The community of Finca Sonador was founded in the early 80's when refugees fleeing civil war in El Salvador and landless farmers from Costa Rica settled onto 800 hectares of land. In recent years, indigenous families have als joined the community.

The families first began by cultivating the parcels of land given to them with traditional methods of subsistence agriculture. Later they began planting coffee, sugarcane and other crops for commercial purposes. In the past few years some families have switched to organic agriculture. Protected rainforest makes up one half of Longo Mai's land.

In the last years, the Longo Mai comunity developped an alternative tourism experience, which promote the cultural exchange and the immersion in the central american culture. In 2004, the experience has been awarded with the "ToDo 2004" prize of the socially responsible tourism contest. You can read here the text from the contest which describe the Longo Mai tourism experience.