After 36 years of civil war in Guatemala, a community of ex-guerrillas put down their arms to struggle for justice and subsistence with fair trade, organic coffee.

The War

War broke out between the largely peasant guerrillas and the US funded Guatemalan army in 1960 following a decade and a half of US funded military dictatorships. The US had lost control of the...
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After 36 years of civil war in Guatemala, a community of ex-guerrillas put down their arms to struggle for justice and subsistence with fair trade, organic coffee.

The War

War broke out between the largely peasant guerrillas and the US funded Guatemalan army in 1960 following a decade and a half of US funded military dictatorships. The US had lost control of the situation as centuries of racial strife and economic instability exploded into genocide. Some 200,000 were killed or disappeared. 97% of these deaths are arbitrated to the army. Over a million Guatemalans fled to Mexico. In 1996 peace accords were signed with United Nations assistance.

The Community and Their Coffee

One year after the signing of the peace accords, 33 families, who met through their participation in the guerrilla group ORPA, organized to receive a loan to buy a farm. After decades in exile in Mexico or mobilized in the mountains fighting, they no longer had stable homes to return to. They purchased an abandoned coffee farm called Santa Anita and set up a collective governance system. Despite their motivation and participation in international fair trade markets, they barely make enough money to get through the year and have no means to pay back the loan for the farm. The history of coffee in Guatemala, the main cash crop since the 1860's, has been marked by debt and government subsidies, even for the rich planters. Despite these economic hardships, Santa Anita La Union is much better off than people on neighboring farms. They earn twice as much in the fair trade market than in the conventional market. Through their collective organization they have founded schools and a pharmacy. Applying the revolutionary principles they learned with guns in the mountains, they work with machetes and international organizations to achieve the same goals; a dignified existence based on equality and sustainability.
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