A short drive north of Bolivia’s capital La Paz, deep in the lush green valleys of the Yungas, Alicia Calle, a middle-aged Indigenous cocalero (coca farmer), plucked the leaves off the shrubs on her immaculately clean patch, letting them fall in the pouch of the apron tied around her waist. When she’s not tending to her plot, Alicia lends a hand to the other farms in her community; they, in turn, help her when it's harvest season.
Now that I was here, she asked the gringo to assist.
“If you look after the land well and take care of it, it lasts,” she explained, pointing to one of the shrubs. “We planted this bush specifically in 1999. I remember it very well because my mother was between 40 and 50-years-old at the time. My father was a cocalero, and I’ve been a cocalero since I was ten-years-old. We’ve been doing this for centuries.”
After being collected, the leaves are laid out to dry. If it rains, the harvested leaves must be dried very quickly — within a day — otherwise they turn yellow and no one wants them.
“This coca, it’s the only thing that sustains us,” said Alicia. “Our food, clothing, education. We tried growing citrus and oranges, but the price is too low — ten bolivianos [$1.45] for a hundred oranges. There’s only one harvest a year, and it’s eaten by bugs. Even though we don't earn much, but thanks to this [coca] leaf, we eat every day. For example, now I'm going to harvest this, tomorrow it's going to dry, and in the afternoon I can sell it. Otherwise, I just have nothing, [but with this] I can buy food for my children.”
I got to gathering, stuffing a couple of the fresh leaves in my mouth along with a pinch of baking soda. My hunger faded, replaced with a mildly uplifting feeling. The Yungas is one of two chief coca-growing regions in Bolivia, along with the Chapare, and the leaves here are considered the best quality.
"This coca, it’s the only thing that sustains us."
This relatively innocuous little leaf enjoys a stature in native Bolivian culture not unlike wine in France, but in the last century its reputation became toxic by association with ruthless cocaine cartels. Now, after a decades-long struggle by Indigenous movements, boxes of coca tea may finally appear on supermarket shelves near you.
Coca fields in the Yungas region, Bolivia (Niko Vorobyov)
Coca grows in semitropical areas at heights of between 200 and 1,500 metres over sea level, and unlike oranges, can be harvested three to six times per year. The plant is rich in vitamins, minerals, calcium, iron, fiber, protein and calories; helps stimulate breathing and allows the lungs to absorb more oxygen, which is useful in the highlands of Bolivia. It also contains a tiny, teensy-weensy, amount of cocaine. Because of this, cocaleros such as Alicia spent decades in the crosshairs of the global war on drugs.
Bolivia has since reclaimed the coca leaf as a powerful national symbol, and is now pushing for its recognition worldwide. This year, the World Health Organization is due to complete its reassessment of coca at Bolivia’s request: if it’s decided that coca’s bodily perils have been overexaggerated, this could clear the way for global reform.
Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter Lab Notes.
Coca leaves have been part of the indigenous culture for millennia. Besides Bolivia, coca-chewing is also practiced to a lesser extent by the native populations of Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and the Brazilian Amazon, where it’s known as ipadu. The leaves were used as currency in the Inca Empire, which ruled the Andes mountains spanning the length of South America, and fed to the victims of human sacrifices before their untimely departures.
There are a number of legends of how coca was discovered. According to the Aymara peoples of Bolivia and Peru, a group of settlers trekking through the mountains had made camp, but their campfire spiraled out of control, angering the gods, who washed them away with a stormy flood. The survivors found a coca bush, which nourished them back to health.
In Bolivia, bundles of coca leaves are gifted at weddings, negotiations and as offerings to the Earth goddess Pachamama. In a ritual known as Q’owa, herbs and coca leaves are wrapped together in old newspaper along with a symbol of something desired – a job, or a house – on top of a pile of burning charcoal while alcohol is poured around. On certain occasions, a llama fetus is added to the mix. If the symbol melts, your wish has been acknowledged by Pachamama.
Most commonly, though, coca-chewing is a social activity, like hanging out with your friends over a cup of coffee.
When the Spanish conquistadors arrived they were suspicious at first, and the Catholic Church declared coca to be the work of the devil. But then the Spaniards saw how it “motivated” their native workforce at the silver mines in Potosí, which was paid in coca. The church was perhaps genuinely concerned for the welfare of the overworked miners, who were being kept (in the eyes of the clergy) “addicted” to coca, but eventually a 10% cut shut the church up. Tens of thousands perished in the shafts of Potosí alone.
"It is unthinkable that the WHO today will maintain the indefensible arguments they used in the past."
In 1949, a flawed U.N. study described coca-chewing as a gross habit that “degenerated” the Indigenous people, leaving them impoverished and unproductive (which would have been news to the Spaniards.) And since 1961, coca has been listed among the most dangerous substances by the U.N. This on its own wouldn’t have attracted the attention of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, were it not for the fact that coca is the primary raw material for cocaine.
In secret locations, a mixture of gasoline, baking soda and sulfuric acid is poured on top of shredded coca leaves and processed either in a cement mixer or by stomping on them. From there, couriers — usually out-of-work locals — are paid to drive the finished product overland, onboard a canoe or trek through the jungle to big-city hubs for export or distribution. During the 1970s and ‘80s, coke barons such as Roberto Suárez Gómez, who served as the real-life inspiration for the character of Sosa in “Scarface,” grew rich and powerful enough to finance military coups.
In 1988, under pressure from Washington, Bolivia passed Law 1008, which criminalized all coca cultivation outside a designated zone in the Yungas. That year, soldiers overseen by the DEA and the CIA gunned down a dozen protestors against the new law on a bridge crossing the Chapare river in Villa Tunari. For the next sixteen years, security forces committed summary executions and sexually assaulted peasant girls with impunity, while angry mobs rioted, lynching cops and burning down police stations.
Confrontations between police and cocaleros resulted in scores of deaths, almost to the point of a low-level insurgency. Soldiers on patrol were met with peasant militias and booby traps. While the war on drugs may have reduced Bolivia’s cocaine output, it destroyed the livelihoods of rural communities while, paradoxically, the increased scarcity of coca left it a more profitable (and tempting) career path.
The cocaleros pushed back. Leading the fiery demonstrations was Evo Morales, a native Aymara cocalero from the Chapare and the president of a powerful coca-growers’ union, raging against neoliberal economics and the war on coca — both seen as stand-ins for gringo imperialism. The coca farmers, along with miners and other allies, shut down La Paz, erecting roadblocks on all major highways and byways in and out of the capital and choking the economy.
Between this and the unrest in Chapare, the situation was nearing crisis point, and in 2004 president Carlos Mesa struck a compromise with the cocaleros, legalizing cultivation in the Chapare.
Morales was elected Bolivia’s first Indigenous president in 2006. Two years later, he expelled both the DEA and the American ambassador, accusing them of spying and undermining Bolivian sovereignty. U.S.-Bolivia relations would remain frozen for the next three years. And in 2009, the new constitution even recognized “ancestral coca as cultural patrimony, a renewable natural resource of Bolivia’s biodiversity, and as a factor of social cohesion.” By 2017, the land authorized to grow coca was more than doubled to 22,000 hectares.
Cocalero households are entitled to a cato (1,600 square meters) of coca after being cleared by the authorities, which is watched over closely by their local union. If you’re caught growing over your limit, you can lose your coca-growing privileges, and if they fail to keep check, the entire union can be barred. This is known as “community control”. The authorities still carry out inspections and rip out excess plants, but their arrival is announced beforehand so it doesn’t create tension like in the old days. Still, many farmers are unhappy that a single cato isn’t enough to earn money, and the nationwide cap means it’s hard for newcomers to enter the business.
Bolivia is now home to a thriving domestic coca industry. There’s coca-infused tea, candy and beer, while leaves for chewing can be bought in markets or stalls anywhere in the country. But while global prohibition remains in place, Bolivia is unable to share its “cultural patrimony” with the rest of the world. Therefore, it’s taking the fight to the world stage.
“It is time to decolonize the [U.N.’s] current regulations and [end] the six decades of the colonization of the coca leaf,” Bolivian Vice President David Chochquehuanca told a conference in Peru in February.
Coca is currently listed as a Schedule I narcotic by the United Nations, in the same category as opioids like fentanyl. However, cannabis was once filed under the even stricter Schedule IV until a reassessment from the WHO, together with lobbying from India, Nepal, Morocco, South Africa, Thailand, Mexico, Jamaica and Colombia — all heartlands of the herb — removed it from the blacklist in 2020. Now countries are free to reform their marijuana laws without breaking U.N. treaties (although other agreements, e.g. European Union rules, may still apply.)
It's hoped that the same will happen to coca. In July 2023, the WHO received a formal request from Bolivia to look into the matter.
Coca leaves drying after harvest in the Yungas region, Bolivia (Niko Vorobyov)
“Ending the U.N. treaty ban on coca and the condemnation of millennia-old Andean-Amazonian cultural practices, has been a long-standing demand from Indigenous peoples and cocalero movements,” said Martin Jelsma, a drug policy specialist at the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute. “This struggle has now culminated in the formal review procedure triggered by Bolivia, with active support from Colombia. Civil society in the region and worldwide sees it as a historic opportunity to decolonize the frozen U.N. drug control regime and to resolve systemic inconsistencies and the obvious tensions with Indigenous rights. The review process has also received support from OHCHR and the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous People.”
Other Andean nations are watching intently. In Peru, limited coca cultivation is allowed and controlled by a government monopoly, which then sells the decocainized leaves to Coca-Cola for flavoring. The extracted cocaine is sold to the pharmaceutical market, which is used as a topical anesthetic for nasal surgery. While traditional Peruvian farmers protest, unlike in Bolivia they are not a powerful political force. Lawmakers show little interest in Indigenous communities, and instead coca is tainted by associations with cocaine and terrorism. Specifically, the ultra-radical, cult-like, incredibly brutal Shining Path — once feared for its reign of terror in the ‘80s and ‘90s, hanging dead dogs from lampposts — collects “revolutionary taxes” from cocaleros and facilitates onward shipments to global traffickers, for example through the port of Callao.
Coca in Colombia has historically been more heavily criminalized than either Peru or Bolivia given how there’s less cultural tradition and the plant is almost exclusively grown for the narco-business, violent paramilitaries and guerrillas. The struggle to dominate the cocaine trade has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
However, Colombia’s progressive president Gustavo Petro now wants to go further and end the war on drugs altogether by legalizing cocaine, which he claims is no worse than whiskey.
We need your help to stay independent
“It is unthinkable that the WHO today will maintain the indefensible arguments they used in the past,” Jelsma continued. “The WHO, however, is very aware of the political controversy that would arise if they would recommend to delete coca from the treaty schedules altogether, and will therefore be tempted and under considerable pressure to use the argument of cocaine extraction to justify keeping it on Schedule I, or to only recommend a transfer to the slightly lighter-controlled Schedule II. All the available evidence about the coca leaf and consistency of the scheduling criteria as applied to other plants and alkaloids across the treaty system, however, will make it very difficult for the Expert Committee to recommend anything else than withdrawing coca leaf from the treaty schedules.”
“Under the terms of the treaty, using coca leaf for the extraction of cocaine would remain as illegal as it is now, also if coca itself is no longer scheduled as a narcotic drug itself,” Jelsma added.
These concerns are not wholly unfounded. It’s clear that a portion of Bolivia’s coca is diverted to narcotraffickers. How much, exactly, is uncertain, but a year ago Bolivian cops celebrated their second-biggest drug bust of all time: 7.2 tons of blow discovered onboard two trucks transporting scrap metal through the desert near the Chilean border, from where it would be shipped overseas toward Belgium.
There are other concerns as well, such as legal coca would fall prey to corporate capitalism like cannabis. We can already see that in Peru, where Coca-Cola is allowed to sell their product worldwide while native farmers are not.
But back in the valleys of the Yungas, Alicia welcomed the world finally recognizing her Indigenous customs and livelihood.
“It would be beautiful,” she said, plucking more leaves into her pouch.
Additional reporting by William Wroblewski.
Shares