The Nicaraguan agrarian reform, which began with the Sandinista victory of July 1979, is unusual in at least two, respects. First, the process of cooperative development has been the result of a large-scale mobilization of peasants and rural workers by their own mass organizations, and these rural organizations have largely shaped the course of the agrarian reform. And second, the new cooperative members benefited through the agrarian reform have included both men and women. The origins of Nicaragua's cooperative movement are found in the struggle led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) against the Somoza dictatorship in the late 1970s. By that time, landless rural workers, the majority without access to permanent employment, and smallholders, who also formed part of the seasonal wage labor force for agro-export production, accounted for over 75% of the rural economically active population (EAP) of 430,065 (Deere and Marchetti, p. 42). The FSLN successfully organized both groups around wage demands and working conditions on the coffee and cotton estates, and in 1978 the local committees merged to form Nicaragua's first rural union, the Rural Worker's Association (ATC). By the time of the Sandinista victory, the ATC had more than 50,000 men and women members; a year later, its membership included over one-quarter of the rural EAP.