Reed Raft

An ancient way of fishing persists—against many odds

As visitors approached the Caballitos de Totora exhibition space at the 2015 Perú: Pachamama Festival program, they were confronted by ten- to fifteen-foot-tall reed rafts, standing just as they would on the beaches of Huanchaco. The totora reeds (bulrush), from which the caballitos were constructed, carried the smell of the northern Peruvian coast. In my mind I was transported back to the day I met fisherman and master caballito maker Ángel Piminchumo and his nephew Matteo Valderrama.

I was part of a five-person research team that traveled to Huanchaco in December 2014 to learn more about this tradition. Building and fishing in reed rafts are practices that date back to the pre-Incan Moche (100-700 BCE) and Chimú (900-1470) civilizations. Today, tourists flock to Huanchaco to try their hand at surfing the “little horses.”

Ángel met us on the beach, explaining how caballitos de totora are constructed while deftly wrapping a fishing line around two small bundles of dried reeds to make a miniature one. Matteo showed us how to mount the caballito, where we could store our catch, and how to row in and out from shore, as he had done for countless tourists before. The rafts take a lot of strength to carry. They weigh almost 90 pounds when dry, and closer to 150 pounds when soaked with sea water.

Walking around the swamps of Huanchaco where the totora reed grows, we learned that overharvesting has made this once plentiful natural resource scarce. Yet artisans like Ángel have adapted by adding pieces of polystyrene, requiring less raw material per boat, in order to maintain the iconic boats that tourists have come to associate with the Huanchaco coastline. The raft Ángel donated to our collection is specially made in the more traditional way, exclusively with reeds. This caballito, in contrast to most, will not rot away over the fishing season, but will stand in our collection as a symbol of the resiliency of this 3,000-year tradition.