'Laguneros' navigate life without lagoons

Guanacache Lagoons resident with a totora-reed canoe of the type once used in the region. (Photo by Daniel Gutman)

Carlos Morales has lived all of his 54 years in San Antonio, a tiny hamlet at the foot of the Andes in Argentina’s western province of Mendoza. In that time he has seen wrenching environmental and demographic change. “When I was a child my mother had 550 goats,” says Morales, whose family—like the 15 others still living in the community—has Huarpe indigenous roots. “Today, nobody here has more than 50. Sheep were raised here, too, but now there are none because there is hardly any water or grass. That’s why people leave. Only the elderly are staying.” Morales is one of an estimated 3,000 “laguneros,” Huarpe whose traditions, customs and livelihoods are rooted in the Guanacache Lagoons of Mendoza and the neighboring province of San Juan. The lagoons, now dried out, formed part of a 5,800-square-kilometer (2,239-sq.-mile) network of seasonal wetlands that are now... Read more →