{"id":50051069,"date":"2022-02-11T19:15:47","date_gmt":"2022-02-11T19:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stage.dialogochino.net\/?p=51069"},"modified":"2023-01-08T21:36:10","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T21:36:10","slug":"51063-parana-river-argentina-women-fishers","status":"publish","type":"photo_story","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/uncategorized\/51063-parana-river-argentina-women-fishers\/","title":{"rendered":"In Argentina, female fishers persevere as the Paran\u00e1\u2019s water level drops"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cEs lo que hay<\/em>,\u201d says Mar\u00eda Barrios, shrugging her shoulders. It is what it is. These words are being heard more and more frequently in the shed of the Fisherton\u2013Pueblo Esther worker\u2019s cooperative, strategically located next to the Paran\u00e1 river on the Balbi bajada <\/em>\u2013 a riverbank about 30 minutes by car from the city of Rosario, Santa Fe province\u2019s most populous city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note<\/p>

This article first appeared on\u00a0Territorios y Resistencias<\/a>, a collaborative project led by Chicas Poderosas Argentina, with the support of the US Embassy in Argentina<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As she speaks, the fisherwoman and leader of this cooperative looks at the five silver shad fish she pulled out of the river, at the end of a long day scouring the nets without much success. One by one, she places them on a board, measures them with her hands and plunges the knife into the soft white belly. It takes her only a few minutes to expertly debone the day\u2019s meagre catch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early days of previous springs, Mar\u00eda would have returned with her boat full of fish. But in the last two years, misfortune has struck this small-scale fishing village like a plague. In mid-2019, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Paran\u00e1 river began to see a dramatic decline in its flow, which, by 2021, led to its lowest water level<\/a> in more than 70 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The drop in the level of the river<\/a>, traditionally one of the strongest in the Americas, has not only been abrupt, but also prolonged. Among the determining causes for this historic drop is a deficit in precipitation in the Brazilian basins of the Paran\u00e1, Uruguay and Iguaz\u00fa rivers, amid greater climate variability as a result of global warming, and profound changes in land use due to the extension of the agricultural frontier along the entire basin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After analysing measurements of the average daily flows of the Paran\u00e1 River over 117 years, from 1905 to 2021, researchers from the National University of Rosario concluded<\/a> that \u201cthe decrease observed in the years 2020 and 2021 can be substantially related to an average annual rainfall well below those considered normal in the previous period.\u201d The authors, Pedro Basile, Gerardo Riccardi and Marina Garc\u00eda, presented their findings at the university\u2019s 15th Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The low water level of the last two years has transformed the landscape of the Paran\u00e1\u2019s wetlands. The shores have widened, revealing the sand and silt that give the river its brown colour, and several wonders that had been buried by the water have emerged: fragments of an old bridge in the city of Santa Fe, old anchors in the town of Ramallo and, in the city of Paran\u00e1, a chapel of the Virgin of Guadalupe that had been submerged by a flood at the beginning of 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Paran\u00e1<\/div>
The drop in the level of the Paran\u00e1 river has changed the landscape for fishing communities along its riverbank, such as here at Balbi in Santa Fe province (Image:\u00a0Celina Mutti Lovera<\/a>\u00a0\/ Territorios y Resistencias)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Around the characteristic islands that dot the Paran\u00e1\u2019s course, the changes were more dramatic. Many of the streams and lagoons that depend on the river\u2019s main channel dried up and many fish lost part of their breeding grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five shad that Mar\u00eda cleans in the fishers’ cooperative shed are another face of the environmental crisis. \u201cThe lagoons where we used to go to look for fish are dry. On the island there are now planted fields, there are machines, there are cows. Everything has been destroyed,\u201d the fisher says. \u201cIf this continues, in two years we will have no fish left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resisting together<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Fisherton cooperative, in the town of Pueblo Esther, was founded ten years ago. It is made up of 19 people, seven of whom are women, most of them dedicated to the production of fish-based foods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar\u00eda is in charge of the project, which seeks to add value to the work of local fishermen and fisherwomen. The group includes those who fish, those who clean and skin the catch, and those who prepare the empanadas, meatballs, breaded fish or cannelloni that are sold frozen at fairs and markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe life of the fisher and his family is arduous,\u201d says Marcela B\u00e1ez, Mar\u00eda\u2019s sister-in-law and head cook. The adjective is not enough to sum up the many hours of work out in the open: at night, at dawn, in the cold, in the rain, in the sun, with mosquitoes, with tired bodies and bone-chilling humidity, and without a fixed salary or social benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cooperative was born as an attempt to mend this chain of hardships, to improve the fishers\u2019 income and, at the same time, to protect the resource from the voracity of the processing factories that pay little for the fish: even in times of scarce supply, like the current one, the payment for a kilo of shad can reach as low as 100 pesos (US$0.94) \u2013 barely enough to buy half a kilo of bread, and up to five times less than what it is sold for in some supermarkets in the centre of Rosario.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Paran\u00e1<\/div>
A group of women prepare fish in the kitchen of the Fisherton\u2013Pueblo Esther cooperative (Image:\u00a0Celina Mutti Lovera<\/a>\u00a0\/ Territorios y Resistencias)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The community project became essential as the Paran\u00e1\u2019s flow declined. In the winter of 2021, the beautiful and wild river, the second longest in South America after the Amazon, attracted the attention of the Argentine press and international media, including the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Paran\u00e1 \u201cshriveling\u201d or \u201cplummeting\u201d were some of the headlines that tried to summarise an environmental tragedy that is straining the pulse of this vital waterway. In 2020, 70% of the grains, 96% of the vegetable oils, and 96% of the flours that were exported \u2013 equivalent to 37% of Argentina\u2019s total exports \u2013 were transported along the river, according to a report<\/a> by the Rosario Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these numbers are not enough to measure the consequences of the receding waters. For Mar\u00eda, Marcela and their colleagues in the cooperative, the decline of the river is not only hurting their meagre economy but also their history, and sowing concern about the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a cumbia rhythm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To get to Balbi you have to cross an area of agricultural land near Pueblo Esther and pay attention to the signs, painted without much typographic effort, announcing \u201chay pescado<\/em>\u201d (fish available). On weekdays, not a soul passes through these dirt streets. But on Saturdays and Sundays, people flock to the beach, and cumbia music plays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Google Maps, the area is listed as Bajada Barbi<\/a> \u2013 but that is not the correct name. The neighbourhood bears the surname of Don Balbi, one of the first fish gatherers in town, who built his ranch on a shore formed at the Paran\u00e1 River and the mouth of the Fr\u00edas stream, an archaeological site where palaeontologist brothers Carlos and Florentino Ameghino arrived in 1907. Over time, the area became populated by fishing families, whose houses face the river delta. Today, there are around 50 of them, although not all make their living from fishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The geography of this area of the river began to change 20 years ago, when Argentina positioned itself as the world\u2019s main supplier of soybean meal and oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the steep slopes of this stretch of the Paran\u00e1 grew the ports of the multinationals Cargill, Louis Dreyfus and Toepfer, barge repair industries such as Ultrapetrol \u2013 which gradually reshaped the water\u2019s edge \u2013 and also gated communities with bucolic names such as Fields of Esther, Land of Dreams or Blossoms of Paran\u00e1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"women<\/div>
Through the preparation of foods, such as empanadas, cannelloni and breaded products, in the kitchens of the cooperative, women add value to the fish caught along the river (Image:\u00a0Celina Mutti Lovera<\/a>\u00a0\/ Territorios y Resistencias)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Each new development was celebrated as a sign of progress. But the illusion, they say here at Balbi, faded quickly. \u201cSome of our kids managed to get to work with the barges, but in three months they were thrown out,\u201d says one of the fishers. \u201cIt hurt us a lot. It reduced our fishing ground, forced us to abandon it and run away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fishing ground is something like the fisher\u2019s sacred place. It is the area of the river where they can work calmly and cast their nets, without fear of snagging them, breaking them or losing tools. The size of these areas is measured by the time it takes to canoe through them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, the fishers on the Balbi riverbank would cast their line over the mouth of the Fr\u00edas stream after sailing for an hour. But the growth of industry forced them to move further south and narrow the area, getting dangerously close to the edge of the navigation channel, the deepest and most swiftly flowing part of the river. \u201cToday, we have little more than half an hour of [time on the] water left,\u201d Mar\u00eda grumbles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women of the bajada<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Mar\u00eda Barrios has dark skin, black eyes and long hair, which she hides under a white bonnet as she handles fish in the cooperative\u2019s shed, a brick building with a tin roof, built by the community itself. It smells of bleach this afternoon. Mar\u00eda came to Balbi when she was a child. More than once, in times of flooding, the river came within a few metres of the building, which was erected on an uneven section of the riverbank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, due of the low water level, getting to the Paran\u00e1 is not simply a walk to the bottom of the slope, but another 70 metres, sinking your boots in the mud, among tall reeds, fragile willows, fragrant bushes and weeds. These began to occupy the space when the water began to recede, slowly at first, and violently this past winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday \u2013 the days exempted from the ban on commercial fishing enforced by the provincial government as a result of the low water \u2013 Mar\u00eda walks this path to make a living. In the province of Santa Fe alone, there are 4,020 families who depend on fishing and some 1,628 are small-scale fishers, according to the latest survey by Santa Fe\u2019s department for environment and climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women are in the minority in this universe of hard work. According to the same list, only 85 fisherwomen have commercial fishing permits and another 80 have subsistence permits \u2013 that is, only for their own or their families\u2019 consumption. Traditionally, the activity is taught and learned from fathers to sons. And in this whimsically masculine world, women have other tasks: they are the ones who clean, prepare or cook the fish. They are not the ones who take it out of the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Paran\u00e1<\/div>
Mar\u00eda Barrios walks through the dry bed of the Paran\u00e1 river, where vegetation has begun to grow in absence of the flowing stream (Image:\u00a0Celina Mutti Lovera<\/a>\u00a0\/ Territorios y Resistencias)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Mar\u00eda says that she learned to fish from her father. Although her father never encouraged her, she started fishing to feed her children. If her story could be summed up in a series of significant moments, it would go something like this: At the age of nine, she worked with her mother on a strawberry farm; at the age of 13, she and her brothers and sisters were already medieros<\/em>, those who cultivate a farm and share the profits with the landowners. Then she worked in a factory, just for a few months as she never got paid; and at the age of 20, she told her father that she was going to start fishing. She rented herself a boat and went out on the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar\u00eda learned to weave and build nets, to set them, to cast lines, jars and hooks. She learned the cycles and the arrivals of the different fish; how to look for them in the river, in the lagoons of the island and, above all, she says, learned to defend the price of the fish. She then took charge of the cooperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar\u00eda knows the comings and goings of the river by heart. But she has never seen a low water level like the current one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flow of the Paran\u00e1 dances to the rhythm of the rainfall in its upper basin, especially in southern Brazil, Paraguay and northern Argentina. Those who study these fluctuations have previously measured rises and falls in the same year, falls in autumn and winter and rises in spring and summer, and also over longer periods, with dry years and wet years. To their credit, these records have a long history, dating back to the construction of the port of Rosario in the late 19th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"female<\/div>
At only 20 years old, Mar\u00eda Barrios decided she wanted to be a fisher, a job that has long been considered men’s work (Image:\u00a0Celina Mutti Lovera<\/a>\u00a0\/ Territorios y Resistencias)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

During the summer of 2020, while the news talked exclusively about the spread of Covid-19 cases, the National University of Rosario\u2019s Centre for Hydro-Environmental Research (CURIHAM) began to notice that the low water was running outside of the usual margins. The following winter, for almost a month, the height of the Paran\u00e1 was below zero on the scale used to measure its level in the Rosario port area, while the average height for that time of year, according to the National Water Institute, is three metres. At this point, there was no longer any doubt that this was an extraordinary situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to CURIHAM researchers Gerardo Riccardi and Pedro Basile, the nearly 140-year history of measurements of Paran\u00e1 levels has seen numerous severe events. But since the beginning of the 1970s, the river\u2019s hydrological regime has changed, with more extreme maximum and minimum values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current low is comparable to that of the years 1944 and 1945, when two minimum annual levels were recorded: -1.39 and -0.81 metres at Rosario, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For specialists, the fluctuation in the river\u2019s hydrological regime since 1972 is explained by various factors observed in the basin from the 1960s onwards, such as increases in rainfall on a regional scale, deforestation and changes in land use, which have contributed to greater runoff in the basin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing is clear: the river today is no longer the same as the river of 1944. In seven decades, the population of the cities around it has grown and the number of housing developments multiplied, as have the number of industries located on its coast, the number of hectares cultivated throughout the basin and the number of ships transporting the harvest, among other factors. Everything has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A river in emergency<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A week before the end of July 2021, Argentina\u2019s national government declared a water emergency for territories located on the banks of the Paran\u00e1, Paraguay and Iguaz\u00fa rivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The document, signed by President Alberto Fern\u00e1ndez, states that the deficit in precipitation in the upper basins \u201cis one of the determining factors for the current historical low water level, considered the most significant in our country in the last SEVENTY SEVEN (77) years\u201d. The capital letters are from the original.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Paran\u00e1<\/div>
Last year, the Paran\u00e1 river reached its lowest water levels in over 70 years, prompting the national government to declare a water emergency (Image:\u00a0Celina Mutti Lovera<\/a>\u00a0\/ Territorios y Resistencias)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The decline in levels in these watercourses, the decree continues, could harm \u201cthe supply of drinking water, navigation and port operations, the generation of hydroelectric energy and economic activities linked to the exploitation of the basin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The area affected by the low water is not only extensive but also extremely diverse. The withdrawal of the waters is affecting seven provinces: Formosa, Chaco, Misiones, Corrientes, Santa Fe, Entre R\u00edos and Buenos Aires, which together make up 809,000 km2, a third of the country\u2019s continental surface area, and 24 million people, or more than half of the Argentine population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For environmental organisations within the Multisectorial Humedales<\/a> conservation group, the emergency in the river was declared too late, and was mainly motivated by the need for works to adapt the drinking water supply systems, and losses generated in the transport of grains. According to data from the Rosario Stock Exchange, between January and mid-September 2021 alone, the drop in the height of the river meant a loss of 620 million pesos (US$5.8 million) in exports of soybean meal and oil. The economy, the organisation warns, has prevailed over the need to protect the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After declaring the emergency, the national government announced that it had begun to negotiate with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) the possibility of adding US$100 million to the US$300 million<\/a> it had already committed to the country last year to deal with events such as floods and earthquakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September, the then-Cabinet Chief, Santiago Cafiero, announced that work would be authorised through the Water Emergency Fund, which is administered by the National Agency for Water and Sanitation Works (ENOHSA) and involves investments of 1 billion pesos (US$9.4 million) to assist the affected provinces and localities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Santa Fe joined the water emergency in August, a month after the national decree. But, according to the local ministry for environment, the provincial accounts had not yet received a single peso from the emergency fund by the end of October 2021. \u201cWe have already sent all the documentation, with the corresponding requirements, to the national cabinet office. We are now waiting for the allocation of resources,\u201d a source explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A summer storm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Micaela Tosco is 24 years old and has eyes very similar to those of Mar\u00eda, her mother. She does not live in the Balbi neighbourhood, but in the south of Rosario. Every morning, she travels an hour by bus to go to work at the cooperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was very young when her mother started fishing and can no longer remember the first time she went with her in the boat, but she remembers the last time. It was after a summer storm \u2013 which often form quickly and hit the land violently \u2013 found them in the middle of the river. The waves were huge, the young girl recalls. Her mother just about managed to throw her and her siblings on their bellies on the floor of the boat and ask them to cover their eyes. As the woman fought the river, she thought they would not make it, but she managed to tame it and reached the shore. Since then, none of Mar\u00eda\u2019s seven children have fished with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The memory arrives like a bird at the table, where the women are turning some 10 kilos of fish mince into empanadas, pies, meatballs, rolls or sausages, all homemade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/div>
The Pueblo Esther cooperative makes a range of foods to be sold at fairs and markets (Image:\u00a0Celina Mutti Lovera<\/a>\u00a0\/ Territorios y Resistencias)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In the background, the radio talks about the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. More than 10,000 km \u2013 and many other things \u2013 separate Pueblo Esther from the Scottish city, but the concerns are the same. \u201cAll of us who are fishers are aware of what is happening with the weather,\u201d comments Mar\u00eda and adds that it is no longer so easy to anticipate the arrival of species such as tarpon, bogue or pacu; and that the time between the storms forming in the sky and their precipitation is becoming shorter and shorter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fish of the Paran\u00e1 follow a popular saying: el grande se come al chico<\/em>, the big (and often more powerful) one eats the small one. At the beginning of this chain is the shad, whose eggs and larvae feed other species such as the bogue, the surub\u00ed<\/em> or the dorado. But the shad requires the natural oscillations of the river level for its reproduction, and the delta lagoons where its young develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EBIPES project (the biological and fishing evaluation of species of sporting and commercial interest) was set up in 2005 to improve knowledge of the fishing resources in this area of the river, and involves the national Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries and the provinces of the middle and lower Paran\u00e1 River. To determine the state of the situation, studies are periodically carried out on the variety, quantity and size of the species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2021 evaluations indicated that, due to the low water level, there have already been two years in which the reproduction numbers of the shad was abnormal. Gaspar Borra, an environmental lawyer and advisor to the Ministry of Environment of Santa Fe, warns that the situation casts uncertainty on the future of the resource. After two years of very low reproduction, \u201cwe have to see what happens this summer because, although the river is rising, the projections are not very encouraging and, if the low flows are maintained, this will not be a good reproduction season either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this reason, Borra says, measures have been put in place to reduce fishing pressure by closing the catch on certain days and limiting the fish export quota. In 2019, the Argentine Littoral region exported 18,000 tonnes of shad. That year, all the Littoral provinces (Entre R\u00edos, Santa Fe, Corrientes and Chaco) agreed to lower the export quota by a third. \u201cFor there to be fish tomorrow, there has to be fish today,\u201d Borra points out, but in any case, he stresses that the environmental variable cannot be dissociated from the social or economic. \u201cThere are communities that, for cultural reasons, subsist on the river. We have to find a balance,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biodiversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Paran\u00e1 is home to some 200 species of fish<\/a> with a unique dynamic, due to their ability to adapt to the river\u2019s irregular flows of drought and flooding. Looking at all this richness, not just at the fish of commercial interest, \u201cwe can say that very little is known about what happens in the river,\u201d says Andr\u00e9s Sciara, dean of the faculty of biochemical and pharmaceutical sciences at the National University of Rosario, and a specialist in biotechnology in aquaculture of native species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid this irregularity, there are already species that have practically disappeared from these coasts. The pacu is a clear example: many fishers in the area cannot even identify it, confusing it with palometa or piranha. The same is true of the manguruy\u00fa<\/em>, one of the largest fish in the basin. At least one scientific study also shows the vulnerability of some rays, especially the giant river stingray, affected by unintended overfishing and habitat loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vanina Villanova is a doctor in biological sciences, a researcher at Conicet \u2013 the national government research agency \u2013 and the laboratory of aquatic biotechnology at the Paran\u00e1 River Aquarium in Rosario. Every now and then, she says, fishers bring her strange catches. The last one was a baby manguruy\u00fa<\/em>, which its captor considered an exotic species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scientist explains that fish fauna is a resource to be taken care of, and which is under stress from fishing, whether it is large-scale for export, by-catch or sport fishing. Changes in their environment, such as the dredging of the river and the modification of watercourses on the islands, conspire against the good health of the species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile the dynamics of these fish allow them to avoid the river\u2019s low waters, we now also have greater human activity of all kinds: pollution, fishing, transport, changes in land use in the wetlands and land development that have repercussions throughout the chain,\u201d says the expert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specialists consider the conservation of natural areas a good practice to preserve these species \u2013 especially in the areas where the fish reproduce \u2013 along with the control of export quotas. Some suggest eliminating the international sale of freshwater fish as another tool for preservation: \u201cThese are measures that have a political cost and are a bit drastic, but we should think about them,\u201d says Villanova.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I wouldn\u2019t change my life for anything\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In February 2005, the first meeting of the provincial fishing council was held. It is a body made up of 20 people, representatives of the legislative chambers, provincial, municipal and communal officials, stockpilers, processing factories, tourism entrepreneurs, sport fishing clubs, NGOs, universities and regional fishing committees. The fishers also sit at this table, which meets about six times a year to analyse the state of the sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/div>
Despite the ever more challenging conditions she faces, Mar\u00eda Barrios, pictured here in her boat, says: ‘I wouldn’t change my life for anything’ (Image:\u00a0Celina Mutti Lovera<\/a>\u00a0\/ Territorios y Resistencias)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Paran\u00e1\u2019s low water level and its consequences on fishing was the big topic of the recent meetings, where, Mar\u00eda says, they could discuss on equal terms with biologists and politicians. \u201cTo be there, we had to learn, we had to prepare a lot, and little by little we are making ourselves heard,\u201d she says, assuring us that the voices of the river workers enrich the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, she says, \u201cwe fishers have been persecuted for everything that happens in the Paran\u00e1.\u201d However, she stresses that it is the real-estate pressure on coastal land, the dredging of the river, the intense traffic of ships or the use of pesticides that damages the river. \u201cWe fishers always appear to be the only ones to blame for everything,\u201d complains Mar\u00eda. Micaela and Marcela share her anger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t change my life for anything,\u201d says Mar\u00eda, showing a tattoo she proudly wears with the image of a beautiful goldfish jumping over the water. She got it stamped on her back a few years ago when she turned 40, as rheumatism and asthma were pushing her to stop fishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she says that the river still calls to her, that the water calms her. When the low water level came, many fishers left the river to do other jobs and there was a shortage of fish for the cooperative. But she still hasn\u2019t been able to stop fishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was originally published on Territorios y Resistencias<\/a>, a collaborative project led by Chicas Poderosas Argentina, with the support of the US Embassy in Argentina. Research was carried out between October and December 2021 by a team of more than 35 women and LGBTTQI+ people from across Argentina.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid an extraordinary loss of flow on the Paran\u00e1 river in Argentina, a cooperative seeks to improve incomes for women in artisanal fishing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":50051099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[1],"tags":[511,545,587],"country":[50000020],"class_list":["post-50051069","photo_story","type-photo_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biodiversity","tag-fisheries","tag-rivers","country-argentina"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIn Argentina, female fishers persevere as the Paran\u00e1\u2019s water level drops<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Amid an extraordinary loss of flow on the Paran\u00e1 river in Argentina, a cooperative seeks to improve incomes for women in artisanal fishing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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