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Cirilo's account offers a view of a time only a decade or so after the first use of green totora as cattle fodder. He suggests a number of parallels between himself and the cattle that he purchased. Both Cirilo and his cattle travel to a new portion of the altiplano. They remember their homes: Cirilo recalls of the totora-eating cattle in his lakeshore village; the cattle wait for the grasses and the lakeweed that they knew in the alturas from which they come. At first, they face unpleasant sensations (anger and hunger), provoked in part because their memories are imperfect guides for action in these new circumstances. Through observation and experiment, they gradually change their habits. Cirilo learns a new way of feeding cattle, and the cattle learn to eat a new kind of fodder. Within a week or so they become accustomed to each other. These bovine immigrants fit into their new home, and Cirilo knows how to draw on the animals of a new portion of the altiplano.
Such experiments, repeated around the lake, led to a major change in the use of totora. A report published in 1959 showed that a complex commercial network had sprung up to take advantage of this new fodder [footnote 9]. Cattle, raised in the high pasture zone near the cordilleras or trucked into the altiplano from the neighboring highland department of Cusco, were sold at the large weekly cattle fairs in Taraco and Paucarcolla. Purchased by villagers from the area around Chucuito and Taraco, they were fattened on totora and sold in weekly fairs in Ilave and elsewhere, and shipped by truck to Arequipa, Tacna and smaller coastal cities. This shift from the use of yellow totora for crafts to green totora for fodder led to an increase in the total amount that the villagers harvested. Despite this increase, the patterns of ownership of totora have changed only slightly. A few of the villages on Puno Bay have such an abundance of totora, with beds that cover thousands of hectares, that they allow residents to harvest anywhere within the village territory. In most villages, however, totora plots are much like agricultural fields. Rectangular in shape, they can be divided into equal shares at the time of inheritance from parents. They are occasionally sold to relatives or neighbors within the village. It is somewhat more frequent to rent totora beds to people from nearby villages, since the size of the reed beds varies greatly from one village to the next. A prospective renter from a community with little or no totora would travel to one of the areas with large totora beds. Such renters would return to the same village for a number of years and, in some cases, to the villages where their parents had traveled to cut totora. There has been a shift in the payment of rent. Through the 1950s and 1960s, renters usually gave potatoes and grain, and offered additional gifts of coca leaf and alcohol. In more recent decades, cash payments have become more frequent. Individuals can also purchase totora in markets, but most prefer these rental arrangements. It costs less to obtain totora this way, and the supply is surer, since the ties can last for many years. Though the increased harvest of green totora did not change patterns of ownership, it led to increasing disputes over totora theft. Individuals would accuse members of the same village or of neighboring villages of entering their totora plots and cutting their reeds. The villages held meetings to discuss this problem. As at all such assemblies, the adults gathered at a central plaza or schoolhouse or other meeting place. The men would form a semi-circle, standing or sitting on benches, and the women would sit on the ground nearby. The men would dominate the conversation, though women would occasionally break in and offer their comments as well. A number of villages decided to add a totora-guard [footnote 10] (vigilante del lago) to the list of community offices. Familiar with the patterns of ownership of plots, these guards would travel through the reedbeds to watch for incursions and theft. Like other such positions, the guard has a year-long term of office. To make this work less burdensome and more efficient, the villages established rules for the timing of harvest. They closed the reedbeds to cutting altogether in middle of rainy season, since they had learned that totora does not resprout well if it is harvested when the water is most turbid. They also selected certain days for harvest, usually two each week. Each village tried to choose days different from those its neighbors. If one allowed harvesting on Mondays and Thursdays, the neighboring villages would choose Tuesdays and Fridays, or Wednesdays and Saturdays. This pattern reduced the number of days that the totora-guard had to work. It also spread the effort around, since all villagers, aware of the days when their neighbors would harvest, would be prepared to look out for trespassers who came across the channels that mark the boundaries between village beds. It took some effort for villages to agree on harvesting days. They tried to avoid the days when major markets are held. Religious arguments were often raised as well. Most villagers prefer not to harvest on Sundays, but Seventh-Day Adventists, who are numerous in some sections, avoid all work on Saturdays. Villagers would rather select days that are convenient for them, rather than for their neighbors. Nonetheless, the advantages of linking the schedule for totora harvest are evident to all. The dates, once established, have rarely changed.
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