Coca: An Andean Tradition V 0
AGAINST ERADICATION AND FOR LEGALIZATION
Under the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, signed in Vienna in 1988, it is prohibited to sow, cultivate, harvest, process and market coca leaves, against which an undeclared war is being waged to achieve their complete eradication, with the exception of lawful consumption such as for chewing, medicinal use in herbal tea and poultices, etc.
As has already been observed, in Western eyes the most suitable solution to the unlawful traffic in cocaine paste for export to the United States of America and Europe would be the total eradication of coca plantations in the Andean countries over a period of some six years at a cost of millions of dollars.
This strategy, which has been developed by the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States Department of Justice includes a vast programme to eradicate the Andean shrub by abusively and unlawfully employing herbicides such as hexazinone and tebuthiuron which have devastating effects on vegetable life. Apart from definitively eradicating the coca plantations, the arbitrary and unilateral use of defoliants and other chemicals would render vast areas of Andean land sterile and transform them into a desert. Even more significant, by its perverse effects, this coercive measure is a de facto violation of the spirit of the Rio Conference on safeguarding biodiversity.
In addition to the campaign to eradicate and replace millennial crops, which goes far further than we imagine, there are other plans and methods of destruction. The “scientists” of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration even recommend the use of other “natural enemies” such as insects and fungi. This pernicious plan, which is inspired by research, envisages the use of the larva of the eloria noyesi butterfly, whose voracity makes it one of the most efficient weapons to eliminate the shrub. According to research, the butterfly, which inhabits coca producing areas and apparently exclusively feeds on coca leaves, is allegedly capable of consuming over 50 leaves in its one month of existence, and of destroying even the shrubs’ buds; as a result even the hardiest plants die under the onslaught of eloria.
The report by the Drug Enforcement Administration also recommends other “natural enemies” such as the larva of the eucleodora coca fly which apparently only attacks certain varieties of plant, the herbivorous ayromyernex ant, of whose effects little is known, and the aeguidos pacificus beetle all of which constitute a serious threat to the survival of the Andean plant. However, cocaine and the other alkaloids contained in the coca leaves offer natural defence and resistance to the unsavoury pests manipulated by “scientists” in the drug-consuming countries.
Whatever weapons are used to control coca growing and cultivation, with its traditional roots among the natives of the Andes, any sophisticated eradication and extirpation campaign will prove illusory and utopian in the context of the market economy and of uncontrolled economic neoliberalism – the ideology of modern societies – whose inspiration lies in the irrational instinct to produce and consume more and more. Far from putting an end to the extraction, crystallization, purification and chemical synthesis of coca unlawful criminal acts which represent a direct threat to the health and well-being of consumers – the eradication of ancestral plants and the destruction aboriginal customs and traditions could generate social conflicts with irreparable consequences.
In the light of the foregoing it is imperative to legalize the sowing, cultivation, exploitation, marketing and consumption of coca leaves to allow the rehabilitation of their medicinal qualities and the reassessment of their pharmacological properties, which should moreover be the subject of scientific research.
In the eyes of the indigenous populations this is undoubtedly the only way to bring the areas devoted to coca growing gradually under control, absorb the surplus illegal production, plan and organize marketing subject to special regulations, with the overall objective of balancing supply and demand for lawful consumption.
There is no other solution to the constant growth and expansion of the drug trade in the industrialized countries, unless Governments demonstrate the political will to industrialize surplus production to manufacture medicines, food, infusions, etc. It is now the responsibility of the Government of consumer and producer countries to accord just and equitable treatment to coca cultivation and resolutely fight the international mafias which have infiltrated every sphere of economic, political and social life.
