(San José del Guaviare) Recumbent trees, charred trunks, smoke rising in the distance, and, above all, the shrill hum of chainsaws… In the Colombian Amazon, the forest has been receding inexorably since the start of the guerrillas in 2016 which imposed its law on it.
Seen from the sky, the picture is even more distressing: in the distance, where the forest is supposed to be virgin, large expanses of land, fences, fields of coca and cows …
In the jungle of Guaviare, in southern Colombia, peasants clear land with chainsaws and start fires. They explain calling these scorched earth squares “graves”.
“The jungle does not belong to us, but we are obliged to cut it down in order to be able to buy food,” says one of the loggers, chainsaw in hand, a scarf on his face so as not to be identified.
All around him, majestic trees lie on the ground.
“Cattle trail”
Deforestation follows the “cattle trail”, a road built during the war by the former Marxist guerrillas of the FARC, in the heart of the Serrania de La Macarena National Park, intended to facilitate the movement of troops and the production of cocaine .
After the signing of the peace accords in Cuba in 2016, the guerrillas left.
In their wake, along the same dusty track of a hundred kilometers, land grabbers have arrived that no one dares to identify.
The state has never truly regained control of these vast, remote areas. “The most serious deforestation here has continued for five years,” laments Luis Calle, a community leader.
Logging, he hastens to specify, “is not the work of the peasants”, but “of the big traders” from other regions.
According to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies IDEAM, a public body, nearly 925,000 hectares of forest have been lost in Colombia since 2016, an area equivalent to that of Cyprus.
And 2017, the year of the disarmament of the FARC, was the worst of the century with 219,000 hectares deforested, 76% more than in 2015. The Amazon is now the most deforested region (63.7% ) from the country.
“Mini-army” and “mafias”
The guerrillas have protected this forest, note the villagers. They made their law reign there. And controlled the revenues from coca, which financed their armed struggle.
But “after peace, the rich came to destroy everything,” accuses Edilberto Lozada, a 50-year-old farmer. They took advantage of the fact that the inhabitants were “short of money” to buy their land at low prices, adds Luis Calle.
They also came to “choose” unoccupied land, as we say locally. Understand: clear large tracts of forests at will and with a machete.
Fences are now abundant throughout the area. A 40-year-old man, speaking on condition of anonymity, estimates that he alone deforested some 200 hectares, before giving up his task for fear of being arrested.
“I was able to clear a hectare a day,” says this former coca farmer. He remembers having formed a “mini-army” of a dozen lumberjacks, paid by a “boss” he has never met.
“These are people who come from other departments and, logically, their identity is unknown,” explains Albeiro Pachon, responsible for the environment in the governorate of Guaviare.
People caught exploiting the forest, financing or inciting deforestation are liable to 15 years in prison. “The subject of deforestation is treated as for a mafia”, assures Mr. Pachon.
Today, on these same roads and territories that the FARC used to take, cows and other herds graze.
“For anyone who wants to take over the land, whether you have documents or not, coming with cattle is easiest,” observes Claudio Maretti of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The savannah stretches out on either side of the track, where you can see few houses, a few stables.
Land clearing, bringing in cows for the meat market, and planting seedlings are expensive activities that only wealthy landowners can afford.
“Children of coca”
In what is known as the “Amazon deforestation arc”, the cattle herd grew from 1.08 million head of cattle in 2016 to 1.74 million in 2019 (+ 60%), according to the Foundation for conservation and sustainable development.
After the peace agreement, some coca growers tried their hand at other crops, but ultimately lost income. Amazon soil “is not the best place for agriculture,” Maretti notes.
On this weekend day, the peasants of a small village gather around dancing, beer, pool tables and traditional cock fights.
A popular Mexican song echoes through the night. “They call me the son of coca,” resumes the audience. The cultivation of the coca leaf, they admit, is the only profitable thing on these lands.
In the middle of the party, stories are circulating about those who have resumed collecting or “coca-scraping”, this time on behalf of FARC dissidents who took up arms after the 2016 agreement, and are said to be close to 2,700 men in this area.
“We are clearing the jungle […] to plant coca because it is the only thing that sustains us, for lack of guarantees from the government, ”explains the pioneer with the hidden face.
A coca farmer earns nearly $ 1,700 a month in a country where the minimum monthly wage is $ 248.
Although to a lesser extent, coca cultivation also contributes to deforestation. In Guaviare, 3,227 hectares are devoted to it, according to the UN, for more than 124,000 throughout the country, the world’s largest producer and exporter of cocaine.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, families from all over the country have colonized and cleared the Amazon jungle. Before coca, in the early 1900s, there was the rubber boom. Then came the displaced from wars.
Nobody knows who owns the land here, repeat the local peasants.
The land reform foreseen by the 2016 agreement is still pending and the signatories say it is the least advanced in five years of implementation.
In Guaviare, we predict an “angry” peasantry: “with hunger, there is no peace,” warns Edilberto Lozada.