Tablas y Figuras

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their own irregular participation, and others even reckoned that due to the lack of young people the long-term success of NGOs’ trainings and activities was uncertain (Unstructured interviews 28-11-2012). Furthermore, because of young people’s migration, the involvement of the elderly would also decrease. “Antes iba a los talleres de PROINPA. Ya no voy porque tengo mucho que hacer. Estoy solo. Mis hijas viven en la ciudad. Son profesionales. Yo tengo que atender al ganado, cuidar las parcelas, no tengo tiempo” (“I used to attend PROINPA’s workshops. I don’t go anymore because I am too busy. I’m alone. My daughters live in the city.

They are professional workers. I must look after the cattle and take care of the plots, I don’t have the time”, 28-11-2012), complained Don Jorge, a former migrant who had spent most of his life in the city. The fact that he conserved very little diversity was perhaps due more to his long absence from the community, than to his interrupted participation in ADAMA’s and PROINPA’s activities. However, I met several elderly people who were the only members of their families living in rural communities. This situation challenged NGOs in the planning and implementation of their activities. Indeed, they considered depopulation and the lack of young people in indigenous villages a very serious problem. PROINPA, for example, supported my study on rural-urban migration because of their eagerness to know more about an issue undermining the success of scientists’ daily work in the field.

6.3.3 Traditional channels of seed and knowledge exchange fade away and some non-traditional ones are ineffective

Agrobiodiversity has been conserved until today thanks to the activity of farmers transmitting seeds and agricultural knowledge through different inter-generational and intra-generational channels. As chapter 5 illustrated, despite the continuation of traditional practices, new

“modern” channels have become established due to the presence of NGOs and the increased physical and ideal proximity of Aymara villages with urban markets.

In their study “Ecological and socio-cultural factors influencing in situ conservation of crop diversity by traditional Andean households in Peru” Velásquez-Milla et al. identify a positive correlation between agrobiodiversity and traditional agricultural management. In particular, they emphasise the importance of traditional techniques, mutual help, and seed interchange strategies that maintain seed flow among households, including farmers’ efforts to obtain seeds (Velásquez-Milla et al. 2011). Such aspects are crucial for agrobiodiversity conservation in the Altiplano Norte as well. This section will show how migration influences inter-generational and intra-inter-generational channels of knowledge transmission, seed flow and farmers’ networks, while also affecting some non-traditional mechanisms.

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The “eternal childhood” of permanent migrants

Chapter 5 explained that in the Altiplano Norte people acquire most agrobiodiversity-related knowledge and skills as children and teenagers, thanks to an inter-generational mechanism of transmission, linked with the implementation - year after year - of agricultural practices at the family and community levels. Migrants retain some familiarity with agricultural practices and seed varieties, especially if they visit their village regularly for sowing and harvesting sessions.

However, in this section I argue that they have a different consideration for agriculture than their non-migrant peers.

This is an excerpt from an interview with a second-generation woman migrant in El Alto.

“Yo también tengo tres o cuatro surcos en mi pueblo. Y esto es suficiente para toda mi familia.

Se siembra lo que se necesita, no más. En mis surcos sembramos papa, generalmente Huaycha certificada. Mis papás al venirse a la ciudad no se han traído las variedades. Las han dejado ahí en el campo y se han perdido. Tampoco puedo acudir a mis abuelos para que me regalen semilla, hay que comprarla […]. Los que manejan las variedades son los que se quedan ahí. Los que se han ido siembran lo que les conviene, las variedades que rinden mejor, que producen mejor. Para que arriesgarte a otras variedades? […] Hay que darle uso a cada variedad, te cuesta más trabajo. Los residentes tienen que ir a su comunidad y regresar en el mismo día, tanto para sembrar como para cosechar. Por eso escogen una o dos variedades no más”.

“I also have three or four furrows in my village. And this is enough for my family. We sow what we need, nothing more than that. In my furrows I sow papa, generally certified Huaycha. My parents, when they moved to the city, didn’t bring any varieties with them. They left them there in the community, so we lost them. I can’t even go to my grandparents to ask them to give me seeds as a gift, I must buy them [...]. Those who handle varieties [i.e. those who conserve agrobiodiversity] are the people who live in the community. Those who left sow what’s convenient for them - the varieties that give better yields, that produce better. Why should you take the risk of sowing other varieties? […] Then you have to give a use to each variety, it means more work. Residentes normally have to go to their community of origin and return to the city on the same day, for both sowing and harvesting sessions. This is why they choose just one or two varieties and that’s it” (03-12-2012).

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By speaking with pobladores and migrants, I learnt that - because migrants’ life is somewhere else - their participation in the agricultural routine in their communities of origin is occasional.

They often delegate the management of their furrows to their family members, who take care of them for the majority of the year (5.4.2). They do not partake in community life and in decisions concerning cattle and plots, having built their family in the city, where their spouses and children live and work (4.4).

“Los hijos que se van ya no regresan y tienen su vida independiente. Los padres les dejan algunos surcos. De todas maneras no podrían sembrar superficies grandes. Solo se siembra lo que se necesita. A veces los hijos que viven en la ciudad sí traen semilla de la ciudad para sembrarla en sus parcelas. Sus papás se las cuidan. Luego siembran juntos como familia. Pero de sus surcos de los hijos ellos son los que se llevan el producto”.

“The children who leave don’t go back to the community and have their independent life in the city. Parents leave a few furrows for them. They wouldn’t be able to sow on bigger areas anyway. They only sow what they need. Sometimes children who come from the city bring some seeds from there to sow them in their plots. Parents take care of the plots while they are away. Then they sow all together as a family. But it’s the children who take the product of their furrows” (Interview with agronomist 04-12-2012).

In agriculture migrants continue to rely on their parents’ knowledge, expertise and genetic material. For example, during a sowing session of papa in the plot of an elderly couple in Cachilaya, migrant children were there. They were three young and middle-aged women and men who lived in the city but had travelled to the village with their spouses on that day to help their parents. They had a role of support to their older family members, whose instructions they diligently followed. Parents decided when and what to sow, they had procured and chosen the seeds, and they assigned tasks (Fieldnotes, participant observation 24-10-2012).

This tendency is confirmed by the words of Don Bernardo from Cachilaya - “One of my sons lives in La Paz, the other one in Santa Cruz. My son who lives in Santa Cruz is a policeman. I go to visit him once a year and I normally take with me papa for him. He gives me sugar and pasta in return. He hasn’t come back to Cachilaya in almost 20 years. He has his life and his own family in Santa Cruz. He doesn’t come over here to help me anymore. The same happens with my other son who lives in La Paz. He has his family there. But he comes here for sowing and harvesting and for the fiestas. When he comes here for the sowing I give him the seeds and we sow together” (Interview 25-01-2013).

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Migrants, although participating in sowing and harvesting sessions, as well as in the community’s fiestas, are not present during other important phases of the crop year. For instance, differently than on sowing and harvesting days, I did not see any migrants helping in post-harvest activities such as seed selection or dehydrated product preparation. After the harvest, young migrants would leave, carrying some produce with them for their own consumption. Later on, they told me in Cachilaya, they would receive dehydrated products like chuño, tunta or caya as a gift from their family members without getting involved in their preparation (Unstructured interviews 24-10-2012).

“Cuando mis hijos vienen de visita les doy papita … Una cuarta arroba. También chuño y tunta”.

“When my children come here to visit me I give them a little bit of potato … one quarter of an arroba⁷⁹. I also give them chuño and tunta” (Interview with a farmer from Coromata 03-12-2012).

This turns into a limitation for the mechanisms of intra-generational transmission of agricultural varieties and knowledge.

Young migrants become adults who lead a totally independent life in the city. However, since they mainly rely on non-agricultural livelihoods, they do not transmit to their children - born and raised in an urban area - the agriculture-related knowledge they acquired before leaving their village. It is enough to interact with second-generation migrants to understand that migrants’ children, like most city dwellers, do not know much about agriculture. The grandchildren of a couple of migrant farmers from the municipality of Huarina were not at all interested in agriculture, entirely oriented as they are towards a future of personal and professional realisation that was based on a completely urban lifestyle. One of them, a 13 year-old boy born and raised in El Alto, went to school in La Paz and wanted to become a computer scientist when he grew up. Although he enjoyed visiting his grandparents in the Altiplano village where they lived - he told me - he was not at all attracted by a future as a farmer. He did not speak Aymara but he was studying English. His intention after high school was to study at the university, and he dreamt of travelling to Europe one day (Fieldnotes 03-06-2013).

In conclusion, the progressive detachment of migrants and their children from farming ultimately causes an irreversible loss of relevant knowledge and skills. Agrobiodiversity

79 The arroba is a unit of measure used by farmers in the Altiplano. It corresponds to 12kg.