Saberes y estrategias de adaptación a la disponibilidad hídrica en las yungas secas del norte de Chile

Abstract

Communities who settled in the dry yunga of the Arica and Parinacota region in northern Chile, from the pre-Hispanic past knew how to take advantage of the superficial and intermittent watercourses, thereby demonstrating knowledge and organizational capacity to incorporate new crop spaces through strategies of environmental management. Under the current climate change scenario, the adaptive capacity that communities possess and will possess is important. For this reason, it is significant to highlight the practices that have proven effective in confronting climate variations. Using ethnographic methods and a review of ethnohistoric and climatic sources, seasonal practices of crop and flood management are characterized in the Apanza and Livilcar ravine, approaching the pattern of climatic variability that stimulated the adaptation of their communities. The results show that the region’s past and projected climate present a recurrence of periods with greater and lesser availability of water just like when these practices were employed. Consequently, the disuse of adaptive practices can be linked to the sporadic connection that people currently maintain with the territories which stimulated strategies for resource management, within the context of ‘de-peasantization’ and urbanization experienced by in the region.