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If this use of totora as fodder is a chapter in the history of the villagers and their livelihoods, it shows striking parallels with another such chapter, the expansion of the fishing in the lake after the introduction of trout and the shift to wooden boats and nylon nets. In both cases, villagers increased their production of foodstuffs as demand grew in markets. And in both cases, the village control over the lake has increased, rather than decreased, as the boundaries of village fishing territories expanded further from shore and as new rules defined totora harvest periods more precisely [footnote 11].
In many other parts of the world, such commercialization has led to a breakdown of such local control. The lakeshore villagers are distinctive in their extreme touchiness about incursions of outsiders into their territory and in their eagerness to preserve the resources in the lake, both as a protection against hunger in times of drought and as a legacy for the generations that will follow them. Their tenacity stems as well from their determination to remember the efforts of earlier generations to maintain this control [footnote 12]. The histories of totora harvest and of fishing show another parallel, the success of the lakeshore villagers in keeping the government at bay. In this regard as well, this pattern in Lake Titicaca stands out in contrast to many other regions around the world, in which state agencies regulate economically valuable resources. Though the Titicaca villagers seek out the support of the state in certain areas-they welcome schoolhouses and health clinics, and they treasure the official documents that indicate their status as recognized peasant communities-they strive to retain control of their territories and the resources that they contain. In the case of the reedbeds, the government attempted to establish a system of management in the name of conservation, much as the navy registered boats and fishermen as part of its efforts to patrol and develop the waters under its jurisdiction. The Titicaca National Reserve is at the center of this chapter of the history of totora. Much as the growth of the Titicaca fisheries is part of a global story of the commercialization of food production, so too the Titicaca National Reserve is only one case of a world-wide trend, the expansion of protected areas that are set aside to preserve habitat for endangered species [footnote 13]. Governments on every continent established such protected areas in the 1970s and 1980s. In the case of Peru, this timing coincided with the military government that had been so important in the fisheries as well. This government, which took power in 1968, was more receptive than earlier ones to the lobbying by Peruvian scientists and activists and by international environmental movements who wanted to protect the country's great biological diversity. In 1975 the military government established the National Forestry Center (Centro Nacional Forestal) in 1975. This agency, commonly known by its acronym CENFOR, was a subministerial branch within the Department of Forestry and Wildlife of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. It was assigned the responsibility to regularize and consolidate the management of natural plant and wildlife resources through a system of national parks and reserves in the tropical forests of the Amazon and other regions as well. The government was well aware that Titicaca is by far the largest lake in Peru and indeed in all of the Andes, and CENFOR officials were familiar with its enormous reedbeds and its large diverse populations of waterfowl. It was virtually inevitable that the government would decide to set up a protected area around Lake Titicaca. In 1976, the government opened a regional office of CENFOR in Puno. Word of the establishment of CENFOR had spread from official circles to the countryside, creating great concern on the part of the villagers. A number knew that a wealthy storekeeper in Puno had considered setting up a paper factory that would use the reeds for raw material, and they feared that the government might take over the reed beds for this end. Others believed that new taxes might be imposed, or simply distrusted new government programs. Some villagers feared that new regulations over water use-a Ley de Aguas-might harm them. These worries increased as CENFOR representatives visited villages and traveled out on the lake.
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