Bio/grafías of the Coca Plant (2018) 50 x 70 cm. Colored pencil drawing on tinted cardboard.
A review of the initial status of the coca plant in the colonies and the role it has historically played for the colonised. A plant that was prohibited, demonized, taxed, exploited for European scientific research during the colonial era, commercialized from 1860s-1920s, and banned from the open market in the mid-20th century. A plant that is a commercial crop caught up in a cynical dynamic of international exportation: trapped between the mass consumption of the illegal recreational drug trade and the mass consumption of the legal Coca-Cola trade. Throughout all these changes, what remains are the complex dimensions that the coca plant plays in Andean societies. The impact of the persecution of the plant in Latin America makes redrawing its history important.
In this sense, this is an attempt to redraw the history of the coca plant from an Andean perspective, reviewing the history of its status in its place of origin and how it intertwines with the history of Andean peoples. Initially prohibited by the Spaniard colonizers, it passed on to be taxed during colonial times, and then researched by scientists in modern times. Commercialized in international markets in the early 20th century, it was banned from open markets in the mid 20th century. The coca plant was a cash crop inserted in a double dynamic of international exportation: entangled in the mass consumption of the illegal recreational drug business, and the mass consumption of a legal commerce. Throughout the changes in its status, what remains is the complex dimensions that the coca plant plays in Andean societies. And with that the possibility to ask for the plant's own purpose and perspective.
Coca (Erythroxylum coca var. coca) grows along the Andes. The seeds of the plant are sown naturally by birds that each the ripe drupes from the bush and excrete the seeds undigested. In the Andes, this variety is propagated almost exclusively from seeds (Plowman 1979b,46). Coca seeds become infertile when they dry (normal after three days). (…) From the time of planting, a period of some eighteen months is necessary before the first leaves can be harvested. A bush produce for twenty to thirty years. (…) The plant is not disturbed by the removal of almost all of its leaves. If the leaves aren’t harvested, the bush will grown into a proper tree. The leaves of these coca trees are almost devoid of effects. (...)The Amazonian coca bush is pruned to a height of about 1.5 meters. Suche bushes are known as ilyimera, “little birds.” Amazonian coca is propagated solely through cuttings, as this variety does not produce viable seeds (Plowman 1979b, 46f.)”
When the Spanish arrived in South America, they encountered claims that coca gave the locals strength and energy. After confirming these claims as true, they taxed the leaf, taking 10% off the value of each crop. Yet in parallel the colonizers started to build a narrative of demonization of coca use while sometimes describing as well its positive qualities.
In 1569, Nicolás Monardes described the practice of the natives of chewing a mixture of tobacco and coca leaves to induce “great contentment”: "When they wished to make themselves drunk and out of judgment they chewed a mixture of tobacco and coca leaves which make them go as they were out of their wit".
In 1771 a batch of the coca plant is sent to Europe via the french scientist Joseph de Jussieu. Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck described and classified the genus of the plant in 1786 using Linnaeus' system as Erythroxylum coca. Erythros meaning red in Greek and Xylon meaning wood, but refering to the xylem or transport tissue of vascular plants. Known mostly by the vibrant greeness of its leaves, the plant blossoms white flowers and matures into red berries. The second part of the name Erythroxylum coca is derived from kuka, the name of the plant in Aymara and Quechua, which means “tree” or "plant". This descriptor is undoubtedly an expression of the significance of the plant in the Andes.
The cocaine alkaloid was first isolated by the German chemist Friedrich Gaedcke in 1855. Gaedcke named the alkaloid “erythroxyline”, and published a description in the journal Archiv der Pharmazie.
In 1856, Friedrich Wöhler asked Dr. Carl Scherzer, a scientist aboard the Novara Austrian frigate (sent by Emperor Franz Joseph to circle the globe), to bring him a large amount of coca leaves from South America.
The expedition was accomplished under the command of Kommodore Bernhard von Wüllerstorf-Urbair, with 345 officers and crew, plus 7 scientists aboard. Preparation for the research journey was made by the “Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna” and by specialized scholars under direction of the geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter and the zoologist Georg von Frauenfeld. The collections of botanical, zoological (26,000 preparations), and cultural material brought back enriched the Austrian museums (especially the natural-history museum). They were also studied by Johann Natterer, a scientist who collected Vienna museum specimens during 18 years in South America. The oceanographic research, in particular in the South Pacific, revolutionized oceanography and hydrography.
The Novara-Expedition report included a drawing of the frigate SMS Novara surrounded by an oval border with the names of locations visited: Gibraltar, Madeira, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, St. Paul island, Ceylon, Madras, Nicobar Islands, Singapore, Batavia, Manila, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Puynipet island, Stuarts, Sydney (5 November 1858), Auckland, Tahiti, Valparaíso, Gravosa, and Triest (returning on 26 August 1859).
In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act act was passed in the United States.
The new political projects that emerged in Latin America in the 2000's, along their steady extractive resources, changed the panorama. In the Andean area, specially in Ecuador and Bolivia, indigenous movements made their demands for participation in society heard. These demands were in the name of the land: against its exploitation by extraction industries, and against politics that prohibit the cultivation of the coca plant. The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, battled in the UN for the legalization of the cultivation of coca leaves. It is ironic that in the UN, three of the countries that constantly oppose the cultivation of coca leaves are Germany, U.S., and Austria.
In 2007, Bolivia drafted a whole article dedicated to the coca plant, which was later promulgated in 2009:
Artículo 384.- El Estado protege a la coca originaria y ancestral como patrimonio cultural, recurso natural renovable de la biodiversidad de Bolivia, y como factor de cohesión social; en su estado natural no es estupefaciente. La revalorización, producción, comercialización e industrialización se regirá mediante la ley. Cuarta Parte, Título II, Capítulo Séptimo, Sección II: Coca, Nueva Constitución Política del Estado (p. 89)
Article 384.- The State shall protect the native and ancestral coca as cultural patrimony, a renewable natural resource of Bolivia's biodiversity, and as a factor of social cohesion; in its natural state it is not a drug. Its revaluing, production, commercialization, and industrialization shall be regulated by law.Fourth Part, Title II, Chapter VII, Section II: Coca, New Political Constitution of the State (p.89)
In the words of the sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui:
"Why is coca so underground, so unknown, so mistreated, so stigmatized? Why do people believe all these lies. Why can you get any drug but not coca. It is because if coca was a drug, you could get it. And I'm finding a big conspiracy against coca in the late 19th century by the pharmaceutical industry. And it is a conspiracy against people's health in general. But the conspiracy against coca was particularly mean and ill because it was a conspiracy against a people. The Indians who had been in touch with coca for millennia and have been able to use it in a variety of ways; as a mild stimulant for work, as a ritual item, as a recreational commodity that you chew in parties, in wakes, in weddings, or even as a symbol of identity and of struggle." "This has involved a misleading construction of coca as linked to subsistence, reciprocity, ritual, and tradition.
For Rivera Cusicanqui, the coca leaf "has long been important mercantile commodity whose production and circulation has contributed to the refashioning of social hierarchies, labor relations, and cultural connections in the Andean world. These transformations worked out differently over time and space, leading to remarkable variations in how coca was and is used and perceived. By looking at coca and its changing il/licitness, a complex history of subaltern agency and recolonization can be reconstructed."(Van Schendel).
In the 20th century, the parallel commercial processes that took place around the coca leaf led to competition between the old colonial powers and the new corporate powers. Because of this, it is not difficult to imagine that the banning on the consumption of cocaine and later on coca leaves responded to processes of resources control on one hand and the control of drugs that induce a sense of fearlessness for the racialized and the working class. Such attempts of control were there from the beginning. The Coca Museum in Bolivia writes that the persecution of its use in colonial times “marked the start of a Narco-Inquisition”.
1500
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1600
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1800
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1900
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2000
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