Use command other than \item to render lists in LaTeX export

Question

I am trying to come up with a template for moderncv package. I would like to be able to render org-mode lists using \cvitem for example. Better yet, if I could choose the LaTeX command for rendering list items (there are several available in this package). I know about :environment and :options but these don't really help. I would really prefer to make this as much independent of the export back-end as possible, so that it would be less painful to export the same document as HTML if need be.

Answer 1

An export filter (section 12.15 of org documentation) can do that:

(defun my-latex-item (text backend info)
  "Replace \\item with \\cvitem."
  (when (org-export-derived-backend-p backend 'latex)
    (concat "\\cvitem" (substring text 5))))

(add-to-list 'org-export-filter-item-functions
         'my-latex-item)

For extending with other back-ends the when can be replaced by a cond.