Objective/Context:

An anthropological reflection on the consequences of the desertification of Lake Poopó, in Bolivia, particularly for the Uru-Qotzuñi group “people of water” from an approach that is conceived as an anthropology of life. The article studies the way in which quotidian and ritual practices allow a “human correspondence” with the lake and its inhabitants, thus weaving a meshwork of Poopó-Uru-Qotzuñi life.

Methodology:

A series of anthropological approaches were used for the analysis, leading us to think about life in a broad and relational sense, whose clues are particularly evident in the recent work of Tim Ingold, but also in other social-ecological references such as Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway´s work, allowing us, based on these proposals, to learn together with the Uru of Poopó about attention and how to live with responsibility, responsiveness and correspondence. In order to do this the text is structured on the basis of the outcomes obtained through an ethnographic work and interdisciplinary collaboration sustained over time with local institutions dedicated to defending the lake.

Conclusions:

What is at stake, we argue, is not only water availability, nor a set of cultural practices simply associated with the lake, but the very survival of this whole meshwork of life, in a broad and relational sense. This, because from the vantage point of an anthropology of life, survival always presupposes a coexistence in reciprocity that ought to be thought - even in its political and legal dimensions - in terms of attentionality.

Originality:

The analysis proposed here is relevant, first, because it is a case that is not usually studied from an anthropological perspective, and second because the research expressed here aims not only to inform ethnographically about a specific social ecological context but also to propose a critical and attentive look at the life processes that accompany it, deploying, in the process, a series of contemporary and creative anthropological theoretical explorations and proposals.

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