On Sunday June 21, Colombians will elect their country’s next president. The choice could not be more stark, with far-right firebrand Abelardo de la Espriella leading in polls against his rival and prominent leftist lawyer and activist Ivan Cepeda. At stake in the election is the future of Colombia’s fraught peace process and the redistribution of lands to communities long displaced by Colombia’s decades-long civil war. In May, journalists Manuel Ortiz and Andrés Gómez traveled to Cauca, in Colombia’s southwest where violence between rival Indigenous communities highlights the delicate balance on which the South American country’s future hangs.
She had learned to work the land since she was a child. She was strong and brave, say those who knew her. She dreamed of owning a small piece of land and seeing it flourish alongside her daughter.
That is why, when Carmen Velasco Tombé remembers Flor Alba, she does not speak first about politics or territorial disputes; she speaks about shattered dreams.
Flor Alba Tombé Velazco died on May 21, 2026, in La Ensillada, a high altitude region located between the Misak reservation of Guambía and the Nasa reservation of Pitayó, in Colombia’s Cauca department, where a historic dispute over land ended up pitting two Indigenous peoples against one another.
Tombé Velazco was 28 years old and left her daughter, Lisbet, in the care of her mother, who still finds strength by remembering the young woman who dreamed of moving forward in life.
On May 21, Cauca experienced a tragedy. Members of the Misak and Nasa communities clashed in the area known as La Ensillada. The reason: Colombia’s National Land Agency (ANT) failed to consult both communities when it “organized” the territory in December 2023. This reignited disputes over land and over spaces considered sacred, made up of high mountain wetlands and lagoons, which both peoples claim as their own.
As a result of the confrontation, eight Indigenous people died: four Misak and four Nasa. More than 100 people were injured on the Misak side and over 40 on the Nasa side.
Another victim of the dispute was Nasa leader Hernán Perdomo. The pain caused by his death was reflected in the words of José Condua, a leader and former council member of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), who, during the funeral, could barely find words to explain the loss.
“All we can say to the Perdomo family is: stay strong, stay resilient. It is not easy because our words as human beings will not fill the void left by Elder Hernán, who is no longer here. And perhaps today we are together as a community, but after we bury our elder, the family will have to continue carrying that emptiness, and so will we.”
The conflict between the two communities dates back to colonial times, and neither independence nor Colombia’s 1991 Constitution managed to resolve it through dialogue. Today, with Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s policy of deepening democracy through land formalization in a country that has never undergone a comprehensive agrarian reform, the situation has flared up once again.
State fuels distrust, confusion
The Misak claim ownership of the disputed wetlands and lagoons — the páramo — arguing pre-Hispanic occupation as well as a Royal Decree issued by the Spanish Crown in 1700. The Nasa, meanwhile, argue the same lands were consolidated under a former chiefdom and therefore belong to them.
While the ANT’s 2023 resolution heightened tensions between the communities, earlier efforts — including a restructuring and expansion of Misak territory during former President Álvaro Uribe’s administration in 2022 — also fueled the long-simmering stand off, though dialogue between the two sides kept violence at bay.
Alexander Tunubalá of the Misak was a tenth-grade student at the time and still remembers those assemblies.
“There were authorities … who understood the issue very well, and I remember the schools were there too; there were many Nasa people, Misak people, teachers, officials as well.”
Then, following the ANT’s resolution, it exploded. Both sides say the language of the government’s muddled declaration added to the conflict, sewing yet more confusion over which side owns what. The officials statement reads, in part:
“The opinion of the Subdirectorate of Ethnic Affairs and the circular issued by the Agency’s general director indicate that protected third parties include the already formalized collective property of the Guambía Indigenous reservation. In other words, the clarification of the titles of Mosoco, Pitayó, and Yaquivá is recognized, while at the same time guaranteeing that clarifying those titles cannot, by itself, dispossess or limit Guambía’s territory.”
The statement fueled distrust, and in December 2025, the Nasa decided to create a boundary fence of just over 800 meters. They demarcated their territory, set up six checkpoints, and in the process, destroyed fences belonging to Misak families and drove away their cattle.
The state, say both sides, failed to grasp the magnitude of the problem.
Miguel Antonio Yalanda Calambas speaks of those days as someone recalling a long chain of closed doors:
“So, first of all, we blocked the Pan-American Highway… and there was also supposed to be a dialogue there… And in the end, we had to go all the way to Bogotá, to the Foreign Ministry.”
Just like the Misak, the Nasa warned state institutions about the risk of violence. They sought to have the territorial conflict addressed institutionally by publicly calling for the intervention of the relevant authorities. That intervention never came.
And thus followed the tragedy of May 21.
What should never have happened
Miguel Antonio Yalanda Calambas says that on May 20, at around 11 PM he and other members of the Misak began to climb a nearby hill, prepared to dismantle the fence erected by the Nasa.
Among them was Jairo Tunubalá, among those to die in the ensuing violence.
“We are going to defend what is ours because they are invading us, they are taking our land away because those lands belonged to our father,” Jairo told his brother before leaving.
The group walked for five hours, and at four in the morning, May 21, they attacked the six checkpoints, tying up the Nasa men stationed there.
Pablo Pacho, governor of the Nasa community of Pitayó, remembers the moment with a mixture of anger and exhaustion:
“At four, they started arriving at the checkpoints. They tied people up, beat them, destroyed the pots, the dishes, everything. Because each checkpoint had its own little kitchen where we prepared our food, they ruined all of that; they tied people up.”
The Misak proceeded to dismantle the fencing, and within an hour, the barrier had been destroyed. By 5:30 AM, dozens of Nasa arrived, and the fighting began.
Alexander Tunubalá, Jairo’s brother, still remembers the final attempt to prevent the tragedy:
“I even told them (the Nasa): No one is going to get hurt here; you have your children, we have ours. Besides, you are my brothers; you have different blood, but in this conflict, we have to do things the right way, not with fights, not with blows.”
It was not enough.
Among the dead on the Misak side: Luis Enrique Tunubalá, Flor Alba Tombe, Jairo Rodrigo Tunubalá Morales, and Luis Enrique Tunubalá Fernández. Among the Nasa: Wilmar Darío Caña Imbachi, Albeiro Dizu, Alonso Chaguendo, and Hernán Perdomo.
The fighting lasted through the morning. Cruz Elena Osa still shudders when recalling the clash.
“They took us against our will, some people were taken, they tied them up to take them there, some were forced to take off their shoes… they constantly told us that if their community members were killed, they would mistreat us there as well.”
Humanitarian interventions by the Municipal Government, as well as the United Nations and the Catholic Church eventually brought the violence to an end. But the wounds remain open.
The Misak report more than 100 people seriously injured, many of them by gunfire; the Nasa also report more than forty people severely injured by stones and machetes.
There are also fears that dissident factions of Colombia’s leftist paramilitary group FARC may have had a hand in the conflict.
“The presence of illegal armed actors affects and conditions the peoples’ exercises of governance and territoriality within the territory,” reads one analysis from the Institute of Intercultural Studies at Colombia’s Javeriana University.
Processing grief
“Here, there are no winners or losers,” said José Condua, during the funeral of leader Hernán Perdomo:
“There is pain here, there is sadness here, there is helplessness here. That is why we must recognize that today there is pain in the community of Pitayó; but that over there [in the Misak nation] there are also families carrying the same pain and, like Pitayó, we acknowledge it.”
After the bloodshed, some leaders are now insisting on dialogue and intervention by the state. José Condua is one of them.
“The messages we must leave are messages of unity and calls for dialogue, and for institutions to pay attention to this problem. If, in the middle of two groups that are fighting, there is no commission to guarantee dialogue, it will be very difficult for us to come together, especially with pain, anger, and hatred, because we are human beings. We have to feel all of that, but we must also find the wisdom to engage in dialogue.”
Liliana Pechené, Misak governor of Guambía, is also convinced that violence can be de-escalated, but she demands that the state undertake an agreed-upon agrarian reform and calls on both peoples to unite around that demand.
“What our parents, grandparents, and elders taught us is that we must continue recovering land; in other words, we must carry out agrarian reform. And that is the invitation we make (…) So I believe that this is our task and our responsibility because there is no other path.”
No democracy without consensus
The Colombian government’s actions to purchase land and formalize property titles demonstrate goodwill, but the state’s inexperience in negotiating interethnic territorial disputes amid the operations of illegal armed groups is evident, reflecting decades of war and only a few years of peacebuilding.
The outburst of violence also highlights the need to deepen peace as a national political project and to strengthen the state’s institutional capacity to mediate interethnic conflicts when assigning territories.
The government of Gustavo Petro, through the country’s National Land Agency, has managed more than 700,000 hectares for land access and formalized nearly 1.8 million hectares, while at the same time establishing 133 new Indigenous reservations and granting 105 collective land titles to Afro-descendant communities. In a country where land concentration has been one of the deepest roots of inequality and armed conflict, this represents relief for historically excluded communities.
But mistakes are also being made.
In Colombia, just 1% of landowners hold 45% of rural land, while just 4.2% of land owned by communities — including the Misak and Nasa — is arable. The government, for its part, has sought to formalize land ownership, but has remained largely deaf to local concerns.
“As you saw on Wednesday,” notes José Condua, “when the first government delegation came, what mediocre responses they gave … The institutions have left us alone.”
A statement by outgoing President Petro acknowledged the centrality of land in the conflict. “The basis of the conflict is the scarcity of fertile land in the mountains of Cauca in the face of Indigenous population growth.” Petro also hinted at the possible involvement by paramilitary groups. “I once warned about interethnic wars that could even be exploited and intensified by drug-trafficking armed groups.”
Still, one month after the tragedy, the government’s only intervention has been militarization. Today, there are more than 500 soldiers stationed between both communities, and this has prompted harassment by the Dagoberto Ramos Front — the dissident FARC group believed to have had a hand in the conflict — creating fears of confrontations with security forces.
In addition, the Misak and Nasa remain wary of the security forces because of crimes committed by Colombia’s armed forces in previous decades.
A shared responsibility
Walking through the site of the clash, José Condua returns again and again to the same idea: A bad agreement is better than a perfect war.
The phrase summarizes the challenge facing both peoples, and the country.
Misak governor Pechené says both peoples must reflect on the political implications of the conflict and what a failure to achieve dialogue means for the country.
“I think it is time to leave the mistrust behind and become serious because if we are going to govern this country, we have to take things seriously. And these deaths we have witnessed in recent days, these people who were killed among ourselves, must become a lesson. This must never happen again because if it happens again … What kind of country are we proposing?
Leaders like Condua propose that the disputed territory become a forest reserve and that agrarian reform be implemented so Misak families do not have to convert the land into pasture.
Given the area’s population growth, Cruz Elena Osa of the Misak does not consider the proposal viable.
“They (the Nasa) have the proposal from the Pitayó council to turn this area, where the clashes took place, into a reserve so it can return to forest, which is not viable for us because we have 250 families who depend on what they produce there, on the work they do there.“
Although it may not seem so, both positions are closer than they appear: Agrarian reform as a guarantee of prosperity for rural Indigenous communities.
Having cultivable land to support her family was Flor Alba’s dream. And in the end, her death and the deaths of seven other Indigenous people show that the absence of a comprehensive and negotiated agrarian reform continues to exact human and environmental costs in Colombia.
The lesson from Cauca, ultimately, is that territorial disputes cannot be resolved simply through bureaucratic resolutions. A territory is interwoven with many voices.
This story was first published by Terra 360, a digital news site exploring issues impacting communities across Latin America, and the independent Colombian news outlet El Turbión.
Manuel Ortiz is a photojournalist and founder of Terra 360. He is based in the Bay Area. Andrés Gómez is director of Turbión and has long covered environmental and social conflicts across Colombia.
