Lake Poopo in Bolivia left high and dry

Felix Mauricio, a member of the Uru Indigenous community, used to be a fisherman. Now 82, he gazes over a barren landscape and chews coca leaf to suppress the hunger pains.

"The fish were big. A small fish was three kilos," he recalls of the good old days.

At its peak in 1986, Lake Poopo spanned some 3,500 square kilometers (1,350 square miles) -- an area more than twice the size of Greater London.

But by the end of 2015 it had "fully evaporated" according to a European Space Agency timeline of satellite images tracking the lake's decline.

Scientific studies have blamed a confluence of factors, including climate change and water extraction for farming and mining in the area on the Bolivian high plains, some 3,700 meters above sea level.

"Here was the lake... It dried up quickly," Mauricio told AFP, kneeling in the dry bed and playing with a miniature wooden boat he had carved himself -- pushing it around with a wistful look, like a kid lost in an imaginary world.

Mauricio has always lived in Punaca Tinta Maria, a village in the southwestern region of Oruro.

His grandparents settled in the area in 1915 at a time when the waters of Lake Poopo lapped at doorsteps and intermittently flooded huts.

- No land either -
Mauricio's is one of only seven families left in Punaca Tinta Maria, which used to have 84 of them, according to locals.

There are only about 600 members left of the Uru Indigenous community -- which goes back thousands of years in Bolivia and Peru -- in Punaca Tinta Maria and the neighboring settlements of Llapallapani and Vilaneque, according to a 2013 survey.

"Many lived here before," said Cristina Mauricio, a resident of Punaca Tinta Maria who guesses her age at 50.

"They have left. There is no work."

Since 2015, rainfall has returned a shallow film of water to parts of the lake, but not enough to navigate or to hold the fish or water birds the Uru -- who still call themselves "water people" -- used to catch and hunt.

With none of the lake's natural offerings left, the Uru have had to learn new skills, working today as bricklayers or miners, some growing quinoa or other small crops.

A major problem is that the Uru have little access to land.

Their villages are surrounded by members of another Indigenous community called the Aimara, who jealously guard the farmland they occupy with property titles from the government.

The state has announced plans to distribute land to the Uru as well, but the community claims most of it is infertile and useless.