In the fertile valleys of Cauca (southwestern Colombia), indigenous people from the Nasa tribe are forcibly occupying agricultural properties, claiming to end monoculture in the country’s main sugar region.

Their irruptions by the dozens in the fields provoke sharp tensions and clashes with the workers of the sugar cane industry, often black populations who have been living there for more than a century, who find themselves driven from their land and their jobs.

A new conflict seems about to break out in this fertile valley of Corinto, below the mountain range, where everyone claims the land of their “ancestors”.

“By what right can they (the Nasas) affirm that these lands belong to them? Our ancestors lived here all their lives”, complains to AFP one of the leaders of the local black community.

The Nasa want to “build their houses over ours”, he accuses, denouncing the “violence” of the new occupants.

Nearly 2,500 Afro-descendants, “small and medium-sized sugar cane producers”, live in Severo Mulato, a village which adjoins several agricultural estates that are now occupied.

It is this same culture that the Nasa do not accept, which according to them dries up the soil and only enriches the barons of the sugar industry in Cali.

– “Stones and sticks” –

Since the election this summer of Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president in the country’s history, indigenous people have multiplied the occupations and confiscation of land by force in Cauca, already one of the departments most affected by violence. armed groups and drug trafficking.

In this region alone, there are 30 occupations of agricultural properties, including nine in the past month, according to the police.

Very popular among indigenous peoples, President Petro has promised an ambitious “land reform” to redistribute land in a country where land ownership is concentrated in the hands of a privileged few.

Access to land is at the heart of the conflict that has bloodied Colombia for almost six decades. In the 1960s, it was one of the main fuels of the armed struggle launched by several peasant guerrillas.

In the decades that followed, far-right paramilitaries violently dispossessed thousands of peasant families of their land for the benefit of large landowners and cattle herders.

Land occupation by natives now extends to seven of the 32 departments. Faced with the increase in the phenomenon, the government condemned and warned that the police would intervene.

The Nasa “cut everything and anything, they build huts, burn” the cane, says the Afro-descendant chief, while pointing with his machete to the charred sugar cane. The natives, he claims, have destroyed five hectares of cultivated land.

After the abolition of slavery in 1851, black populations bought land in exchange for their work. Today, most of their descendants cultivate sugar cane to sell it to large farms in the region.

“When we faced (the natives), we had to fight with stones because we have no other weapons. Stones and sticks.”

– “Recover” the valley –

A year ago, Severo Mulato’s camp was next to a sugar factory. Some 400 “landless” indigenous families, descended from the mountain, then occupied the place.

In the abandoned houses, invaded by mosquitoes, Nasa women and children now make a living around wood fires, feeding themselves in particular thanks to modest vegetable gardens.

“We put our lives in danger to claim our right to a piece of land”, pleads the leader of the group, face masked for fear of “judicial persecution”.

Colonization and large landowners made us “go to the mountains” where the land is not cultivable.

With a growing population, the natives had to destroy the forest to grow food, to the detriment of the local fauna and flora, he says.

That’s why they decided to “recover” the valley and destroy the sugar cane, to plant bananas, rice and corn instead.

Indigenous reserves currently cover almost 20% of the Cauca region. The natives claim that their lands are mainly “forested”, which would leave them without cultivable land.

Today, the natives are established on nearly 1,500 hectares and accuse the sugar barons of financing and manipulating the protest of black workers.

Tree trunks and trenches prevent the advance of the police who try to dislodge them. The villages of Afro-Colombian workers are close by. The valley is becoming a powder keg.

The union of sugar cane operators denounces the loss of “nearly 6,000 jobs”. The industry has allowed the “development of these communities”, wants to believe Juan Carlos Agudelo, spokesperson for these workers who claim their “right to work”.

Poverty in the Cauca, however, far exceeds the national average (58% against 39.5%).

“Communities have no school, they have no housing, no running water. Where is the development?” asks the occupations coordinator, hooded and walkie-talkie in hand.