“La Gente del Agua” by Dr. Eduardo Williams is a 416-page book, in Spanish, representing 20 years of study of the “fishers” – as he calls them to avoid gender prejudice – who live on the shores of lakes Cuitzeo and Pátzcuaro in Michoacán.
Page through this book and you will find hundreds of beautiful photos which suggest that this is not only an impressive work of scholarly importance, but also a labor of love. Fortunately for English speakers, Williams has produced a 165-page, well-illustrated, abridged version of this book in excellent English, which can be downloaded free from the Internet. (Go to Academia.edu and look for “Water Folk: Reconstructing an Ancient Aquatic Lifeway in Michoacan, Western Mexico.”)
Williams’ study of modern-day people using the resources of these lakes says much about the way the Tarascans lived in the same area before the arrival of the Spaniards. This work is a response to a cry for help made in 2001 by archaeologist Jeffrey Parsons in “The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico: An Archaeological Ethnography.”
According to Parsons, there are many traditional activities hovering on the edge of extinction that deserve to be recorded in Mexico and throughout the world. “Few scholars appear to be much interested in studying the material and organizational aspects of these vanishing lifeways, and archaeologists may be virtually alone in making such efforts as do exist,” he continues. “In one sense this … is a plea to others to undertake comparable studies elsewhere while there is still a little time left to do so.”
As Williams points out, studies of this sort need to be carried out by archaeologists, not by researchers in other social sciences, because a certain sensitivity and attention to detail are required for a highly specialized interpretation of the data, focused on how our ancestors carried on similar activities. However, I think few archaeologists have the patience to give so much of their time to a contemporary society. For those who are willing to take up the challenge, “La Gente del Agua” will be an admirable guide.
In the course of this research, the author was surprised to discover that one of the main tools used for manufacturing sleeping mats (petates) and baskets from lake reeds, was identical to one employed by the most ancient of our ancestors, possibly the oldest known tool on earth. This was a flat, rounded rock that most of us would pay no attention to whatsoever, unless neon signs were pointing to it in a museum. These rocks, in modern times called petateras in Michoacán, fit nicely in the hand and may be polished on the bottom from being used to press and smooth moistened reeds as they are being woven together. The only other tool needed to make a sleeping mat is a knife. (In ancient times an obsidian blade would have been used, according to Williams.)
The same people Williams found making petates also specialized in waste-paper baskets, lampshades, cat baskets, decorative “Christmas bells” and even human-like figures which surely must have required long hours of patient work.
There are many gems hidden away in this large book. I was surprised that Williams had found people living on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro who knew how to use the atlatl, the celebrated device for propelling a spear much faster than it could be thrown by hand alone and one of humankind’s first mechanical inventions (at least 10,000 years old, according to archaeological data).
“In the late 1940’s, ducks by the millions used to arrive at Lake Cuitzeo in early October,” fisher Manuel Morales told Williams, “and on October 31 we used to go out in canoes to hunt them, with nothing but fisgas, (reed harpoons) and el tirador (the atlatl).”
A second informant, Rogelio Lucas, offered to show Williams the techniques for manufacturing an atlatl, which he referred to as a tirador or tzipaki, even though he had not made one since 1978. He also showed him how to prepare the metal point of the fisga and a special insert at the other end which fits into the atlatl. Altogether, the craftsman used thirteen different tools to make the two pieces, including a hacksaw and a vise-grip. Ancient atlatl makers would have had their own specialized set of tools (called an “assemblage” by Williams) to produce the same result.
Another surprising fact I learned from this book was that insects are still one of the important resources “fished” out of Lake Cuitzeo. Moscos or bugs, like water boatmen and shore flies, frolicking on the surface of the water, are caught during the rainy season in very fine nets of a cloth called tul, still sold in Mexican markets under the same name, for making bridal veils. “In a good season,” says Williams, “between 50 and 60 kilos of bugs may be collected in a single day.”
While moscos are today used as bird feed, in pre-Hispanic times they were an important source of protein and amino acids for human beings. It seems that in the Basin of Mexico three types of lake insects were considered appropriate for human consumption, while all others were thought of as “dirty.”
The edible insects were prepared to be eaten while still alive, because people in those times thought they lose their nutritional value once they are dried. Citing Parsons, Williams says that the living insects were ground up in a metate and turned into a paste, into which were mixed cilantro, onion, garlic, epazote (wormseed), chile and salt. This paste might be served with vegetables, hens’ eggs or pieces of meat. The mixture was cooked in a wet corn husk on a comal for half an hour and might be served with tortillas as tacos. The “bug tamal” was still being eaten by fishers that Parsons studied at the beginning of the 1990s.
It seems Mexico’s People of the Water were extraordinary – on a worldwide scale – for the intensity and extent of their exploitation of lake insects and algae (Spirulina). However, little is known about the kind of “markers” indicating these activities, that archaeologists should be hunting for. By investigating the work of Mexico’s modern-day lake dwellers, patient ethnoarchaeologists like Parsons and Williams are shining new light on ancient customs.
“Numerous traditional activities and manufactures have virtually disappeared from the aquatic environments mentioned in this book,” Williams says at the end of his tome. “Because of the serious environmental problems affecting these areas, as well as the rapid pace of cultural change, the current generation of scholars may well be the last one that will be able to observe and record a traditional lifeway which is reminiscent of the pre-Hispanic past. This would be an irreparable loss for our understanding of the ancient history of Mexico’s lakes, a watery realm in which fishers, hunters and artisans earned their livelihood on a daily basis over thousands of years. These were the men and women who took pride in calling themselves the ‘water folk.’”
I subsequently look forward to reviewing Williams’ award-winning book, “Salt of the Earth,” which is written in English and is, like Water Folk, available free on the internet.