[4] It was under these conditions that the Guatemalan labour movement began to emerge, organizing indentured workers to resist the landowning class, with the country's first trade union being formed in 1877.
This led president Manuel Estrada Cabrera to begin offering concessions to the United Fruit Company, giving the corporation tax-exemptions, land grants and control of all railroads in the east of the country.
[8] By this time, anarcho-syndicalism had already developed a significant presence in the Guatemalan workers' movement, with syndicalists founding the Federación Obrera de Guatemala (FOG) in 1922.
[9] In 1926, the Orientación Sindical began to be published in Guatemala, calling for trade unions to take up direct action, outside of and in opposition to the country's political parties.
[10] However, this period of anarcho-syndicalist activity was brought to an end with the rise of Jorge Ubico and the Progressive Liberal Party to power, which transformed the country into a right-wing dictatorship.