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Chapter 6: Reeds

  1. Like other wetlands Source on aquatic plants include Raynal-Roques, A. (1992) The higher plants, In Iltis, André and Claude Dejoux, eds. Lake Titicaca: A synthesis of limnological knowledge. Dordrecht, Kluwer. 223-231; Ticona Zuñíga, Isaac (1980) Determinación del cariotipo de la totora en el Lago Titicaca. Master's thesis in agronomy, Puno: Universidad Nacional Técnica del Altiplano.
  2. Reproducing chiefly by sprouting Raynal-Roques indicates that plants in shallow waters usually flower after two to three years, though they require four or five years in deeper waters; some of them never flower at all. The flower spikes, a dull brown, are 7-8 centimeters across, and hence quite small in proportion to the stem.
  3. In years of very low lake levels Government officials oppose such burning. See, for example, the article in the 8 August 1998 issue of El Comercio, a leading national newspaper, "Por falsa creencia queman totorales de la Reserva Nacional del Titicaca."
  4. Through the late 1930s If the villagers had used totora as cattle feed, it is unlikely that Weston LaBarre, an anthropologist who traveled extensively through the altiplano in 1938 and 1939, would have failed to mention this practice in his detailed account of local culture (1948) The Aymara Indians of the Lake Titicaca Plateau, Bolivia. Washington, D.C., American Anthropological Association. In his descriptions of livestock raising (pp. 70-76, 152), he lists a number of wild and cultivated plants provided to different species of domesticated animals, and takes care to describe two different types of lakeweed that served as fodder for cattle near the lake. Since he mentions that donkeys and mules were fed green totora stalks, it is unlikely that he would not have reported the same practice for cattle. There is also no mention of the use of totora as cattle feed in another, somewhat less detailed account of plant use in the altiplano at this time, Gibson, H. C (1939) The Percy Sladen Expedition to Lake Titicaca, 1937. Geographical Journal 88: 553-542.
  5. By the early 1960s Hickman treats this use as an established rather than a new practice in his account of life at this time: Hickman, John M. 1963. The Aymara of Chinchera, Peru: Persistence and Change in a Bicultural Context. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University.
  6. About 6,500 households harvested totora The first figure is from Dew, Edward M. (1969) Politics in the altiplano: the dynamics of change in rural Peru. Austin: University of Texas Press, p. 58; the second from Levieil, Dominique and Gilmar Goyzueta (1984) Evaluación de la extracción de totora para fines de subsistencia en la Reserva Nacional del Titicaca, sector Puno. Puno: Ministerio de Agricultura y Alimentación, CENFOR, pp. 1-24; the third from Plan Director Global Nacional de Protección, Prevención de Inundanciones y Aprovechamiento de los Recursos del Lago Titicaca, Río Desaguadero, Lago Poopó y Lago Salar de Coipasa (1995) Diagnóstico y Estudio de Desarrollo. Puno: Proyecto Especial Binacional Lago Titicaca , sec. 3, pp. 5-8.
  7. They traveled to the cattle fairs Details on the new cattle markets can be found in Appleby, Gordon (1978). Exportation and its aftermath: the spatioeconomic evolution of the regional marketing system in highland Puno, Peru. Ph. D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, 187-211.
  8. From Rosaspata to Huancané The distance from Huancané to Ramis is much shorter than the distance that Cirilo walked with his uncle and cousins and their cattle. On the day that they went to Ramis, they had to wait for the ferry-a large totora raft-to carry them across the Río Ramis.
  9. A report published in 1959 This report is Ministerio de Agricultura (1959) Los recursos humanos del departamento de Puno. Lima: Ministerio de Agricultura, Plan Regional para el Desarrollo del Sur del Perú. Vol. 5, section B/9, p. 46.
  10. A number of villages decided to add a totora-guard An account of recent changes in the systems by which villages patrol their territories, set in the northern highlands of Peru, is Starn, Orin (1999) Nightwatch : the politics of protest in the Andes. Durham: Duke University Press.
  11. And in both cases, the village control over the lake has increased As I discussed in Chapter 4, this case fits in well with Elinor Ostrom's views of the management of common property resources.
  12. Their tenacity stems as well Many factors influence the success of the village systems of control over resources from the lake, particularly the economic importance of these resources and the strength of local village institutions that set up, enforce and modify the rules that govern access to these resources. However, since the economic and political aspects of such systems have received a good deal of attention in recent decades, I would like to emphasize here the relatively neglected cultural aspects of such systems.
  13. Much as the growth of the Titicaca fisheries For a review of the anthropological literature on protected areas, see Orlove, Benjamin S. and Stephen Brush (1996) Anthropology and the conservation of biodiversity. Annual Review of Anthropology 25:329-352.
  14. Representatives from the League met with the Minister The politics in the region during this period are described in Taylor, Lewis (1987) Agrarian unrest and political conflict in Puno, 1985-1987. Bulletin of Latin American Research 6(2):135-162.
  15. The location and areas of these reedbeds The 1903 map is published in Neveu-Lemaire, Maurice (1906) Les lacs des hauts plateaux de l'Amérique du Sud. Paris: Imprimerie nationale. The 1927 surveys served as a basis for the maps, printed on a scale of 1:200,000, that include the reedbeds, published in the 1940s: Instituto Geográfico Militar, Carta Nacional del Perú, hojas 16j, 17i , Lima: Instituto Geográfico Militar The aerial photographs were used in maps of this area printed in the late 1960s on a scale of 1:100,000 Lima: Instituto Geográfico Militar, Carta Nacional, hojas 32-w, 31-x, 32-x, 33-x, 31-y, 32-y, 33-y, 33-z.. Lima: Instituto Geográfico Militar. . Aerial photographs from the early 1980s appear in Collot, Daniel (1982) Mapa de vegetación de la Bahía de Puno. Revista del Instituto de Ecología (La Paz, Bolivia) 2:49-65; Collot, Daniel Fany Koriyama and Emilia García (1983) Répartitions, biomasses et productions del macrophytes du lac Titicaca. Revue d'Hydrobiologie Tropicale 16(3):241-261.
  16. Moreover, the density of totora The aerial photographs and more recent records offer information as well on the density of the totora stands. They suggest that the density of the totora is also stable. There are some regions where totora grows more sparsely, especially where it is crowded by stoneworts. These plants, a strange kind of giant algae in the genus Chara, ordinarily grow in water between 5 and 15 meters deep, but are sometimes found in areas that support totora. They concentrate calcium in their stems and can leave a whitish deposit on the lake bottom that suppresses the growth of other plants, including totora. Though they can appear after totora has been harvested, they do not appear to be a serious threat to the totora beds. Since these stoneworts cannot survive in shallow water, they die off close to shore in the years when the lake level falls. Wave action can also remove the whitish deposits. The most detailed studies suggest that the distribution of these stoneworts is stable, rather than increasing. Collot, Daniel (1980) Les macrophytes de quelques lacs andins (Lac Titicaca, Lac Poopo, Lacs des vallées d'Hichu Kkota et d'Ovejhuyo. Unpublished report. La Paz: ORSTOM; Iltis, A. and P. Mourguiart (1992) Higher plants: distribution and biomass. In A. Iltis and C. Dejoux, 1992. Lake Titicaca: A synthesis of limnological knowledge. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 241-252.
  17. Of these, twenty-five have distributions The CENFOR list was published in CENFOR (1978) Principales especies de fauna. Puno: Centro Nacional Forestal. There are several sources for the ranges of these birds that CENFOR could have drawn on: Koepcke, Maria (1964) Aves del departmento de Lima. Lima: n. pub.; also available in English (1970) The birds of the department of Lima, Peru. Wynnewood, Pa. and Johnson, Alfredo William (1972) Supplement to The Birds of Chile and adjacent regions of Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. Buenos Aires: Platt Establecimientos Gráficos. A more recent source on these birds is Dejoux, Claude (1992) The avifauna, In Iltis, André and Claude Dejoux, eds. Lake Titicaca: A synthesis of limnological knowledge. Dordrecht, Kluwer. 460-469.
  18. Many other grebe species take flight only a few times a year Sources on the short-winged grebe include Fjeldså, Jon (1985) Displays of two primitive grebes Rollandia rolland and R. microptera and the origin of the complex courtship behaviour of the Podiceps species (Aves: Podicipedidae). Steenstrupia (Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen) 11(5):133-155 and Livezey, Bradley C. (1989). Flightlessness in grebes (Aves, Podicipedidae): its independent evolution in three genera. Evolution 43(1):29-54.
  19. Like many customary units of measurement A fundamental source on this topic of measurement is Kula, Witold (1986) Measures and Men. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  20. Dominique and I reviewed a number of these sketch maps These maps are discussed more thoroughly in Orlove, Benjamin S. (1991) Mapping reeds and reading maps: the politics of representation in Lake Titicaca. American Ethnologist 18(1):3-38.
  21. It is striking that the villagers' opposition took such different forms A useful source on peasant opposition to government programs is Scott, James C. (1985) Weapons of the Weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  22. The lake itself was a powerful reminder An important source for this notion that landscapes serve as concrete icons, as well as abstract symbols, is Zimmermann, Francis (1987) The jungle and the aroma of meats: an ecological theme in Hindu medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press.