COCAINE COLONIALISM

Coca, one of the most significant plants in the world, grows in South
America. It is cultivated in warm and humid valleys, known in the local
Aymara language as yungas. Andean peasants chew it while working and
resting and even treat their guests with it. The habit of chewing - not
only accepted but widely spread among millions of inhabitants in countries
such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile - has an
economic basis. For peasants coca is a most beneficial crop because of its
ability to yield three to four harvests a year, in nonarable soils. In
fact, a detailed description of its leaf concludes that, due to its
richness in amino acids and vitamins, the coca plant is the Earth's most
complete plant in non-proteinic nitrogen. This kind of nitrogen eliminates
toxins and pathogens from the human body, also hydrating and regulating the
nervous system.

History

Andean peasants praise coca for its profitability, in comparison with other
crops. Its very specific farming technique is well adapted to the valleys
through the construction of stone or walled ground platforms. Raising coca
in the Andean valley is an ancestral custom. Since about 2000 BC, the leaf
has been intertwined with local life. Andeans not only utilised it for
conveying friendship, repaying services or simply as a coin, but also
considered it sacred. Besides discovering its medicinal powers, they
employed the leaf, mixed with certain oils, to soften rocks.

When the Incas politically centralised the area, plantations were located
all across the empire in order to maintain a stable production, the Incas
being the sole proprietors of sacred harvests. Later on, once the Spaniards
imposed themselves in the area, the Spanish Crown distributed these
plantations among some colonos under the encomiendas regime, and payment
with coca leaves was authorised.

When the Spaniards conquered the continent and discovered coca's energising
properties, they encouraged consumption in order to increase the
productivity of the natives they forced to work in the Potosi mines. As a
result, the coca trade became an important revenue source for the Spanish
Crown, second only to mine exploitation. Tithes on coca contributed almost
all of the Andean Catholic Church's funds.

In this way, coca entered the market economy, and colonial society adopted
the plant, fully incorporating it in its habits and manners to the extent
that physicians employed it as a medicine for asthma, haemorrhages,
toothache, vomiting and diarrhoea.

Criminalisation

Nevertheless, despite its early assimilation by colonial society, Spaniards
were not reluctant to blame the natives' ritual use of the coca leaf for
delaying their conversion to Christianity - thus beginning the long fight
against its consumption. When decolonisation brought independent states in
the region, the plant was once again accused, this time of blocking the
natives' assimilation into 'white' society.

However, it was the emergence of cocaine -- one of the 14 alkaloids of the
plant -- which ignited the black history of this bush. Soon after being
isolated in 1884, cocaine began to be used as an anaesthetic in surgery,
with the likes of Sigmund Freud recommending it as a relief for nervous
stress and fatigue. Towards the end of the 19th century, cocaine
consumption extended through the upper classes and the artistic circles of
both Europe and the US. Vin Mariani, a tonic based on the coca extract, was
prescribed by every physician as a cure for several diseases. In this, its
origins were similar to those of Coca-Cola patented in 1895 as a stimulant
and headache reliever which originally contained cocaine.

But in 1906, the US authorities made cocaine illegal by officially
declaring it was a narcotic and then prohibiting its import, together with
the coca leaves. In spite of the prohibition -- or eventually because of it
- -- all through the century cocaine has become highly appreciated and consumed.

The UN Convention for Narcotics placed cocaine on its toxic drugs first
page, listing it as 'psychotropic' in 1961. But the truth is that its
rocketing price makes cocaine one of the most profitable businesses on
Earth. In financial, artistic and political milieus from Western Europe and
the US, cocaine is regarded as synonymous with opulence and distinction,
also being consumed in Japan, Eastern Europe and Latin America, though to a
lesser degree.

Narcotraffic

Cocaine's desirability has launched a fabulous business -- more lucrative
than oil and second only to the warfare business -- known as narcotraffic.
This word defines the entire process of illegal production, transportation
and selling of illegal and controlled drugs. In this transnational game,
each one plays its role.

The USA, Europe and France sustain a strong demand, while Andean countries
like Peru, Bolivia and Colombia supply the product. In these latter
countries, coca consumption still differs from the one developed in the
North. While the use of cocaine paste expands among the young floating
population, the natives and peasants -- while disliking the paste -- still
preserve the habit of daily chewing.

The coca-producing regions have been transformed by this trade into
developing zones, because drug cartels extend credit and insurance to the
groups that produce cocaine. Cocaplanting peasants have increased their
incomes: raising the leaf means much more profit than raising any other
crop. In Bolivia, coca and its by-products generate a revenue of $600
million a year, and provide jobs for 20 per cent of the adult labour force.
In Peru, the coca industry occupies 15 per cent of the active labour force
and reports a yearly income of $1 billion.

In Colombia, the drugs trade provides a revenue of $1 billion, a sum higher
than coffee exports. The main gain, however, belongs to the consumer
countries, where the money laundering is undertaken, chemicals for cocaine
production are supplied and weapons to sustain drug dealers are sold.

Hypocrisy

The basic point about this amazing business seems to be its hypocrisy. In
the US, more than $100 billion has been spent on arrests, imprisonment,
education and other action since President Ronald Reagan initiated his "war
against drugs" in 1983. But, in the period from 1983 to 1993, the death by
drug abuse rate doubled, while assassinations linked to drug-trafficking
trebled. Statistics reveal that in 1992, in the US, 12,000 people died from
drug abuse and 2,000 more from drug-related murders.

The worst statistics for drug casualties are for adults between 35 and 50
years old, who in 1983 accounted for 80 per cent of the total drug
casualties. Ten years later, the risk of dying by drug abuse was 15 times
greater for people in their forties than for university students. And yet
US authorities in charge of the fight against drugs give no explanation for
these figures. They just present statistics showing an increase in the
relatively low rate of teenagers who smoke marijuana.

At present, the US market almost entirely absorbs Latin American drug
production (as well as a third of the world's heroin and 80 per cent of its
marijuana). Drug consumers in that country amount to 20 million, but in
order to solve this domestic problem, the US policy is to fight it abroad.
This exclusively domestic issue of drug consumption has been turned into
one of the favourite excuses for US intervention abroad, the creation of
the Drug

Enforcement Agency (DEA) in July 1973 being one of the fundamental steps to
institutionalise this. This cocaine colonialism has led to a disregard for
other countries' sovereignty. A 1992 US Supreme Court judgement, legalising
the kidnapping of drugs suspects in other countries, carries with it a very
serious threat to human rights, and mocks international law.

The US approach to the popularity of cocaine is a classic example of
misrepresenting the real problem. Drug consumption has become the object of
a crusade, projecting the evil onto the producer and not onto the consumer
onto the 'other' and not onto oneself. Today, many respectable voices can
be heard proposing that drugs such as cocaine should be legalised, as a
first step to solving some of the problems created by the prohibitions -
such as the high price, which often leads to corruption and violence, or
the bad quality of the final product, that endangers health. Such a move
would not only remove the carpet from beneath the feet of the corrupt, but
would decriminalise large sections of a society wracked by many more
serious problems.