The recent history of Comunidad Nueva Alianza is a common representation of so many agricultural workers throughout Guatemala. It is peppered with the theme of oppression, exploitation, struggle for workers rights and lands, and ends with the magnificent example of self-organisation and self-determination which has resulted in the collectively owned and run plantation.

For generations the plantation was owned and managed by an individual land owner. The forty families who now own the land were the employees of that individual and worked faithfully to raise profits for him. In the 1990s due to the global fall coffee prices and bad management by the plantation owner, the families were not paid wages for 18 months and were barely surviving. Eventually the workers united and instigated a long legal process against the owner for those unpaid wages. During this legal process the owner went bankrupt and it appeared that the workers would lose everything. Showing amazing tenacity and human spirit they formed an independent workers union and in a desperate effort to retain the land their grandparents and parents had worked, they peacefully occupied the plantation on 14 May 2002. A long negotiation process ensued between the workers and the new boss - a Panamanian financial group. With the assistance of Fondo de Tierras (a Guatemalan Government body set up after the 1996 Peace Accords and dedicated to returning land to workers, ex-guerrillas and repatriated refugees), the collective finally got legal title to the plantation on 18 December 2004.