The MLN-20 attempted to gain contacts with the campesino base of some of these movements, but little coordination resulted, in large part due to the huge political differences.
As the leading militant force against the regime in Panama, the MLN-20 saw its first few years using urban guerrilla tactics, but while some assaults on soldiers and bank expropriations saw success, there was little organizing amongst the masses.
As militants were captured and killed, the MLN-20 became so weak that it entered a dormant phase in which some fled into temporary exile, while others remained to quietly expand base support.
It also formed ties with Marxist revolutionaries in other countries, and some members went on to fight in the Sandinistas and the FMLN, and it continued to train militarily in preparation for the return to the armed struggle.
Opposing much of the late 1980s movement against Noriega as bourgeois and United States-influenced, the MLN-29 continued to organize poor and working class opposition.