page_title: Coca
section_title: Chew
hierarchical_section_title: Coca / Traditional uses / Religion / Chew
caption_attribution_description: English: Rock of llipta on a coca leaf (underside up), on red textile, at Museo de coca in Cusco, Peru.
context_page_description: Coca is known throughout the world for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America.
  The plant is grown as a cash crop in Argentine Northwest, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, even in areas where its cultivation is unlawful. There are some reports that the plant is being cultivated in the south of Mexico as an alternative to smuggling its recreational product cocaine.
  It also plays a role in many traditional Andean cultures as well as the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
  The cocaine alkaloid content of coca leaves is relatively low, between 0.25% and 0.77%. The native people use it as a stimulant. Coca-Cola used coca leaf extract in its products from 1885 until about 1903. Extraction of cocaine from coca requires several solvents and a chemical process known as an acid-base extraction, which can fairly easily extract the alkaloids from the plant.
context_section_description: In Bolivia bags of coca leaves are sold in local markets and by street vendors. The activity of chewing coca is called mambear, chacchar or acullicar, borrowed from Quechua, coquear (northern Argentina), or in Bolivia, picchar, derived from the Aymara language. The Spanish masticar is also frequently used, along with the slang term "bolear," derived from the word "bola" or ball of coca pouched in the cheek while chewing. Typical coca consumption varies between 20 and 60 grams per day, and contemporary methods are believed to be unchanged from ancient times. Coca is kept in a woven pouch (chuspa or huallqui). A few leaves are chosen to form a quid (acullico) held between the mouth and gums. Doing so may cause a tingling and numbing sensation in the mouth, in similar fashion to the formerly ubiquitous dental anaesthetic novocaine (as both cocaine and novocaine belong to the amino ester class of local anesthetics).
  Chewing coca leaves is most common in indigenous communities across the central Andean region, particularly in places like the highlands of Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru, where the cultivation and consumption of coca is a part of the national culture, similar to chicha. It also serves as a powerful symbol of indigenous cultural and religious identity, amongst a diversity of indigenous nations throughout South America. Tobacco leaves were also traditionally chewed in the same way in North America, though modern chewing tobacco is typically heavily processed.
  One option for chewing coca is with a tiny quantity of ilucta (a preparation of the ashes of the quinoa plant) added to the coca leaves; it softens their astringent flavor and activates the alkaloids. Other names for this basifying substance are llipta in Peru and the Spanish word lejía, bleach in English. The consumer carefully uses a wooden stick (formerly often a spatula of precious metal) to transfer an alkaline component into the quid without touching his flesh with the corrosive substance. The alkali component, usually kept in a gourd (ishcupuro or poporo), can be made by burning limestone to form unslaked quicklime, burning quinoa stalks, or the bark from certain trees, and may be called llipta, tocra or mambe depending on its composition. Many of these materials are salty in flavor, but there are variations. The most common base in the La Paz area of Bolivia is a product known as lejía dulce (sweet lye), which is made from quinoa ashes mixed with aniseed and cane sugar, forming a soft black putty with a sweet and pleasing flavor. In some places, baking soda is used under the name bico.
  In the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, on the Caribbean Coast of Colombia, coca is consumed by the Kogi, Arhuaco, and Wiwa by using a special device called poporo. It represents the womb and the stick is a phallic symbol. The movements of the stick in the poporo symbolize the sexual act. For a man the poporo is a good companion that means "food", "woman", "memory", and "meditation". The poporo is the mark of manhood. When a boy is ready to be married, his mother initiates him in the use of the coca. This act of initiation is carefully supervised by the Mamo, a traditional priest-teacher-leader.
  Fresh samples of the dried leaves, uncurled, are a deep green colour on the upper surface, and a grey-green on the lower surface, and have a strong tea-like aroma. When chewed, they produce a pleasurable numbness in the mouth, and have a pleasant, pungent taste. They are traditionally chewed with lime or some other reagent such as bicarbonate of soda to increase the release of the active ingredients from the leaf. Older species have a camphoraceous smell and a brownish color, and lack the pungent taste. See also Erythroxylum coca, and Erythroxylum novogranatense spp.
caption: Llipta is used to improve extraction when chewing coca (Museo de la Coca, Cusco, Peru)
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