Week 5 included a trip to Capachica which is a península that juts into Lake Titicaca. This was an attempt to see a different part of the Puno region. This part is a bit more of a broad high plain that ends to the east in a small beach along the lacustrine edge of Lake Titicaca. I was accompanied by another student, Melissa, who is an undergraduate anthropology student with the University of the Altiplano here in Puno. She is doing her summer internship with my host institution, registering guinea pigs, conducting guinea pig raising workshops, and administering surveys with local women involved in this program to raise guinea pigs. This was a great trip because while we worked with mostly Aymara communities in Vilquechico, we visited Melissa’s grandparents in Capachica, and they are of Quechua origin. I got the distinct pleasure of watching a new generation interact and relax with the old generation, the whole time speaking in their native language, Quechua. I also observed similar subsistence farming practices and baby pigs!!
I also visited two government offices, wanting to learn more about different coping strategies in the Puno region with regards to climate change, subsistence farming and water management, and what these all have to do with local beliefs, norms and attitudes. I had an excellent meeting with the regional government of Puno, in the office of the Environment, natural resources, and biodiversity conservation. We discussed their 2010-2014 strategy for climate change and their 2010-2014 strategy for biodiversity conservation. In summary, their strategy is based on the concept of ecosystem services. They really seem to ‘have their ducks in a row’ because when I asked them how they integrate local norms, beliefs and attitudes into their strategic planning, they responded that they have various technical teams that weigh in on the strategic planning with these concerns. And these teams are made up of experts from local NGOs who have on the ground experience. This includes an NGO that I visited called Chuyma Aru, whose objective is to remind new generations of their ancestors’ practices, traditional ecological knowledge and rituals. The main goal is to re-value and rebuild sustainable practices for a better future. I think there is a split down the middle of local NGOs though. Some think that social change towards this goal is impossible and others think that it has to happen. This is my observation through talking to various NGO practitioners.
This week I went to Cala Cala which is a small community in the District of San Antonio de Putina, located at a higher elevation than anywhere I have been so far, to see a vicuña management and conservation area. I wanted to see this because most people in this area do both agricultural work and some type of raising of livestock. The vicuña is a South American camelid that was close to becoming extinct in the 1960s until the governments of Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina banded together and decided to embark upon a remarkable program of species recovery and conservation. The vicuña lives at altitudes between 3900 m.s.l. and 4900 m.s.l. so they take advantage of altiplano pastures in which very few other species can survive. According to national law in Peru now the indigenous communities living at these altitudes have usufruct rights over the fiber of the vicuña which is the most luxurious fiber in the world and fetches a price of $600 per kilo for finished spun fiber. These communities have regained the capacity of the chaco, which is a yearly round up using people and motorcycles to push the animals into corrals for a day and a half during which the animals with appropriate length of fiber are shorn and released. The chaco is actually an ancient Inca and pre-Inca practice that has been re-valued and re-discovered as part of a modern sustainable management practice promoted by the national and regional government.
