A Modest Proposal to Clarify the Status of Coca in the United Nations Conventions
Creators: name: Thoumi, Francisco E.
Publisher: name: Universidad del Rosario
Year: 2005

description: The implementation of anti-drug policies that focus on illicit crops in theAndean countries faces many significant obstacles, one of which is the culturalclash it generates between the main stakeholders. On the one handone finds the governments and agencies that attempt to implement cropsubstitution and eradication policies and on the other the peasant and nativescommunities that have traditionally grown and used coca or those peasantswho have found in coca an instrument of power and political leverage thatthey never had before. The confrontation about coca eradication, alternativedevelopment and other anti-drug policies in coca growing areas transcendsdrug related issues and is part of a wider and deeper confrontation thatreflects the long-term unsolved conflicts of the Andean societies.All Andean countries have stratified and fragmented societies in which peasantsand Indians have been excluded from power. In Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru mostpeasants belong to native communities many of which have remained segregatedfrom “white” society. The mixing of the races (mestizaje) in Colombia occurredearly during the Conquest and Colony. Those of Indian descent became subservientto the Spanish and Creoles. The society that evolved was (and still is) highlyhierarchical, authoritarian, and has subjacent racist values. The resulting politicalsystem has been exclusionary of large portions of the population.Among Indian communities coca has been used for millennia and its usehas become an identity symbol of their resistance against what may belooked at as foreign invasion. “The Andean Indian chews coca because thatway he affirms his identity as son and owner of the land that yesterday theSpaniard took away and today the landowner keeps away from him. Tochew coca is to be Indian...and to quietly and obstinately challenge thecontemporary lords that descend from the old encomenderos and the olderconquistadors” (Vidart, 1991: 61, author’s translation). In Andean literature on illegal drugs as well as in seminars, colloquia andother meetings where drug policies are debated, complaints are frequentlyexpressed 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 toclassify coca, a nature given plant which has been used for millennia in theAndes without significant negative effects on users, in the same category asman made psychotropic drugs. They also argue that coca has manifold socialand religious meanings in indigenous cultures, that coca is sacred andthat the requirement of the1961 Single Convention demanding that Boliviaand Peru completely eradicate coca within 25 years is limiting Indigenouscommunities in their freedom to practice their religions.In most debates about drug interdiction, the views of those who opposethat approach are not accepted as legitimate. Indeed, “prohibitionists”demonize drugs and those who oppose drug policies in Latin Americafrequently demonize the United States as the imperialist power that imposesthem. This dual polarization is a main obstacle to establish a meaningfulpolicy debate aimed at broadening the policy consensus necessary forsuccessful policy implementation. This essay surveys the status of coca inthe United Nations Conventions, explains why it is confusing, and how afew changes would eliminate some of the sources of conflict and helporganize and control licit coca markets in the Andes. The current disorganizedand weakly controlled legal coca market in Peru has been analyzed todemonstrate its deficiencies and to illustrate possible improvements ininternational drug control policies.