The last eight fish of Lake Poopó – Los últimos ocho pescados del lago Poopó

The second largest lake in Bolivia made headlines in 2015 because it completely dried up. A good rainy season has returned the water to their basins, but rising temperatures, mining pollution and the diversion of their rivers threaten the lives of their people forever.

Brake! –Cristina Mamani suddenly shouts– Stop, we can sink! Night has just fallen on the outskirts of Untavi, in the middle of the plateau, and the car’s headlights barely illuminate the dry land. The desert gives the impression that it could be accelerated for hours without changing course, but Cristina Mamani knows that in a few meters, suddenly, the water will appear. The second largest lake in Bolivia performed a miracle in these pampas: it completely evaporated seven years ago and filled up again this summer. A fisherwoman like her grandparents and her great-great-grandparents, Cristina Mamani affirms that it is not the first time she has passed. “My grandfather used to say that every fifty years it fills up, then it empties,” she says. From here, the waterside town where she grew up is two twinkling lights 20 kilometers to the north. The earth turns to mud at her footsteps and Mamani points to the south: “This time, the lake has just returned here.”

Lake Poopó had completely evaporated at the end of 2015 and the news traveled the world. A mirror of water of 2,337 square kilometers -almost four times larger than a capital like Madrid- disappeared along with more than 200 species of birds, fish and plants. A good rainy season brought water last January, but the lake was only 40% to 70% full. As an isolated basin in the middle of the Andes, the Poopó has always depended on a good shower during the first quarter of the year to maintain its flow. But the average temperature in the area has increased above the global average (0.9 degrees in the last decade alone) and has accelerated the evaporation of water.

Cristina Mamani, 49, had to leave her village the last time the lake dried up. Located at 3,700 meters above sea level, Untavi is reached after three hours of unpaved road leaving the south of the city of Oruro, in western Bolivia. In this Aymara town, the last one on the shores of Lake Poopó, the 2012 national census counted 393 inhabitants. “We were 200 fishermen,” says Mamani, “there was so much fish that five days’ work was enough to live for a month.”

She now rents a room in Oruro and lives from day to day selling used clothes in the market with her cousin Josefa Magne. Her husband, Valerio Rojas, found work as a laborer in Challapata, a city on the other side of the Poopó. They see each other every two months, when the schedules allow them to coincide. “If he’s missing, they stop calling him,” says Mamani. “That’s why we can only come back if the fish comes back.” A single bus arrives in the village every five days, and Mamani tries to return every week to visit her mother, Avelina, who at 74 years old herds the few sheep they have left and hopes not to have to sell.

Untavi has changed a lot in these years. Their houses received aid from the Government to put glass windows, they painted most of them bright colors and the central square has a new kiosk surrounded by trees that in a few years will be a mall. But no one walks through the middle. The church has no priest, the police post has the occasional visitor, and the only doctor is a trainee nurse finishing college. The peaceful night is only interrupted by smugglers as they speed up in their vans fleeing the Chilean border towards the city.

– What do you miss most about the town?

– The pejerrey that our grandparents have taught us to eat -Mamani answers-. Now there is no fishing, there is nothing.

Her eyes light up when she thinks about fishing. “Fried in fillet, we also ate in soup,” she recalls. Mother of five children, the two eldest were also fishermen and are now workers in the city. The minors go to university: one has just graduated as a civil engineer, the fourth follows her and the minor wants to be an agronomist. “But I just want us to go back,” says Mamani. “Let the whole lake come back. Let’s get back to fishing.”

The ships are corroding in the middle of the desert of dry algae. The few fishermen who return to the town from time to time have hardly went fishing in these five years. “The last time we tried to fish, only one boat went out,” says Mamani at dawn on a Monday in July. The residents of Untavi organized themselves at the end of last month, and on June 20 they cast their nets again. “Eight pejerreyes, just like that little ones have come out,” he says and shows the photograph on his phone of the last fish ready on a plate.

The last rainy season left a mirror of water barely fifty centimeters. Mamani and other residents affirm that in the center the depth is up to two meters, but in a boat trip the oars hit the ground without getting completely wet. The Government of Oruro seeks to take advantage of the fact that the water has not disappeared to study the feasibility of planting some species of fish, but avoiding another catastrophe does not depend only on waiting for good rains.

“The lake is experiencing a serious situation in which not only climate change plays a role,” says Ájax Sanhueza, representative of the CASA collective, a non-profit organization that has supported indigenous communities in defense of their environmental rights for 14 years. “First is the mining factor, which uses millions of liters of water per day in this area. Then the endorheic system that unites Lake Titicaca with Poopó, and which Peru and Bolivia share”.

El Poopó is a saltwater lake that does not have an access road to the sea. Its water flow depends on Lake Titicaca, which splits in two on the border between Peru and Bolivia, and the Desaguadero River, which carries water to the Poopó and ends in the Coipasa salt flat, on the border between Bolivia and Chile. “On the Peruvian side, gates are operated that open and close depending on the lack of water. On the Bolivian side, we live off how they manage it,” explains Sanhueza. “That creates a conflict of interest between both countries in which the information is quite opaque.”

“Oruro also has a burden: its emblem is to be a mining exploitation area,” adds Ángela Cuenca, an agricultural engineer and project coordinator for the CASA collective. At least 300 mining explorations are still active in the area. According to a 2012 study, hundreds of kilograms of arsenic, zinc, cadmium, and lead are dumped into the lake every day. “This causes a very high sedimentation of heavy metals, which settle in a closed basin where they expand,” explains Cuenca. “It’s sad to think of it that way, but the years when the lake was dry were a missed opportunity to dredge and clean up the Poopó basin.”

“Bolivia is a paradoxical country”, reflects the engineer. “It has a lot of very good environmental laws that are not enforced, because the country has a completely extractivist vision of development. Pollution has affected the area long before the lake’s water surface was reduced. It is a critical situation in which women, as heads of households, suffer in the front line. They know that it reduces the size of the fish, that some animals are already born with malformations, that children get sick and that the skin cracks due to the minerals in the water. But the state never pays attention to them.

Cristina Mamani was the councilor of her town when the lake dried up in 2015. “I have asked that they dredge, that they dig, that the lake be maintained that way. But they have not listened to me,” she says. “In vain we have gone to La Paz with papers, letters. But since they have (Lake) Titicaca there, they have not given us importance”.

The position of authority of the town fell this year in a young man of 26 years. Fernando Checa, a fisherman and father of three children, also works as a construction worker on the outskirts of the town. His role as mayor is a part-time job. “It is not a lot of work either, we are few. Fed up they are leaving,” he confides with a smile. Checa says that the secondary school of the school closed, and that counting the communities that surround Untavi, the primary barely reaches twenty students. Mid-morning on a Monday, he’s glad when visitors ask if he can go sailing. He hasn’t taken the boat out of him in months.

“I have been fishing since I was 13 years old. My grandfather has taught me. But I didn’t like it at first: the waves, the wind…”, says Checa on the way to the lake. “The water scared me, I have never learned to swim. But it was a nice job, we were our bosses. We left early and spent the afternoon in the village”.

The fisherman rows tirelessly and every once in a while drives a stake into the water. “It’s a puddle,” he says as he pulls out the wet half. This time he no longer laughs. “We hope that these months that we are not going to fish will return the fish. The cousins call from the city, from abroad, they ask if they have returned yet,” he says, and already in the middle of the lake, he enters into confidence. He asks who is the new Chilean president, if it is true that the Argentine economy is as difficult as they are told.

– Would you also like to migrate?

– In January they give me my passport. But I’m going back. If the fish comes back, we will come back.