Since the CIA-backed coup in 1954, opposition groups were continuously forming in an attempt to fight against the repression that the military and wealthy landowners in Guatemala had created. The UNRG formed as a leftist umbrella organization consisting of four groups: the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), the Revolutionary Organization of People in Arms (ORPA), the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) and the National Directing Nucleus of PGT (PGT-NDN). They became the public face of the long-running insurgency against the Guatemalan government throughout the Civil War. The URNG led the leftist opposition in peace negotiations with the conservative Guatemalan government. These negotiations began in 1987, and brought the end of the civil war when negotiations finished in 1996. They received support from Guatemala's rural poor as well as from urban intellectuals.