but here translated into English, help scholars understand how Central American students, professors and university administrators in the period 1929–83 perceived the world around them and, in particular, how they envisaged universities’ responsibilities to society. Although their ideas became more radical and international in outlook from the 1960s onwards, the book also reveals there was a remarkable level of continuity in the way students and their professors understood the role of the university in national life. The idea that the university was at the vanguard of the people's struggle for social justice, education and development, for example, was present throughout most of the twentieth century. Indeed, already in 1933, a professor in El Salvador claimed that universities provided ‘the best guarantee of success’ and opened ‘unexpected horizons for the advancement of the pueblo’ (p. 35). Almost 50 years later, in 1980, Guatemalan economist Saúl Osorio Paz wrote an open letter about how ‘heroic universitarios’ helped the pueblo ‘overcome misery, backwardness and dependence’ (p. 262).

This source reader, then, gives insight into how students understood their relationships with a variety of social groups, such as workers, the urban poor and campesinos. As a result of its focus on the university, however, the book tells us little about how Central Americans outside of the academic world perceived the student movements. Students believed in their responsibility to lead the pueblo, but how did Central Americans from different social backgrounds respond to these claims? Did they join the students’ cause and, if so, why? Indeed, as Vrana points out, scholars need to critically analyse the connections between students, who were usually part of the elite, and the ‘people they purported to represent’ (p. 11). To do so, historians need sources that go beyond the university, and cover the experiences and ideas of workers and campesinos. Of course, this was not the purpose of this volume, but future researchers will hopefully find ways to integrate the voices of different social groups into the histories of protest, mobilisation and revolution in Central America.

One final point is that, although the 1980s was such an important period in Central American history, the compiler has surprisingly chosen to end her compilation in 1983: it includes few documents from this revolutionary decade (only seven out of the 59) and only two sources (both poems) from the period after 1983. This seems strange, as it would have been interesting to read about Central American students’ perceptions of the US invasions of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1988), the winding-down of Cold War tensions, the violent Contra War in Nicaragua, and the Central American peace agreements. Surely student movements shaped and participated in these processes too?

There are very few English publications that deal with Central American history and student activism in the twentieth century, so Heather Vrana's source reader makes an important contribution to the historiography. It is useful for teachers, students and researchers interested in Latin American history, social movements, activism, development, state violence and revolution. Throughout the book, Vrana's explanations, introductions and summaries are clear and well written, which makes the volume easily accessible and a pleasure to read. Even though some of the primary sources are complex and need a lot of context, the majority of the 59 texts are powerful, smart, diverse and – in some cases – incredibly sad. Overall, this volume provides the reader with unique insights into the ideas and experiences of Central American students in some of the region's most tumultuous decades.