Do you know where your water comes from? It’s a simple question that not a lot of people can answer, but Michael Salama and Gastón Zilberman’s Qotzuñi: People of the Lake confronts the audience with that inquiry by the time their film concludes. Many of us have the privilege to not have to worry about where our water comes from, and Salama and Zilberman’s film is really a film about the loss of something that vanished right before our eyes.
Lake Poopó was seven times the size of the capitol of Bolivia, but it no longer exists. Salama and Zilberman rushes over cracked ground before we come upon a boat with a jagged hole torn on one side. Another boat lays almost flat against the ground as the sun beats down upon the sand. Seeing a boat almost flattened against what used to be the lake’s floor is startling the more you imagine how it should float on top. The lake used to cover 3,000 kilometers of surface area in the Bolivian Altiplano, the text says once we say goodbye to these former vessels.
We are introduced to a fisherman who remembers where his ancestors used to launch boats and ships. This Uru indigenous community remembers so much, or recalls stories their family has passed down to them. One woman even remarks that she was told that the lake would never go away–it’s not something that you imagine could or would ever happen. Salama first learned about this community when he was doing his undergraduate research on indigenous communities that hve been affected by mining and water access, specifically in Chile and Bolivia. He was encouraged by a friend to visit Lake Poopó in order to understand it more by seeing it with his own eyes.
What do you do if your life is rooted to a place like this? It’s far too easy to suggest that a group of people should leave to find a different home, but that assumption is steeped in privilege. Salama and Zilberman spent only a few weeks in Bolivia, but they capture this immense weight with the camera.
Towards the end of their film, three men stand in a boat in the middle of where the lake used to be. You cannot help but stare over their shoulders to see where the shore would meet the water or maybe how it would feel to walk out of the depths of water after a day’s worth of fishing. There is a mournful quality surrounding Qotzuñi but the heartbeat of the people engulf every frame.
We sometimes consider mourning to be a negative thing or we wonder how we move on from loss or tragedy, but Salama and ZIlberman have created a film so alive within this community that you cannot help but pay respect.
Salama’s research, Fluid Identities: Political Hydrohistory of the Urus of Lake Poopó, can be read here.
