Development of Land-Use Patterns in the Central Andes

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At present, the region is exploited to the upper limit of vegetation and sometimes beyond for mining purposes. The limits of human activity are those imposed by the availability of vegetation for feeding domestic animals, by the effects of cold and wind and, in the south, by the salinity of the soil. The upper limits of exploitation are among the highest in the world and comparable with the northern region of the high chain of the Himalaya (the Tibetan sector). In the Andes, potatoes, chenopodia, and barley are grown as high as 4,200 m; herds of llamas, alpacas, and sheep graze on the last tufts of gramineae to be found between 4,700 and 4,800 m. Mines are worked at altitudes above 5,000 m and several million people live above 3,500 m. So it is here in the tropical Central Andes that millions of human beings encounter the problems of adapting to the constraints of high altitude and to the effects of changes in elevation. The human body encounters problems relating to hypoxia, to the constraints of rapid temperature and humidity changes and, possibly, to detrimental effects from high levels of cosmic radiation. It should be noted, however, that the limitations imposed upon human settlement by altitude are due more to the unavailability of a usable vegetable biomass than to these physiological difficulties. The constraints of life imposed on high-altitude societies have resulted in adaptive responses which have been fashioned over generations. However, the problem confronting present-day populations is not so much that of adapting to high altitude as that of coping with changes of environment, the descent to the hotter low-lying regions, a d the effects of successive movements between regions of iffering elevation. The highltitude area of the Central Andes, which has been inhabited for at least 15,000 years and contains the oldest relics of human settlement on the continent, was the stronghold of peasant chieftainships and states. It still supports a dense human population today. For example, around Lake Titicaca, at 3,800 m, densities of 100 inhabitants per square kilometre are common. This area is economically backward and large numbers of the population are emigrating toward the lower land to the east and w st. Even so, this emigration does not preclude the possibility of areas in the punas being re-established for grazing and farming (Favre, 1977). Is the present low productivity the result of the low capacity for organic production of the high-altitude environment, natural constraints, and lack of development of ecological potential, or does it stem from socio-economic factors in the past and present-day constraints? There is no single answer to this question; for the time being, only a partial answer can be offered and suggestions made of research directions which would help determine the relative importance of natural and social factors. There are two possible approaches: first, it is possible to describe the potential of the natural environment and then examine how this potential has been utilized by societies in the course of history and what techniques were employed for managing and exploiting the available resources. The second approach takes as its starting point a description of how the system functioned at three points in the history of the Andes from the fifteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, the seventeenth century, and the mid-twentieth century; from this historic base, the problem of how the present system might be enhanced may be examined. The second approach will be utilized here.