Sugar cane: from sweetener to fuel and its impacts as a monoculture in Candelaria

Abstract

In history, Saccharum officinarum, known as sugar cane, has connoted a status of greatness and recognition as well as misery and submission. Being one of the oldest crops, has allowed it to travel through different geographies and position itself as a device for progress and development in places where waters abound. Since before Columbus introduced it on his second trip to the New World, its properties were already referenced in industrial, ritual, medicinal and food use. This strengthened the perception and possession of the seed as an object of power. Progressively, the monoculture structure allowed it to establish itself as a necessary species for the extractivist economy where, in recent years, its transformation for the manufacture of biofuel has been privileged over that of table sugar. This "innovation" has left in its wake soil degradation, alteration of the hydrological cycle, loss of biodiversity, traditions, health and quality of life of human and non-human communities.

The present article is situated in the previous problem. Traces the environmental history of sugarcane in Candelaria, Valle del Cauca. It is treated as a biological and symbolic historical document that offers clues about its privilege, and constant chaining to a hegemonic discourse that between the decades of the 30s and 50s, allows it to position itself, in later years, in a perennial crop. Finally, it exposes the adverse effects that its extensive planting brought to the inhabitants of Candelaria, as well as the decision to turn it into fuel alcohol