Land of indigenous people and communities of African origin, devastated by violence and extreme poverty, with a fully expanding cocaine business, Cauca will be the acid test of Gustavo Petro's commitment to pacifying rural Colombia and converting the production of food in an economical locomotive.
In the south of this undulating landscape, flanked by the Andes and the Pacific, and crossed by the Cauca River, there are new clashes between the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the so-called "dissident" guerrillas, who refused to join. the FARC in handing over their weapons after signing the peace process.
Further north: A series of disputes over property rights between indigenous people and sugarcane farmers highlights the challenges of land reform agreed to in the 2016 peace deal but never implemented. In the western mountain range, the option of growing coca is even more tempting in times of crisis and hunger.
On all these fronts, Petro has created new forums for local and national dialogue. The Southwest Pacific region will be "the investment priority of national public policies," the president announced last week.
With his powerful indigenous and Afro-Colombian organizations -two peoples who fight in unison in Cauca-, the left-wing president has a strong base of activists to promote his national project from below. Petro has appointed the indigenous leader of Cauca, Giovani Yule, to manage the process of returning land to the indigenous.
The development project in Cauca will be headed by the new vice president, the famous Afro-Colombian social leader, Francia Márquez, a native of Suárez, a small town three hours by car from Cali founded by the descendants of fugitive slaves who are dedicated to mining gold craft.
Márquez's first task: to install irrigation systems for crops such as coffee, bananas and cassava that can stop the advance of coca; ensure basic sanitation and drinking water.
For the tireless fighter for the rights of "nobodies", the presidential commission is one more challenge of the work begun in 2009 with the battles against the hydroelectric dam on the mountain upriver from Suárez, as well as the protests against the pollution of the river result of illegal gold mining and the arrival of large mining companies.
Tensions were already palpable last month on the shattered asphalt highway that leads to Suarez from Cali. “This is guerrilla territory. Do not leave the road!” warned an armed military guard at a police checkpoint. The previous government of conservative Iván Duque “shredded the peace agreement and the territory left by the FARC has been occupied by other armed groups,” says Lisiare Ararat, a community leader in Suárez and a longtime friend of Márquez.
The proliferation of armed criminal groups has been disastrous. Hundreds of social leaders, Afro-Colombian and indigenous activists, and environmental defenders have been assassinated. Former FARC combatants too: "They hand over their weapons and after a month they appear dead," says Richard Morales, leader of the Misak ethnic group, during a collective interview with indigenous leaders in the municipality of Piendamó.
More than 1,500 people have been killed since the signing of the peace agreement and Cauca is where there are more dead.
In Suárez there are four gas stations. There are many for a humble town of 20,000 inhabitants, 70% Afro-Colombian, where there are more motorcycles than cars and the streets lack asphalt. But the demand for fuel is inexhaustible due to the two main economic activities in the area. The first, the extraction of gold by autonomous miners, barequeros, who work in the vein mines in the mountains. Second, for drug production. “These buckets are going to be filled with gasoline for the cocaine laboratories,” said the employee of the Petromil gas station, at the entrance to the town.
It is difficult for the legal economy to compete with drugs. “They pay 100,000 pesos (24 dollars) a day to scrape coca, so many of our young people stop studying to work with coca,” explains the deputy mayor of Suárez, Danilo Caraballi. What does the new government have to do? “Agrarian reform to legalize the lands of those who do not have property titles; support agricultural producers to encourage coffee, cassava, cocoa, cardamom; and managing the return of students to school with free tuition”, he replies.
All of these are measures that the new president supports, as well as the full implementation of the Havana agreement on peace and food sovereignty through the substitution of imported food for national production. Petro has also promised to comply with the anti-extractive agenda promoted by the Colombian indigenous people -and by Francia Márquez- by announcing a phased divestment from the extraction of fossil fuels and greater controls on large-scale mining.
“As long as the peace agreement is implemented, many problems are solved here,” says Lisiare Ararat. Moreover, the legalization of marijuana advocated by the new government will create opportunities to replace coca with a crop that – as has been shown in the US – can generate abundant income through exports.
The key will be territorial: the legalization of black peasant lands and the recovery of indigenous lands guaranteed by the 1991 Constitution that Petro helped write, but that has not been respected.
In Cauca, thousands of black peasants lack property titles despite the fact that their ancestors bought their land after the abolition of slavery in 1851. They did so with the savings they had accumulated with the income they pocketed during the workday, one a week. , in which barequero slaves were allowed to keep the gold they found.
In addition to individual requests, nine communities around Suárez have claimed collective title to the land.
At the same time, indigenous people - who overwhelmingly supported Petro and Márquez in the May elections - have stepped up direct action to reclaim what they see as their land. In recent weeks, 1,000 hectares have been occupied by indigenous people, causing clashes with workers, mainly from sugar cane. Petro aims to boost conversations between indigenous people and landowners.
It will not be easy in a region where the hierarchy of power has barely changed since the conquest. “It will be difficult for the elites to let go of power in Cauca,” warns Gisel Pinta, one of the members of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) – which represents the Nasa, Guambiano, Totoroez, Polindara, Guanaco, Kokonuko, Kisgo, Yancona, Inga and Eperara- in an interview held in Popayán, the colonial capital of Cauca.
Representatives of the conservative opposition have attacked Petro in recent days for allegedly creating incentives for the invasion of land by indigenous people. “It is a strategy to see if they start a dialogue that grants them land that does not belong to them,” the conservative senator of the Democratic Center party María Fernanda Cabal said in the magazine Semana.
But after decades of struggle, the high degree of organization of the social movements and the close coordination between the Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples will help the new president
"We are in constant dialogue with the indigenous council," says Caraballi. "They collaborated so that France became vice president, mobilizing the vote for her and Petro." Indigenous leaders say the same. “We are going to work with France. She has always governed a political class based on seven families in Colombia, as if it were a kingdom. It is the first time that we have a government that represents us”, says Ancizar Majin Tintinago, Senior Counselor of the CRIC of the Yanacona ethnic group in an interview held at the indigenous university of Popayán.
In case the support of the new president and his vice president is not enough, the indigenous people of Cauca have other strategies. Before speaking, Ancizar Majin -who carried the staff of the Yanacona leaders-, invited me to participate in the rite inside the university's worship center, in which we walked between logs arranged in a spiral before burning in a bonfire. smoking fruits such as mango and coca leaves as a form of offering to the gods of nature.
