[3] JPT was founded in the second half of the 1950s, following the banning of PGT after the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz.
The Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) were formed, its first fighters were JPT members who had obtained scholarships to study in Cuba and who had started guerrilla warfare training there (without the blessing of the PGT leadership).
[6] In 1965 JPT and PGT took part in forming the Edgar Ibarra Guerrilla Front (FGEI), under the umbrella of FAR and based in Sierra de las Minas.
[4] When FAR and PGT parted ways in 1968 a major share of the erstwhile JPT members followed FAR rather than the mother party.
[11] JPT members were influential in Frente, which emerged as a dominant student organization in San Carlos University in the mid-1970s.