 "A vanishing lake, and identity")
The water receded and the fish died. They surfaced by the tens of thousands, belly-up, and the stench drifted in the air for weeks.
The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia's second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change.
"The lake was our mother and our father," said Adrián Quispe, one of five brothers who were working as fishermen and raising families here in Llapallapani. "Without this lake, where do we go?"
After surviving decades of water diversion and cyclical El Niño droughts in the Andes, Lake Poopó basically disappeared in December. The ripple effects go beyond the loss of livelihood for the Quispes and hundreds of other fishing families, beyond the migration of people forced to leave homes that are no longer viable.
After surviving decades of water diversion and cyclical El Niño droughts in the Andes, Lake Poopó basically disappeared in December. The ripple effects go beyond the loss of livelihood for the Quispes and hundreds of other fishing families, beyond the migration of people forced to leave homes that are no longer viable.
They and their neighbours were known to nearly everyone in the area as "the people of the lake." Some adopted the last name Mauricio after the mauri, which is what they called a fish that used to fill their nets. They worshiped St. Peter because he was a fisherman, ritually offering him fish each September at the water's edge, but that celebration ended when the fish died two years ago.
"This is a millenarian culture that has been here since the start," said Carol Rocha Grimaldi, a Bolivian anthropologist whose office shows a satellite picture of a full lake, a scene no longer visible in real life. "But can the people of the lake exist without the lake?"
It is hard to overstate how central fishing was to Uru life. When a New York Times photographer, Josh Haner, and I asked Quispe whether he had made his living as a fisherman, he gave us a strange look before answering, essentially, "What else is there?"
Men spent stretches as long as two weeks without returning to shore, wandering the lake to follow schools of karachi, a gray fish that looked like a sardine, or pejerrey, which had big scales and grew as long as Quispe's arm.
Some wives worked alongside their husbands, to pull the nets and do the cooking, making the boats a kind of home.
Fishing season began on the lake's edge with a ritual called the Remembering. The Quispe brothers were among about 40 Llapallapani men who would pass a long night chewing coca leaf and drinking liquor. Together, the group recited the names of Lake Poopó's landmarks and how to find them.
"That night, we would ask for a safe journey, that there would be little wind, that there wouldn't be so much rain," Quispe, 42, told us. "We remembered all night, and we chewed our coca."
In the morning, the men would paddle out above the underwater springs known as jansuris. They would toss sweets from the boat as a religious offering. Fishing season had begun.
We were talking on a cloudless morning with a breeze that might have been perfect for a boat ride in another time. Now, the wind only underscored how dry the landscape had become, as tumbleweeds rolled between the boats abandoned on the old lake bed.
Milton Perez, an ecologist at Oruro Technical University, said scientists had known for decades that Lake Poopó, which sits at 12,140 feet with few sources of water, fit the profile of what he called a dying lake. But the prognosis was in centuries, not years.
"We accepted the lake was going to die someday," Perez said. "Now wasn't its time."
The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia's second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change.
"The lake was our mother and our father," said Adrián Quispe, one of five brothers who were working as fishermen and raising families here in Llapallapani. "Without this lake, where do we go?"
After surviving decades of water diversion and cyclical El Niño droughts in the Andes, Lake Poopó basically disappeared in December. The ripple effects go beyond the loss of livelihood for the Quispes and hundreds of other fishing families, beyond the migration of people forced to leave homes that are no longer viable.
After surviving decades of water diversion and cyclical El Niño droughts in the Andes, Lake Poopó basically disappeared in December. The ripple effects go beyond the loss of livelihood for the Quispes and hundreds of other fishing families, beyond the migration of people forced to leave homes that are no longer viable.
They and their neighbours were known to nearly everyone in the area as "the people of the lake." Some adopted the last name Mauricio after the mauri, which is what they called a fish that used to fill their nets. They worshiped St. Peter because he was a fisherman, ritually offering him fish each September at the water's edge, but that celebration ended when the fish died two years ago.
"This is a millenarian culture that has been here since the start," said Carol Rocha Grimaldi, a Bolivian anthropologist whose office shows a satellite picture of a full lake, a scene no longer visible in real life. "But can the people of the lake exist without the lake?"
It is hard to overstate how central fishing was to Uru life. When a New York Times photographer, Josh Haner, and I asked Quispe whether he had made his living as a fisherman, he gave us a strange look before answering, essentially, "What else is there?"
Men spent stretches as long as two weeks without returning to shore, wandering the lake to follow schools of karachi, a gray fish that looked like a sardine, or pejerrey, which had big scales and grew as long as Quispe's arm.
Some wives worked alongside their husbands, to pull the nets and do the cooking, making the boats a kind of home.
Fishing season began on the lake's edge with a ritual called the Remembering. The Quispe brothers were among about 40 Llapallapani men who would pass a long night chewing coca leaf and drinking liquor. Together, the group recited the names of Lake Poopó's landmarks and how to find them.
"That night, we would ask for a safe journey, that there would be little wind, that there wouldn't be so much rain," Quispe, 42, told us. "We remembered all night, and we chewed our coca."
In the morning, the men would paddle out above the underwater springs known as jansuris. They would toss sweets from the boat as a religious offering. Fishing season had begun.
We were talking on a cloudless morning with a breeze that might have been perfect for a boat ride in another time. Now, the wind only underscored how dry the landscape had become, as tumbleweeds rolled between the boats abandoned on the old lake bed.
Milton Perez, an ecologist at Oruro Technical University, said scientists had known for decades that Lake Poopó, which sits at 12,140 feet with few sources of water, fit the profile of what he called a dying lake. But the prognosis was in centuries, not years.
"We accepted the lake was going to die someday," Perez said. "Now wasn't its time."
© 2016 The New York Times