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A Modest Proposal to Clarify the Status of Coca in the United Nations Conventions
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Thoumi, Francisco E.
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2005-03
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Editorial Universidad del Rosario
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Abstract
The implementation of anti-drug policies that focus on illicit crops in the
Andean countries faces many significant obstacles, one of which is the cultural
clash it generates between the main stakeholders. On the one hand
one finds the governments and agencies that attempt to implement crop
substitution and eradication policies and on the other the peasant and natives
communities that have traditionally grown and used coca or those peasants
who have found in coca an instrument of power and political leverage that
they never had before. The confrontation about coca eradication, alternative
development and other anti-drug policies in coca growing areas transcends
drug related issues and is part of a wider and deeper confrontation that
reflects the long-term unsolved conflicts of the Andean societies.
All Andean countries have stratified and fragmented societies in which peasants
and Indians have been excluded from power. In Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru most
peasants belong to native communities many of which have remained segregated
from “white” society. The mixing of the races (mestizaje) in Colombia occurred
early during the Conquest and Colony. Those of Indian descent became subservient
to the Spanish and Creoles. The society that evolved was (and still is) highly
hierarchical, authoritarian, and has subjacent racist values. The resulting political
system has been exclusionary of large portions of the population.
Among Indian communities coca has been used for millennia and its use
has become an identity symbol of their resistance against what may be
looked at as foreign invasion. “The Andean Indian chews coca because that
way he affirms his identity as son and owner of the land that yesterday the
Spaniard took away and today the landowner keeps away from him. To
chew coca is to be Indian...and to quietly and obstinately challenge the
contemporary lords that descend from the old encomenderos and the older
conquistadors” (Vidart, 1991: 61, author’s translation). In Andean literature on illegal drugs as well as in seminars, colloquia and
other meetings where drug policies are debated, complaints are frequently
expressed about the treatment of coca in the same category as cocaine,
heroin, morphine amphetamines and other “hard” drugs.
The complainants assert that “coca is not cocaine” and that it is unfair to
classify coca, a nature given plant which has been used for millennia in the
Andes without significant negative effects on users, in the same category as
man made psychotropic drugs. They also argue that coca has manifold social
and religious meanings in indigenous cultures, that coca is sacred and
that the requirement of the1961 Single Convention demanding that Bolivia
and Peru completely eradicate coca within 25 years is limiting Indigenous
communities in their freedom to practice their religions.
In most debates about drug interdiction, the views of those who oppose
that approach are not accepted as legitimate. Indeed, “prohibitionists”
demonize drugs and those who oppose drug policies in Latin America
frequently demonize the United States as the imperialist power that imposes
them. This dual polarization is a main obstacle to establish a meaningful
policy debate aimed at broadening the policy consensus necessary for
successful policy implementation. This essay surveys the status of coca in
the United Nations Conventions, explains why it is confusing, and how a
few changes would eliminate some of the sources of conflict and help
organize and control licit coca markets in the Andes. The current disorganized
and weakly controlled legal coca market in Peru has been analyzed to
demonstrate its deficiencies and to illustrate possible improvements in
international drug control policies.
Palabras clave
Drogas , Cocaina , Narcóticos