When the Central American countries experienced internal conflicts, revolutions, or dictatorships during the last decades of the twentieth century, armed violence was not new in the region at all. It was constant since the end of the independence process. That violence came by institutional, counter-institutional, and para-institutional forces that appeared, disappeared, or mutated throughout time. In the well-documented Armies Without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America, 1821-1960 (2004, Oxford University Press), historian Robert H. Holden shows this reality as a common denominator in Central American history, which developed in each state according to the context.