For a lot of generations, the homeland of the Uru folks right here was not land in any respect: it was the brackish waters of Lake Poopo.
The Uru — “folks of the water” — would construct a kind of household island of reeds once they married and would survive on what they might harvest from the broad, shallow lake within the highlands of southwestern Bolivia.
“They collected eggs, fished, hunted flamingos and birds. Once they fell in love, the couple constructed their very own raft,” mentioned Abdón Choque, chief of Punaca, a city of some 180 folks.
Now what was Bolivia’s second-largest lake is gone. It dried up about 5 years in the past, a sufferer of shrinking glaciers, water diversions for farming and contamination. Ponds reappear in locations in the course of the wet season. The physique of the lake, 3,700 metres (12,139 toes) above sea stage used to cowl an space of 1,000 sq. kilometres (390 sq. miles) and at its highest stage in 1986, had an space of three,500sq km (1,351sq miles).
The Uru of Lake Poopo are left clinging to its salt-crusted former shoreline in three small settlements, 635 folks scrabbling for tactics to make a residing and struggling to avoid wasting even their tradition.
“Our grandfathers thought the lake would final all their lives, and now my individuals are close to extinction as a result of our supply of life has been misplaced,” mentioned Luis Valero, chief of the Uru communities across the lake.
Not lengthy earlier than the lake was misplaced, the language of the Uru-Cholo had perished as properly. The final native audio system progressively died and youthful generations grew up schooled in Spanish and dealing in different, extra widespread Indigenous languages, Aymara and Quechua.
To avoid wasting their identities, the communities try to revive their native language — or no less than its closest sibling. Aided by the federal government and an area basis, they’ve invited academics from a associated department of the Uru, the Uru-Chipaya close to the Chilean border to the west, to show that tongue — one in all 36 formally recognised Bolivian languages — to their youngsters.
“On this occasions, every thing modifications. However we’re making efforts to take care of our tradition,” Valero mentioned. “Our kids need to get well the language to tell apart us from our neighbours.”
“The instructors train us the language with numbers, songs and greetings,” mentioned Avelina Choque, a 21-year-old pupil who mentioned she someday wish to train arithmetic. “It’s a bit troublesome to pronounce.”
The pandemic has added to that battle. The academics have been unable to carry in-person lessons in the course of the pandemic, leaving college students to study from texts, movies and radio programmes.
Punaca Mayor Rufino Choque mentioned the Uru started deciding on the lakeshore a number of a long time in the past because the lake started to shrink, although by then, a lot of the lands round them had been occupied.
“We’re historic [as a people], however we have now no territory. Now we have now no supply of labor, nothing,” mentioned the 61-year-old mayor, whose city consists of a ribbon of spherical, plastered block houses alongside an earthen road.
With no land for farming, the younger males rent themselves out as labourers, herders or miners in close by cities or extra distant cities. “They see the cash they usually don’t return,” mentioned Abdón. A number of the ladies make handicrafts of straw.
The broader Uru folks as soon as dominated a big swath of the area, and branches stay round Peru and Lake Titicaca to the north, across the Chilean border and close to the Argentinian border.