Coca leaves in a Bolivian market in Sucre (Photo: Julyinireland, on Flickr)
It is a simple-looking leaf: dark green with a light underside, small—barely larger than a digit of Bolivian president Evo Morales’ finger. Yet for what looks like a cousin of the common bay leaf, coca inspires strong sentiments. Coca has stitched Andean society and spirituality together for so many years that the reverence it commands is hard to compare. And in an international discourse ruled by rigid adherence to narcotic prohibition, the fight to carve space for coca ignites fierce resistance.
But earlier this month, Bolivia scored a breakthrough. The UN admitted Bolivia back into the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, exempting it from the clause that criminalises coca leaf. The decision not only has major implications for coca chewers, but for Bolivia’s cultural identity and for the future of Latin American drug control policy.
The ‘Wise’ Leaf
Coca is native to the Andean region, where people have cultivated the shrub for at least five millennia—at least as far back as the Incan Empire. Nowadays, coca leaf chewing, or acullico in the Aymara indigenous language, is still a major element of Bolivian diet. Roughly 90% of Bolivians in the high plains region are regular coca chewers, according to La Paz Coca Museum founder Jorge Hurtado. Dried leaves are arranged into a packet that is placed into the mouth, sometimes supplemented by lye, sugar baking soda, or the stevia plant. The juices released by saliva are said to alleviate altitude sickness, regulate digestion, stave off the cold, and suppress appetite. But more than anything, coca chewers use it as a mild stimulant, perhaps analogous to yerba mate or coffee. Federative Bolivian Association president Alfredo Oyola describes its “very strong energy” that “keeps you sharp and awake.” He mentions that long-haul truckers use it maintain focus during hours on the road. “No one drives without being able to chew.”
‘El Tío’ – ‘The Uncle’… give him some tobacco, alcohol, coca leaves and he will be happy. (Photo: ۞ n o m a d E s, on Flickr)
For those unacquainted with coca leaf and more familiar with its processed derivative cocaine, this might sound suspicious, but chewers insist that the leaf itself does not deserve this suspicion. Decades of studies have found no serious negative consequences associated with coca leaf chewing in Andean communities and some even reported that “nor did it seem difficult for even habitual users to abandon the practice… In no way does it unhinge your mind. In no way.” insists Oyola, who chews coca himself. “It does not make you loose your faculties of thought or anything like that. What does change you is the drug [cocaine]. I repeat: coca leaf in its natural state is not a drug.”
While coca leaf is a popular pick-me-up, the deep spiritual and social significance surrounding it gives the plant a uniquely prized role for Bolivians. “It is truly a sacred leaf,” Oyola explains. “It is something that Mother Earth has blessed us with, giving us a plant that has so many nutritive powers. Our grandparents held ceremonies before chewing, including asking permission from Mother Earth, or Pachamama, thanking her for giving us this sacred, unique coca.” Her gift wards off sleep for tired workers and also holds mystical powers. “There are many amautas [roughly 'wise master' in Quechua] who can chew coca to see someone’s future. It’s like reading cards, but with coca leaf.”
Rituals and respect pervade the social sphere as well. Oyola illustrates with an example: “If they invite me to chew coca, I could never take the coca from them with a single hand. I always have to extend both hands.” Hurtado even writes, “One could say that the coca leaf is the backbone of the cultural structure of the Andean region.”
From Plant to Powder
After the alkaloid compound cocaine was first extracted from the coca plant in 1859, coca gained a whole new set of powers. Coca leaves contain about 0.2%-1% cocaine. Yet when refined with chemicals (including ammonia, kerosene, acetone, and sulphuric acid mix), cocaine in its purer state becomes an addictive, powerful, and dangerous stimulant. Cocaine promotes euphoria, an elevated mood, high self confidence, and feelings of sexuality but it can also cause depression, heart inflammation or palpitations, bleeding in the lungs, heart attacks, strokes, seizures, brain function complications, and even death.
Making Cocaine from leaves in the jungle (Photo: Jungle_Boy, on Flickr)
In 1961, both the coca leaf and cocaine appeared on the newly convened UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs’ list of substances “susceptible to wrongful use”, alongside opium and marihuana. The Single Convention was created to unify the international anti-narcotic effort, streamlining individual treaties and codifying international anti-narcotic tactics. The Single Convention’s stipulations afforded Bolivia 25 years to eradicate its coca cultivation, but the plant never disappeared; the issue of eradication has been under dispute since the prohibition took effect in 1989.
Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are currently the world’s three coca-producing countries, with Colombia as the most prolific and Bolivia the least at 18% in 2008, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The United States is the world’s greatest consumer of cocaine, 90% of which travels from Colombia through Central America and Mexico. Most of Peruvian and Bolivian production bound for illicit trade moves to Europe, occasionally through West Africa en route; some winds up in Brazil or Argentina.
An Exception to Every Rule
In March 2009, President Morales held a pair of small green coca leaves before the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the primary body with the power to craft international drug policy. “This is the coca leaf and this is not a drug,” he declared before the powers that outlawed it as exactly that. From the podium, he placed them in his mouth, chewed, and shrugged innocently. He was on a mission to reconcile international law, which classified a treasured ancestral tradition of his people as dangerous and illegal, with the reality that coca was alive and well in his country.
His presence that day had a lot to do with the small booklet he read from: Bolivia’s newly remodelled constitution. Ratified in February 2009, it leans towards traditional indigenous sentimentalities, including the protection of acullico, to which it dedicates an entire article: “The State protects native and ancestral coca as cultural heritage, a renewable natural resource of Bolivia’s biodiversity, and a factor of social cohesion; in its natural state it is not a narcotic. The law will govern its revalorisation, production, commercialisation, and industrialisation.” The article could not have placed Bolivian law more directly in conflict with international law.
When Morales rose to power in 2006, he took the coca leaf with him. As an Aymara, Morales is his country’s first indigenous leader and as a former coca grower himself, as well as the cocalero union leader, he owed his start in the political arena to his pro-coca activism. The topic was bound to rise to the forefront.
Evo Morales (Photo: Alain Bachellier, on Flickr)
In June 2009, Morales brought a proposal before the Single Convention that would have legalised coca leaf internationally (cocaine would remain prohibited), with a year and a half for consideration. An opposition bloc made out of ‘friends of the convention’, comprised of Russia, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark and rallied by the United States vetoed the proposal in January 2011.
Not dissuaded, Morales adopted a different tactic. The following June, Bolivia withdrew from the Single Convention, citing the prohibition of coca leaf as objectionable. In January 2012, it petitioned for re-entry upon the condition that the convention make an exception within the Bolivian territory for the practice. Although it forfeited the original proposal’s universality, this method, per UN bylaws, could only be defeated if an entire third of the 184 member states—62 in total—filed objections within one year.
The ‘friends of the convention’ rallied again, this time mustering 18 votes against, the majority of them cocaine-consuming nations, once again led by the US. Their reasoning was not directly pitted against Bolivia’s cultural heritage claim, but rather, in some ways, concern over the threat of cocaine. Graciela Touze, president of Intercambios, an organisation devoted to the study of drug-related issues, points out that US/Bolivian relations are rocky, especially since Morales expelled the US ambassador and the DEA in 2008, but even “if it had been a country politically closer to the US, I think it would have been difficult for the US to support it because it would be very contradictory to its position on the topic of drug policy.” Indeed, a senior US State department official told the Associated Press after the opposition submission deadline, “we oppose Bolivia’s reservation and continue to believe it will lead to a greater supply of cocaine.”
Yet while many official memorandums of opposition cite the cocaine trade specifically, they also mention concerns that making an exception could “weaken” reigning international anti-drug efforts. “What this really is about is the fear to acknowledge that the current treaty framework is inconsistent, out-of-date, and needs reform,” says Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the Transnational Institute’s Drugs and Democracy programme. “Fundamentally, it had to do with not touching the conventions,” explains Touze. “One has to think of many countries’ opposition in terms of not wanting to open any possible gap that implies a revision of the current drug policy.”
Allowing Coca, Allowing Debate
Yet the bloc fell far short of threatening Bolivia’s readmission. On 11th January, it was official: the international community would recognise acullico’s legitimacy within Bolivian borders.
Bolivian Coca Growers Celebrate the United Nations Accepting The Chewing of Coca Leaf (Photo: Matthew Straubmuller, on Flickr)
Upon hearing the news, Bolivians marched in the streets beneath Andean indigenous flags, wads of coca leaves in their mouths. Because UN enforcement of coca chewing would be unrealistic, the triumph is largely symbolic, but it is by no means insignificant. “I don’t think it will have any effect on illegal markets, on the production, distribution, trade, consumption of cocaine,” says Touze. “What could occur in the future is that what Bolivia has initiated becomes a precedent that allows us to stop looking at the conventions as sacred books that cannot be revised and open a debate regarding what to do about the drug problem.”
John Walsh, director of the Washington Office on Latin America drug policy program, echoes her thoughts: “Far from undermining the system, Bolivia has given the world a promising example that it is possible to correct historic errors and to adapt old drug control dogmas to today’s new realities.”
It also signals a possible power shift in the drug control arena away from prohibition philosophies and their proponents towards a more open discourse. “I can’t stress enough how big this is,” says Walsh. “Once again, the US snapped its fingers and told the rest of the world to get in line and oppose Bolivia’s move. But this time, while the UK joined them, most of the rest of the world just said, ‘no, thanks’.”
Touze thinks Bolivia’s coca victory is a signal that the dominant anti-drug discourse may be loosening. “It seems to me that in this sense, Bolivia has inserted a wedge that can favour, sometimes in such closed fields as international organisations, a debate opening.” She mentions Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala’s successful joint bid for a special drug policy session to be held in 2016 as an example that although “everything is very slow, everything is difficult”, within the realms of international organisations like the UN, “many other parts of the world are watching Latin America as a region that at least is starting to ask for a debate, to ask for reflection.”
The coca leaf has once again proved to hold extraordinary powers. It reenergises, induces highs, seduces to the point of addiction, and now it may have cracked a steadfast international anti-drug doctrine. At worst, Bolivia’s coca victory might erode drug trade limits, but as an example of more flexible policy-making, it may also make way for innovative advancements in international anti-narcotic efforts.
Click here to find out what Argentines and Latin Americans think about the UN’s recognition of coca leaf chewing in Bolivia.
Coca is like a medicine, and that’s how people use it. But if an excessive amount is produced, the majority of it will be converted into drugs. That’s what’s already happened in Bolivia. I’m from Bolivia, from Cochabamba, and that’s where most of it is produced and marketed. So whether or not it should be legal, I say no, that would just lead people to consume it more. 
