After the Larrea faction received a ransom of over one million Paraguayan guaraní (over $230,000) in June 2014 for a kidnapped businessman from Yby Yau, the group had enough funds to become independent.

In September 2014, the Larrea brothers and their followers fully broke away from the EPP and formed the Armed Peasant Association; the group was initially believed to have around 13 members.

[5][9] According to the government, ACA modeled itself on the Colombian FARC and wanted to become involved in the illegal drug trade in Paraguay through taxation or extortion of marijuana farmers; an expert from InSight Crime considered this assumption likely, as one ACA member, Rubén Darío López Fernández, was known to have close links with the First Catarinense Group, a Brazilian crime group.

[1] Eventually, the group managed to kidnap police sergeant Idilio Morínigo and Mennonite settler Abraham Fehr in order to hold them for ransom, but its demise continued.

[16] In December 2016, four ACA militants stormed the Silva Smith hacienda in the Concepción Department, and took the family and its employees hostage, demanding 300 million guaraní for their release.

[6] In March 2017, Paraguayan security forces arrested several men and women, including relatives of the deceased Jara Larrea brothers, who were suspected to be connected to the ACA or EPP.

Just a few days before this incident, the vigilante self-defense group "Justicieros de la Frontera" had kidnapped the sister-in-law of Alejandro Ramos, another Leftist rebel leader.

The group's members, of unknown number, operate as part-time insurgents, stealing and extorting farms during periodic raids and then returning to civilian life.

[4][27] Security forces initially claimed credit and declared the group destroyed, but journalists later revealed that drug smugglers had actually been responsible for ACA's defeat.

[32] In 2021, Vice journalist Amy Booth also stated that "it's unclear to what extent the EPP’s original Marxist ideology has survived in splinter groups such as ACA-EP.