Short answer. Yes, that circumstance alone triggers a presumption. Article 1602 presumes a sale with right to repurchase is really an equitable mortgage when the seller remains in possession as lessee or otherwise. Staying on the land as a tenant of your own buyer is exactly the situation the law treats as suspicious.
What the law says
When the vendor remains in possession as lessee or otherwise
Civil Code, Article 1602 — When a Sale Is Really a Mortgage. Read the full provision →
What the law says
any money, fruits, or other benefit to be received by the vendee as rent or otherwise shall be considered as interest which shall be subject to the usury laws
Civil Code, Article 1602 — When a Sale Is Really a Mortgage. Read the full provision →
Staying on as a lessee is a listed red flag
Article 1602 lists several circumstances that trigger a presumption against a genuine sale, and yours is named directly: the contract is presumed an equitable mortgage when the vendor remains in possession as lessee or otherwise. If you sold the land under a deed with right to repurchase but continued occupying it, now as a lessee paying rent to the very buyer who supposedly bought it from you, that fact alone is enough to trigger the presumption. You do not need to combine it with other suspicious circumstances for the law to take notice.
Why remaining in possession as lessee raises suspicion
A genuine sale ordinarily transfers both ownership and possession to the buyer, who then decides what to do with the property, including whether to lease it back to the seller or to anyone else. When the seller instead stays in possession as a tenant from the very start of the arrangement, it looks less like a completed transfer of ownership and more like the seller simply borrowed money, using the land as security, while continuing to use the property as before and making rent-like payments that function as interest.
The rent you pay may actually be treated as interest
Article 1602 addresses this directly with its closing sentence: any money, fruits, or other benefit to be received by the vendee as rent or otherwise shall be considered as interest which shall be subject to the usury laws. If your arrangement is recharacterized as an equitable mortgage, the rent you have been paying to your buyer is not treated as rent at all; it is treated as interest on what is really a loan, which then has to be evaluated against usury limits rather than accepted at face value as a lease payment.
What this means for your arrangement
Because you remained in possession as a lessee after the sale, you have a solid basis to argue the transaction was really an equitable mortgage rather than a true sale with right to repurchase, which would mean you never actually lost ownership and are, in substance, still the owner subject to a debt owed to your buyer. This presumption can affect how much you actually owe, since payments framed as rent may need to be reclassified and measured against usury limits.