Last week, the Bolivian vice-president announced that his country would take steps to request that the coca leaf be removed from the United Nations list of narcotics. For him, this international classification is a “historical error” that must be repaired, the fruit of Western domination. Indeed, if the coca leaf is indeed at the origin of cocaine, consumed for the most part in the countries of the North, it is, in its natural state, consumed throughout the country and is considered “sacred”. and above all legal.
From our correspondent in La Paz,
Coca, this leaf that grows in the tropical region of Yungas in Bolivia, the origin of cocaine, has found its way these days into the hushed corridors of ministries. Because at Foreign Affairs, we are working hard to ask for the removal of coca from the United Nations list of narcotics. ” First, we are going to send a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations, as well as a file containing all the scientific and academic studies on the question. In addition to this, we will ask the WHO to initiate a critical approach concerning this classification of coca as a drug. “, details Freddy Mamani, Bolivian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.
David Choquehuanca repeated it during his speech before the United Nations Drug Commission: coca should not be considered a drug. She was punished, he said, for crimes she did not commit. ” The coca leaf in its natural state is non-narcotic and non-addictive. It is part of our cultural identity, as food, as medicine, as a central element of social cohesion. But in addition, if it is removed from the list, this would allow us to export derivative products, such as infusions in particular “, explains Freddy Mamani.
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To find out more, contact an expert. Sdenka Silva, sociologist, studied the world of coca, and she is co-founder of the museum dedicated to it in La Paz. Between two arrivals of tourists who have come to learn more about the so-called sacred leaf, she teaches us, above all, to chew coca: “ Coca is always consumed with an alkaline element. Here, it’s ash, banana in our case. But for example, in the north of Colombia and in certain parts of Peru, they use powdered shellfish… So! You take a handful of coke, you put your alkaline element in the middle and you surround it with the leaves. And once in your mouth, you don’t actually chew, you wait for it to moisten and you absorb the juice. So ! This is how you chew coca “.
Sdenka has been using coca for about forty years. And for her, it doesn’t make sense that it’s illegal: ” This is the objective of this museum, the international decriminalization of coca. The Danes, for example, are the first producers of poppy, the flower; and the poppy is not prohibited although it is the basis of heroin. But in our case, everything is forbidden! »
In Bolivia, the coca leaf is central. It is used in ritual ceremonies at “Mother Earth”, for example, and Andean shamans read the future from it. It is consumed throughout the country, as much by urban scholars like Sdenka as by mine workers to endure fatigue or by mountaineers to withstand altitude. It’s more than just a leaf: Coca is what we would call a cultural axis, like money, for example. If the money disappears, our societies could collapse. To ban coca is therefore to deny the existence of more enlightened and more stable societies than ours. “.
But coca is also the plant at the base of cocaine. And since an American report from the 1950s, it has been classified as narcotic. Today, other studies have been carried out, acknowledging the benefits, nutritional and stimulating in particular. It is these publications that the Bolivian authorities now want to publicize. But before Bolivia’s approach to the United Nations succeeds, we will have to wait several more years, if the approach succeeds.
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