Comunidad Nueva Alianza is a fair trade, organic coffee and macadamia plantation owned and run by a cooperative of forty Guatemalan families. All profits raised by the community are divided amongst the community members and are used to improve the health, education and living conditions within the cooperative. Nueva Alianza is located in a temperate area 1000 meters above sea level in the Guatemalan municipality of El Palmar, Quetzaltenango. The cooperative works according to the principles of Direct Democracy and currently boasts within its organizational structure a Women's Committee, an Education Committee, and a Board of Directors dedicated to ensuring that all workers have equal rights. A visit to our community, either as a tourist or a volunteer, will give you the opportunity to learn our amazing history of exploitation or extended struggle for land and workers rights.
For generations the plantation was owned and managed by an individual land owner. In the 1990s, due to the global fall of coffee prices and poor management by the owner, the workers were not paid wages for a total of 18 months and barely survived. Consequently, they united and initiated a long legal process against the owner for those unpaid wages. During this legal process the owner declared bankruptcy and it appeared that they would lose everything. They formed an independent workers union in a desperate effort to retain the land their parents and grandparents had worked. With a loan from Fondo de Tierras, They purchased legal title to the plantation on December 18, 2004.
Their principal projects are: Fair trade of coffee and macadamia plantations; ecotourism; micro hydro-electric and biodiesel plants; Alianza Pure Water and Bamboo furniture workshop.