Not until after the mid-nineteenth century did Guatemala become an important producer of coffee. The economy had languished during the last years of the colony and those immediately following independence because of political turmoil, locust infestations, and the separation of El Salvador, which produced the captaincy's main cash crop, indigo. In the 1840s and 1850s exports rebounded modestly with cochineal, a red dye made from the bodies of insects that lived on nopal cacti. The dye found a strong demand among domestic and foreign textile producers, and plantations and small holdings flourished around Amatitlán and Antigua, in the southwest of the country. But while cochineal could be very profitable in good years, production was a highly speculative activity, and a short rain shower at the wrong time or an unanticipated cold snap could ruin a year's work. In any event, production involved only a small part of the country and a few thousand workers. Led by the Economic Society of the Friends of the Country, a prodevelopment association subsidized by the government, a few landowners and Indian communities began to experiment with coffee in the 1850s and 1860s, in some places interplanting it with the cochineal. Expectations for the new crop were high.

But transition to coffee proved to be neither swift nor simple. Lessons learned planting coffee in Colombia and Costa Rica did not transfer easily to the soil and climate of Guatemala; several early efforts ended in disaster.