Bolivia Diaries: Day 10, Part 3 - A Quechua Community in Cochabamba

On our tenth day in Bolivia, Agroecología Universidad Cochabamba (AGRUCO), who we had met the day before, brought us to visit a Quechua (Incan) village they work with to learn about their agriculture. This was perhaps the best day of the trip. Part one covers our stop at a market in the town of Sipe Sipe, and part two covers an ancient Incan site we visited that was nearby.

Now we go to the Quechua community itself. It is called Linku or Linko - our group could never figure out how it was spelled. Be warned, this diary includes some very cute pictures of children.



When we arrived, we were invited into a large, open building. We sat down in seats, and the people of Linku sat on the floor. I must say, this is quite common in Bolivia from my experience, that the Bolivian indigenous will invite us gringos into their communities and then sit separate from us, usually offering us the better places to sit. It's not something I like very much.

Someone from Linku spread woven clothes on the table in the middle of the room and then poured a snack on it made from roasted corn, peanuts, and cheese. The corn was soft enough to eat but not fully popped. Perhaps this is what author Carol Deppe means when she talks about "parched corn." Everyone - both us and our hosts - dug in with our hands and soon made the huge pile disappear.


Our yummy snack



As we munched, our guide Gilberto (from AGRUCO) addressed the group in Quechua and Spanish, welcoming us briefly.


Gilberto, speaking to the group.

We then went to the fields. Before we reached them, we saw the irrigation channel, which the people of the community dug by hand.


Irrigation channel.


Running water for irrigation.

They also grow onions to sell. They showed us alfalfa, grapes, pacay (ice cream bean), sugar cane, cassava, lettuce, and loquat, cherimoya, mandarin, orange, and lemon trees. "Todo natural," they said. They also grow prickly pear cacti for the fruit (tunas) and the cactus itself (nopales).


Onions, to sell.


A big squash growing on the side of the field.


Cassava

Almost immediately, this experience became different from our previous visits. It was an exchange, not just a one-way presentation of their community to us. Someone from Linku asked us if alfalfa exists in the U.S. We replied that it does, and told them about the new problem of GE alfalfa. They replied that they had a problem with an attempt to introduce GE potatoes. Beginning in the late 1990s, they said, biotech companies wanted to start field trials of GE potatoes in Bolivia. They protested and fought this and won, because they knew that the introduction of GE potatoes would result in the loss of native varieties. There's been companies coming in and promoting and selling hybrids. They've been doing their own experiments, realizing they can't save their seeds. And they don't like that chemicals are required to use with the hybrids.


Alfalfa, with a big pacay tree among it and smaller lemon trees.


Alfalfa


A loquat tree.


Lettuce and onions.


Cañawa

Among the lettuce, the darker leaves are a medicinal radish. It is good for the kidneys, they told us. You fast and then you drink the juice of the radish.


Medicinal radish growing among the lettuce

I asked why the trees are grown among the plants. They replied that it was for the efficient use of water. They irrigate everything at the same time and don't lose water. They also add soil amendments to everything at the same time this way too.

Then I asked if they grow trees from seed or if they use other propagation methods like growing trees from cuttings. They replied that they do both.


Onions, lettuce, and a loquat tree.


Intercropping. Onions and either fava beans or peas, I can't tell which.


Lettuce and radish intercropped.


Onions and fava beans, I think.


A view of the field below with the village above.


A citrus tree, I think.


Christina with the radish.

At this time, Christina and I began chatting with some folks from Linku, a mother named Faustina and her daughter, Liliana, age 10. They wanted to know how I got so many bug bites. I told them it was the "bichos" (pests) in Yungas. Then they wanted to know if we saw the coca in Yungas. We spoke about how steep it was there in the coca fields, how it was difficult to walk there. They told me they had visited Yungas before.

I asked what the alfalfa was for. They said it was for the cows. Cochabamba is full of dairy cows, almost all Holsteins. Linku didn't have so many. One of the people talking to me said she had 11 cows. As we walked, they pointed out an avocado tree. I asked about another crop and they told us it was barley.


Barley

They told us they begin growing their crops in the winter each year. They begin growing corn in September and harvest it in March. The rains start in December. And they wanted to know when our rains come. Are there strong rains in our country? Do I live in the city or the country? she asked. (As I'm listening to my recording of our conversation, I'm horrified at my answers. I understood very few of the questions and gave answers that were entirely off topic. When she asked if I lived in the campo or the pueblo, I heard "abuelo" and told her about my grandparents.)

We asked how many varieties of corn they have and they began a list: big white corn, big yellow corn, little yellow corn, corn for toasting, black corn... all in all, I couldn't keep up with the varieties he named, but they were different colors, sizes, and for different purposes. Some grew early and some matured later. Later, someone told me there were 25 varieties of corn grown here.

By then I had begun chatting with another man from the community with the help of another member of our group. We tried to explain what we grew in California. The Quechua man wanted to know if we grew coca in the U.S. He asked many questions about the U.S. and also about where we had visited in Bolivia.


Sugarcane

We asked about the climate crisis. He said that it was now warmer than before. Sugar cane, cassava, citrus, and even bananas now grow well here. The rain here has changed too. In the past, it would start in September or October, but now it comes in December. This causes problems for them. He said they have to plant their seeds later. They now have problems with hail, which ruins some crops. It's too warm here for freezes or snow, and here they haven't had floods either. He told me elsewhere in Bolivia there have been floods.

I asked how much they sold their onions for. He said a kilo would cost 2 Bolivianos (less than $.30) when they sold them.


Onions

I asked about soil preparation. Did they use animal traction or tractors or neither? He said they use ox teams (yuntas) for soil preparation here.

We talked a bit about the use of agroechemicals. He said "We don't want them." In our country, I said, we have lots of cancer. We are rich, with lots of money, but sick with cancer and diabetes. We spoke about climate deniers in the U.S. and how the oil companies have paid off scientists.

The conversation then went into what kinds of animals we raised on farms in our respective countries. The man we were speaking with said he was a vegetarian. I'm not sure I believe that, but I think that's what he said.

He said that Bolivia is a backwards country. I said no, I think in many ways the U.S. is backwards. He said, "A lot of money, factories..." We told him that we don't have many more factories. Now, we have lots of unemployment because the factories have moved to countries that treat their workers poorly. He said he had heard of the financial crisis.

Tanya (our guide) told him that in the U.S. we have growing poverty and very few rich people who are getting richer. He said the same is true in Bolivia. Here, he said 60% are poor. They have a small middle class. I replied that I don't want to minimize Bolivia's problem with poverty, but I wish the U.S. had more people who could grow their food using traditional methods like Bolivia. He said, "You should take some wisdom and tradition from here."

I said, "I think it's backwards that my city doesn't allow keeping chickens, forcing people to buy their eggs, mostly from factory operations." He said here, in the city, you can't have hogs or chickens. In the past, you could have them, but not now. Now, you can only keep cows in the city. Another member of our group (an American) brought up the woman in Michigan who got in trouble for gardening in her front yard. I told him about the illegal raw goat's milk some people buy in the U.S. He said that here people like donkey's milk. This was not the first time we heard that in Bolivia, and previously, we were told it is medicinal. He said they used to have lots of goats here, but now they don't have many.

After a while in the fields, we returned to the building where we had first come. I played with children and a puppy and gave them some of the chocolate I brought with me. The adults did not want their pictures taken, but the kids couldn't get enough of having their pictures taken.


A puppy


A little girl with her baby sister.

Next, they served us lunch. They passed out Coca-Cola to everyone. I declined. Gilberto knocked his back and said "Ahhh, la leche del capitalismo" (the milk of capitalism).

I had brought rolls from breakfast in my purse but didn't want to eat them in front of the community because I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I snuck outside with the kids and gave my bowl of meat - a traditional style meal - away to one of them. Then I sat outside with the kids while eating my bread. The baby sister in the picture above really wanted my bread, and not the food her sister was trying to feed her, so I gave her some.


Lunch

Along with the meal, they served an enormous bowl of potatoes and sweet potatoes. I tried to eat what I could, but the potatoes were crusted in dirt, and it just wasn't very appealing. It was not until later, when I was hanging out with the children, that I noticed that the children peeled their potatoes - which is common in Bolivia for many types of potatoes - and then I went back to get a sweet potato, peeling off the dirty skin before eating it.


Potatoes


The spicy pepper, locoto





At the very end, before leaving, we gave them a gift of some shovels. From what I understand, they would not have been eager to let us into their community without some sort of compensation like that. This was AGRUCO's first time bringing outsiders like us into one of their communities, so it was a first for everyone. And from our perspective, we were thrilled to leave them with a gift they would find useful.


Shovels we gave the community.

Last, I cornered Gilberto to ask him a few questions about the agriculture there. I asked him about the crop rotations used here. Here, in the valley, they have individual plots of land and they do crop rotations to maintain soil fertility but don't leave the soil fallow. In the highlands, they have a system called ayanoka in which they have communal land. For three years, they grow oca, potatoes, and barley or oats. After that cycle they move somewhere else and leave that land fallow for 10 years.

Next, I asked about soil amendments. He said the land under the ayanoka system does not need much added to the soil. In the valley, they use sheep dung, chicken bedding, and molle tree leaves. The manure and chicken bedding come from their own animals. They will bring the sheep to a certain parcel for a while, then move the sheep out and plant the crops there.

Then I asked how they deal with pests and diseases. He said they have traditional methods to deal with pests. For example, they plant tarwi as a hedge crop to serve as a physical barrier. They also make herbal pesticides from wild or medicinal plants they grind up and mix with water. I asked if they use any biological controls with predatory species that prey on pests. He said they don't know of many beneficial bugs around here. But he has heard of beneficial wasps used elsewhere in Bolivia but not so much here.

Bolivia Diaries: Day 10, Part 2 - An Ancient Incan Ruin

On our tenth day in Bolivia, Agroecología Universidad Cochabamba (AGRUCO), who we had met the day before, brought us to visit a Quechua (Incan) village they work with to learn about their agriculture. This was perhaps the best day of the trip. Part one covers our stop at a market in the town of Sipe Sipe. This part covers an ancient Incan site we visited that was near the Quechua community. Cochabamba has been the granary of Bolivia since pre-Columbian times.

We got lucky because half our group got lost and I was in the half that did not get lost. While we waited for them, our guide, Gilberto, got himself warmed up and just talked for well over an hour about the local area and AGRUCO's work there.

When we arrived in the Quechua community of Linku (or Linko - we never could figure out how to spell it), our guide from AGRUCO, Gilberto, recommended that we all drive up to an Incan ruin at Incarakay to give the community some time to meet and decide what they would like to do during our visit. Every year, the community of Linku does a big festival for the Andean New Year at these Incan ruins, so they are very important to the community and thus highly relevant to our visit and to understanding this community. We agreed to drive the 20 to 30 minutes to go see them. I took the following two pictures of Linku's fields while this was being worked out.





As luck would have it, when we split into two cars, we had the boys in one car and the girls in the other. Then we took off for the ruins. The girls made it; the boys didn't. Not for a long time, anyway. They got pretty lost first.

While we stood and waited, Gilberto told us just about everything there was to know about the Incan ruins as well as the spectacular view below of Cochabamba.


The view

Originally, there was an Aymara presence in this area (before the Incas) as well as two other ethnic groups, the Cala Cala and the Chuis. Those two were conquered by the Aymara, and then the Aymara were conquered by the Inca. That's why many people here have Aymara names but they speak Quechua (the language of the Inca). They Aymara New Year, which is celebrated at this site, is June 24, which is for them nearly the winter solstice. To celebrate, they sacrifice a llama here.

Both before and after the Incas came to this area, there was a lot of grain production here. During Incan times, that was corn. The Inca Atahuallpa transported the grain from Cochabamba to Cuzco. He had planned to continue his conquest to the Amazon, but the armies there were strong, so he never made it beyond Samaipata in Santa Cruz department. And, if you recall, it was Atahuallpa who was defeated by the Spaniard Pizarro at Cajamarca in 1531, making him the last Inca. (There's a ruin of an Incan fort in Samaipata that you can see today.)

This area provided the grain for much of the Incan army. When the Spanish came and took over the land, they were far more interested in silver than grain production. In Incan times, the grain was corn, and they also grew potatoes. After the conquest, they grew beans, oats, and favas. The Spanish would basically group the indigenous in reservations and would then extract labor from them via the mita. It was a bastardization of the Incan mit'a, a system in which the Inca required men from all over the empire to provide labor for projects of the empire. The Spanish adopted this, but in a much more violent way.

The Spanish, once they came, distributed parcels of land for haciendas to anyone who did them favors, originally only Spanish, but later many of mixed race as well.

Gilberto says that this is a very strategic place because it is the only spot around that gives you a view of absolutely EVERYTHING. You can even see the north of Potosi on clear days. There are several theories on how the Inca used this place. There are several buildings there. One theory is that this was a granary that included a refrigeration system from the nearby lagoons. Another theory is that troops were kept here. But today, we can only view the buildings left behind and guess.








Windows


Look at the thickness of the walls.




An offering to Pachamama was made here.



As we stood on the mountain, we could see farm fields below. Gilberto said that all of the land here was owned by the local communities. We could see their fields of mature wheat.

Gilberto mentioned that the climate crisis is impacting this area, so that potatoes can be grown at lower altitudes recently. The mountains around us, he said, are the Cordillera Tunari. Another thing we could see was the lake Laguna de Huayñacota, which has now completely dried because of the climate crisis.

As a food security strategy, the community of Linku manages different agroecological floors. The bottom is the valley, then foothills, and then even higher is almost a dry puna ecosystem in the mountains. The highest elevation is for tuber (potato, papaliza, and oca) production. In the middle elevation, the foothill area, they grow barley, wheat, and some corn. Right now they are in the period of harvesting wheat, which they do with horses.

In the lowest elevation, they also grow grain. Recently, due climate change, they can now grown vegetables and citrus, which they couldn't before. (Our guide, Tanya, added that now in the very high altitudes in the Andes you could see peaches growing, and you never would see that in the past because it used to be too cold.) What is particular about the agriculture in this community, especially in the lower elevations, is that they have really started diversifying their crops.


Mature wheat fields





AGRUCO works with the people in this entire valley in four areas: soil conservation, agrofoestry, horticulture (vegetable production), and improving ancestral traditional irrigation methods. There's actually not that much irrigation here, but there are some channels. You can tell where those go to because you'll see a patch here and there that is very green. The water for irrigation is groundwater.

Most agriculture here is rainfed, especially at the highest altitudes. You'll see in the next diary, when we visit Linku, that their fields in the valley are all irrigated. With the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the valleys and with the changing climate, they have channeled water to their lowland crops so they can grow year round. They've improved and innovated their productive year in the communities, and they produce a wide diversity of products year round on the valley floor, but in the higher elevation they have only one growing season per year.

AGRUCO is here to support a process of endogenous development, meaning they are projects that the communities initiated themselves. In the past, a development agency would come in with a package of technology to deliver, regardless of a community's need. Here, the community sets its own priorities.

In the mid-1990s, a law was passed in Bolivia called the Popular Participation Law. It was a decentralization of funding, allowing the municipalities to decide where their money would go. Each municipality had to develop a Municipal Development Plan (PDM). What happened is that the municipalities had disconnects between their power and the traditional community governance. The municipality would say "We have money so everyone suggest what you want." Culturally, the community didn't know what to ask for. They were used to development agencies coming in and leaving right away, so they didn't ask for long term things. So they would ask for random things like "We want an airstrip" or "We want a pool." It wasn't presented in a culturally appropriate way so they could plan for their community's long term development.

This law was actually from 1994 but only recently is there more outreach, education, and empowerment efforts to help communities understand what it means. AGRUCO has inserted itself into this process. They are also doing research that supports the communities, such as predicting climate change, which is important for the communities because they've always used biological indicators to predict climate.

Gilberto gave us some examples of biological indicators. For example, to decide when to start planting, the elders of the community will look at the water to see if there's a sort of green tint or film on the water. If there is, they predict there will be good rains that year. Another one is that they will lift stones to see if they are moist or dry underneath, to predict whether it will be a wet year or a dry year. Another one is the fox. If the fox has a high pitched cry, then it means it will be a wet year. If it has a low pitched howl, it will be a dry year. And another is the flowering a certain plant (muña). If it fully flowers, it will be a wet year. However, if there are only a few flowers it will be a dry year.

Thus far, he says, they continue to use these indicators even with climate change, but they see indications of climate change in these examples. For example, frogs are very sensitive to change in temperature, so they have seen a great reduction in the number of frogs. There's an awareness of the shifts in what you can produce and where. Perhaps you can produce fewer potatoes but you can grow maize or fruit trees where you couldn't before.

Another theme is in "Solidarity Economies" here. [I find this part very important.] For example, the practice of ayni, which is reciprocal labor among equal parties. AGRUCO works to strengthen and revalue these practices.

An example of this is an important annual festival, the Feast of the Seventh Friday, which is seven Fridays after Holy Week. The people of all of highland areas bring Andean tubers (potato, papaliza, and oca) to the plaza of Sipe Sipe to a huge fair. The communities of the valley floor bring what they produce (corn, squash, fruits), and they bring their goods to the same plaza. At the fair, they use no money. This is purely barter, a "moral economy." Essentially, it's a food swap. Gilberto said, "Es mas al cariño y sentimiento, es una economia solidaria moral." (It's a more personal solidarity sort of moral exchange that links people together to exchange their products.) And it begins with a ceremony to Pachamama and ends with an offering to Pachamama.

Out of this sort of solidary comes umaraca. If you need help harvesting your crop, particularly if you're a widow or if you don't have many children, you cook a big feast, you make a huge vat of chicha, and everyone in the community would come help you harvest. There is no money paid.

Another example is ayni. Ayni means reciprocity. This was something we also talked about in the coca fields. This is an expression of equality. You help me harvest my crop, and I help you harvest your crop. And this would be done between people who have roughly the same amount of work to be done.

Next, he shared a personal anecdote about this logic of "moral economy." One time, he was holding a workshop for campesinos. He needed to buy tomatoes to feed everyone. He went to the plaza and there was a woman there selling tomatoes. He asked her to please sell him all of her tomatoes. She refused. She said, "If I sell them all to you, what will I do for the rest of the day?" Tanya reflected that the same thing happened to her when she was buying bread. She wanted to buy 30 rolls and they wouldn't sell her so many.

Gilberto added that if you don't have much, there are many mechanisms of wealth redistribution in the community. One is the fiesta. Someone in the town needs to pay for it, by paying to rent the costumes, buying the food, etc, so typically it is the wealthiest person or people in the town who will pay for that. The Western view would think that "It looks like they are always having parties, and when are they actually working?"

Another thing they value is the role of the local authorities. With the conquest, colonialism, and early republic, there was a disruption of local authorities. So now AGRUCO finds it very important to value either the ayllu or the syndicate structure, who are very connected to their communities' needs. They support the process of full participation of the full community, of the full syndicate, in decision making and in cultural processes, rituals, and spirituality.

The role of the syndicate is that the municipality will say to each community, based on its population, here is your budget. Then the syndicate gets everyone together and then puts together a proposal for what they want to do and present that to the municipality. The municipality is the representative of the state. The syndicate is basically the representative of the communities to the state. The communities also have vigilance committees to make sure that the municipality does what it is supposed to do.

The community can also choose to do more, to go beyond the money they get from the municipality. For example, USAID might tell a community that they will pay 70% of the cost of a clinic but they must provide 30%. That 30% might come from their municipal budget. Essentially, they can use the state fund from the municipality to attract more funds.

Last, here are a few photos of plants. Unfortunately I did not write down what each is. The first might be one of the plants important in biological indicators. The last is almost certainly an acacia of some sort. I found it interesting that Cochabamba has a climate similar to Southern California (although with more rain) and also had similar plants. Or at least, it seemed that way to my untrained eye. The big difference in weather is that Southern California gets its rain in the winter, but Bolivia gets its rain in the summer.