Guaviare's post-conflict frontier open to tourism
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Loading... - Claudia Monet
- 09 Sep 2022
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Diego Cifuentes points to the last remaining coca bush in an open field. One of many migrant workers who left his native Venezuela to find work in the jungles of Guaviare, Cifuentes doesn’t want a return to the past when a pound of coca paste from a plantation would fetch COP$2 million on the open market – of which $500,000 pesos had to be handed over to illegal armed groups in form of a “transportation tax”. Examining dried leaves of an illegal cash crop, Cifuentes remarks: “There’s barely enough to make a cup of tea now.”
The 46-year old subsistence farmer believes that the sooner Guaviare abandons its coca harvest, legal agricultural alternatives could feed all of Colombia. “An hectare of yucca in the Guaviare can produce up to 40 tons a month,” says Cifuentes trundling through the wild grass to inspect another alternative crop to coca. But, the sheaves of corn have all but dried up. “It’s not climate change, but the result of the ‘state’s presence’ in the area,” claims the no nonsense farmer of the aerial fumigation with glyphosate that turned much of this arable field into a dust bowl. “It will take years for corn to come back,” he says.
The Guaviare department in southeastern Colombia encompasses large swathes of Amazon rainforest and Guiana Shield rock formation. It is a frontier region that contrasts with the intensive agro-industry of nearby Meta with its expanse of pineapple and African palm plantations. In Guaviare, the river that gives its name to the department, remains the only way people can move between one community and the next or reach the market in the departmental capital San José. A paved road extending 380 kilometers to Villavicencio and interior of country is one of the impressive infrastructure marvels of the region that just several years ago few would dare to travel given guerrilla check points. All this seems to have changed, though.
But it is still a three hour boat ride from Cifuentes’ jungle outpost to San José, making as the farmer claims, any possibility of seeing money from the government for crop substitution futile and costly. According to the Final Accord signed between the Colombian Government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla in November 2016, the National Program for Illicit Crop Substitution – PNIS – entitles coca farmers to have access to credit and a cash payment of some $36 million pesos (US$12,000) spread out over two years to ensure basic subsistence if they voluntary eradicate their illegal crops. But, the payments have faced serious delays, and according to Cifuentes, for many, the money spent buying gasoline to fuel a boat, plus added expenditures in town, is simply not a good business proposition. So, instead of relying on politicians, he is banking on the pink river dolphins that are seen swimming in a nearby lagoon. Read More...
