The ethnic communities want to put pressure on the new government of Gustavo Petro, who has promised an ambitious agrarian reform.
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The Route goes, straight between the sugar cane fields, under the sun of this region in the north of the Cauca, in the southwest of Colombia. “Past governments have undertaken to give land to the natives and they did not hold their promises. Today, we are the producers, who pay the price of this government abandonment,” explains Alvaro Franco, while driving From his 4 x 4. Owner of 150 hectares, he hires his car on the dirt road which leaves towards the mountain and points a shaved field: “The natives have ransacked everything. And, look, they have energized the bridge”, shows -Al, while stressing that “the problem of land occupations here dates back more than fifteen years”. The coming to power of Gustavo Petro on August 7, rekindled tensions.
Convinced that the very high concentration of land ownership is one of the causes of the country’s misery and the violence of the rural world, the country’s first left -wing president promised an ambitious agrarian reform. By occupying private property, in the Cauca and almost everywhere in the country, natives and peasants intend to put pressure on the new government.
“But they do not facilitate his task, sighs a relative of the president. Sending the army as the right was doing is not a solution, letting it go either.” For the Minister of Agriculture, Cecilia Lopez, “Land occupations and other assaults serve the discourse of those who do not want agrarian reform. It limits the room for maneuver of the government”.
conflict between natives and afroders
The north of the Cauca department extends between two mountain cordillera separated by a large fertile plain. The occupation of land properties remains sporadic. Here and there, makeshift tents, made of plastic tarpaulins on wooden stakes, mark the presence of small native groups, descended from the neighboring mountain. Masked face and machete on the side, young people are on the guard near the few dams – three ends of wood across the road – which prevent the passage of tractors and trucks on the paths.
“The government deals with us in invaders, but we are only recovering what belongs to us,” sums up Arcadio Escue, 56 years old. Indian of the NASA community, he was of all fights for the “Liberation of the Earth” organized by the Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca (CIC). Founded in the early 1970s, jack is one of the strongest – and combative – country organizations.
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