Dr. Olivia Arigho Stiles, Research Associate – Rethinking Values of the Anthropocene
Figure 1. Donkey in Sampaya on Easter Sunday, April 2024. Photo, author’s own.
Over March and April I spent four weeks in Bolivia as part of the British Academy-supported Rethinking Values of the Anthropocene project, overseen by Dr Paul Merchant at the University of Bristol and colleagues further afield.
The term ‘Anthropocene’ was coined in 2000 by scientists to refer to a new epoch in which human activity has irrevocably changed the earth’s make-up. It has since entered the ‘eco-humanities’ as a way of thinking about climate change, resource extraction and ecological destruction in the past, present and future. How does the Anthropocene intersect with histories of colonisation, for example? What power relations – racial, spatial, gendered – does it call into question? Is the ‘Anthropocene’ even a meaningful concept?
Scientists now don’t think so, at least officially. In March, a committee of geology experts voted down a proposal to declare that the Anthropocene started in the 1950s.
But beyond the scientific establishment, the Anthropocene continues to open pathways to reimagine human relationships with the non-human in the climate crisis. In this vein, I am exploring the Anthropocene from the perspective of a lake in the high Andes, and investigating how Lake Titicaca’s other-than-human histories might enrich or disrupt conceptions of the Anthropocene.
To do this, in April I set about interviewing community activists, government officials and scientists to understand their perspectives on climate change, as well as the change over time in socio-ecological relations at the Lake.
I began in Copacabana, a small town and sacred place on the Bolivian edge of Lake Titicaca: the highest navigable lake on earth, seemingly as vast as an ocean and so close to the sky that the clouds merge with the Andean cordillera in the distance. It is the birthplace of the Inca creator Viracocha and now a site of pilgrimage for the Virgin of Copacabana.
Figure 2. Lake Titicaca. April 2024. Photo, author’s own.
When I arrive it is Holy Week. Choripan (hotdog) stalls line the lakeside, which is barely visible for beer stalls and tents housing the revellers who have come from far and wide. A miniature pony dressed in a Mexican sombrero stands patiently next to a churros stall. Outside the basilica, a line of large minibuses and cars snakes through the crowds. People are lining up to ch’allar (to bless) their new vehicles which are festooned with flowers.
On Easter Sunday I visit a small village nearby called Sampaya, marked by abandoned dwellings. It is harvest time, and people are busy in the fields on the heavily terraced hillsides.
Later, in the warm, softer glow of the late afternoon sun I walk up the calvario in Copacabana. The steep path is deserted apart from an elderly man, Pedro*[1], who suddenly begins talking to me. He is from Copacabana but like many Bolivians, worked for several years in Argentina. I ask him about how the lake has changed in his lifetime, whether it is more polluted these days. He pauses before telling me that the pollution is more on the Peruvian side. In Bolivia there is less mining so the waters are purer, he says. Pedro tells me that agriculture is disappearing from the fertile shores of the lake, as more and more young people leave to work in the cities where they can earn more money. The lake is drying up. Where before it used to stretch up to the hills, now the water is receding.
Figure 3. Llama on Isla del Sol. April 2024. Photo, author’s own.
In Copacabana I also meet Rosa Jalja, a journalist and leader of Mujeres Unidas en Defensa del Agua, a group of 40 women from Aymara and Quechua-speaking communities in Bolivia and Peru who for the past decade have mobilised against pollution. Rosa and the other women have spearheaded anti-pollution and anti-litter campaigns, lobby political authorities and conduct community workshops on climate change in the area. We meet inside the headquarters of Radio Copacabana, the local radio station which broadcasts in Spanish and Aymara where Rosa has a show. I leave feeling very in awe of Rosa Jalja’s energy and commitment.
Figure 4. Rosa highlights an advert for pesticides in an edition of El Campo newspaper, Yr. 3, No.29. Dec. 1968-Jan.1969.
In the nearby village of Sahuiña, I visit Ana Aguilar, who once masterminded a ‘frog observatory’, an eco-tourism project dedicated to the enigmatic giant frog native to Lake Titicaca, known in Aymara as k’aira. It has since closed down, but Ana took me in a rowing boat to see a trout farm, one of many which are scattered across the lake. Trout were introduced from the US around 1940, and to a large extent, have had a destructive impact on the lives of the frogs and native fish species. In this project, I draw together the entangled and conflictive lives of frogs, fish and humans, all imperilled in different ways by changes we might call the Anthropocene.
Figure 5. Ana Aguilar leads the way. In Sahuina, April 2024. Photo, author’s own.
Figure 6. Ana prepares the rowing boat, Sahuina. Photo, author’s own.
Back in La Paz, I conduct a series of interviews with NGO workers, political authorities and scientists based at the main public university, UMSA. At the Cota Cota campus in the south of the city, I visit the lab of Erick Loayza, a doctoral researcher studying the decline of native fish in the lake.
Figure 7. Fish specimens in Erick Loayza’s lab, UMSA. April 2024. Photo, author’s own.
Figure 8. Bag of fish specimens in Erick Loayza’s lab, UMSA. April 2024. Photo, author’s own.
I return to Copacabana to attend a two day meeting hosted by the Lake Titicaca Authority (ALT), an organisation jointly run by Peru and Bolivia which oversees the management of the lake and its resources, combining an interest in anti-pollution, tourism and heritage.
The meeting brings together local people from villages around the lake, political representatives and technical experts. We hear from representative of the village of Tiwanaku that tourism figures are vastly down on pre-pandemic times, and they’re hoping Instagram influencers might help. In Humamarca, a local guide tells us they hoping their bird viewing platform, the only one in the lake, will bring more visitors.
Figure 9. Meeting hosted by ALT, 16 April 2024, Copacabana.Photo, author’s own.
Figure 10. Rosa Jalja (Mujeres Unidas) addresses the ALT meeting. Photo, author’s own.
At lunch, I am sat next to a man from a village near Copacabana opposite Isla Koati (also known as Isla de la Luna). We discuss fishing, and he tells me sadly, like many other people I speak to, that there are less fish now in the lake. It is difficult to make a living from fishing or from agriculture.
Representatives of the tourism board in Yunguyo on the Peruvian side join us, and the discussion turns to linguistic and cultural differences between Aymara-speaking communities on the Peruvian and Bolivian sides of the lake. The lake is an ‘espacio transfronterizo’ (transboundary space), a place that both divides and connects across countries, languages and local cultures. In the age of the Anthropocene, the lake might also be said to connect across deeper cleavages of time. From the residues of mining contamination in the colonial period to sewage pollution from the twentieth century rise of urban centres such as El Alto, the lake resists easy periodisation. By centring its human and non-human entanglements, we might reflect on what, and who, is valued in the Anthropocene.
Figure 11. Author with Bolivian flag, Sahuina, April 2024
[1] pseudonym