Current Bolivian government is questioning Bolivia’s participation in the UN Vienna Convention regarding coca/cocaine. Bolivian government has sent a message that we will pull out of that Convention if the world does not recognize “our right to chew coca.” I do believe, this government is trying to set up the grounds for justification of the increased coca production. I have worked around international development efforts to provide alternative production over coca for many years. I have seen too many Bolivians caught in the coca paste, pitillo, cocaine, crack consumption. I have seen how families are affected by this disease. How families broke down and how a human being is converted into trash. I visited those centers where some people were brought to recover, urban/rural, poor/rich, they were all being consumed by this drug. Despite what this president said in earlier political days: “(sic)… it is not our problem but it is the rich, the empire who use this drug…” Unfortunately, Bolivian citizens suffer this addiction as do other citizens worldwide.

I also saw how drug traffickers became important in a given town/city over night… back in the early 7o’s I sensed some difficulty of those individuals to gain access or “respect” to upper class societies. However, money talks and as such it took sometime but those individuals are well inserted in society. Giving an easy example that through illegal activities people can have access to wealth and acceptance.

I have also seen drivers (public and private) that get into a vehicle and drive straight for more than five hours without stopping. I have met a miner in the middle of a 48 hour shift with nothing but coca leaves on both sides of his mouth. I have seen people partying for extended hours, drinking heavily, and then chew some coca leafs, “feeling refreshed” and continue to party as if they hadn’t drank before. Coca chewing does take care of lack of sleep, hunger, thirst; it offers an apparent strength, an alternative but let me tell you, it is only a misleading effect.

Current government represents the coca growers, president himself, when asked, mentions he continues to lead the coca growers’ union and he is also the president of this State. I offer just to examples to outline a point. Earlier in this government, two sisters that were up high in the political structure were caught in narcotrafficking, the Teran sisters were not brought to justice. General Sanabria who was caught trafficking in Chile was brought to American courts, this week he pleaded guilty as he wanted to evade life time imprisonment. This police general was, under this government, the head of the antinarcotics force (drug Tsar), had access to all sensitive information of the war against cocaine, yet, he was at the same time a prosper trafficker.

Bolivian arguments regarding coca uses go from its “millenary tradition” to how people uses it country-wide. Well, let us establish first that ALL coca chewing uses coca leafs from the Yungas of La Paz. The rest of the coca grown in Chapare and neighboring lands, are going primarily to narcotrafficking. Current Bolivian government and some coca advocates defend the right to use coca leaves as something that comes from ancient times. They refer to the Inca’s empire, on how this coca leaf was used on ceremonies, as part of worshipped rituals. What they neglect to say is that those uses were just for the upper class, for the ruling Inca. The Conquerors upon arrival and when they took control of the economic production of natural resources did the same as the former rulers. Following mining activities that the Inca’s had, they also continued to use the coca chewing as a means to replace hunger. Thus, the Spanish continued to provide the best possible “booster” to exploit human labor. History records literally millions of people dying over mining for centuries. On those grounds, how could we regard coca leaf as something to be proud of? It only helped to subdue the minds of those poor workers.

Today, I saw on TV the foreign minister trying to make a case for the Vienna Convention to accept the use of coca chewing. Or was it just politics? If Bolivia pulls out of the Convention, we will become more isolated than before. Trying to understand someone who before said that rocks/stones have a gender and that they procreate… makes me difficult to believe this individual.

In sum, coca per se offers more bad than good to the world. In Bolivia, it takes our self-respect and misleads our youth in terms of the ways to go up higher in the social spectrum.

About General Sanabria: http://www.eldeber.com.bo/2011/2011-06-24/vernotaahora.php?id=110624020624

About the Convention and Bolivia Senate approach:  http://www.paginasiete.bo/2011-06-24/Nacional/Destacados/02Nal01240611.aspx

The UN considers “preoccupying” the Bolivian position: http://www.lostiempos.com/diario/actualidad/nacional/20110624/onu-lamenta-la-denuncia-de-la-convencion-de-viena_131079_265291.html