ABSTRACT
With all of the initial enthusiasm by archaeologists and other researchers, the coverage by the press, and subsequent funding by various international development agencies, it seemed that raised fields offered a viable solution from the past for contemporary agricultural development in the Lake Titicaca Basin. Yet by 1994 most of the raised fields built by the Bolivian raised field rehabilitation project were already beginning to be abandoned across the altiplano and no new fields were being built. After 2 to 4 years of cultivation, most of the communities that participated in the project stopped building new fields and discontinued cultivation on fields that had already been built. Yet community members in Wankollo did not think of the project as being a failure. For community members who had participated in the fields it had been a worthwhile venture. They had had several years of good potato production on the fields, which had provided additional food and crop seed. The also received various tools, potato seed, and foodstuffs as incentives for participating in the project. Certainly in the eyes of the community, the project was not a failure, since they had participated in the project, reaped some significant short-term rewards, and continued with their normal dry field farming techniques without any ill affects in the community. In the community’s view the project had provided increased subsistence goods, though only for the short-term.
