ICA, Peru – The fight began early one morning on a sandy dirt road between fields of lima beans, where farmers discovered an excavator machine digging a trench for a water pipe. Infuriated that the pipe would carry water pumped from beneath their farms, a crowd gathered and drove away the crew of workers in a fit of shouts.

Then the protesters set fire to the plastic pipes, leaving them charred and warped on the side of the road.

As tensions rose in the days after that confrontation, threats flew between the protesters and a group of men sent by the company that was laying the pipes. Some of the men wielded wooden clubs, a machete and a baseball bat. Some of the protesters faced criminal charges.

Read more here: The costs of Peru’s farming boom