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Risk and Opportunity in the Coca/Cocaine Economy of the Bolivian Yungas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Madeline Barbara Léons
Madeline Barbara Léons
Affiliation:
Professor of Anthropology atTowson State University.
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Extract

Bolivia is one of the poorest countries of the hemisphere and its rural people have among the lowest life expectancy, health-care standards and educational levels of all Latin Americans. It is the only country in South America with a ranking of ‘low’ on the Human Development Index for 1991 compiled by the United Nations, a measure combining the per capita product with such factors as longevity and access to education. At the same time, the most valuable export of the country, cocaine, depends on the coca supplied by peasant cultivators in the regions where it grows. The explosion of the international cocaine trade has had profound repercussions, both positive and negative, on the lives of the campesinos of the Bolivian Yungas, who happened to supply, since colonial times and before, the coca destined for traditional consumption within the country; it was their most reliable cash crop. The conversion of their ancient crop to an illicit commodity of high, concentrated value has created the opportunity for some to experience a marginally enhanced standard of living (at a time when other rural Bolivians were seeing their own abysmal standard depressed even further), but at the same time has increased the risks they would run if they entered the lucrative but illegal cocaine trade.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 1993 , pp. 121 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 This is a revised version of a paper presented to the General Seminar of the Program in Atlantic History, Culture and Society, The Johns Hopkins University, March, 1991. It reports on research carried out primarily in 1984/5; which was supported by a Fulbright Research Grant and the National Science Foundation. Further field work in 1992 was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. This paper has benefited from the comments of Frances Rothstein and Guy Wolf.

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46 Alvarez, Elena H., ‘Rural Poverty and the Illegal Expansion of Coca Production in Peru’, Paper delivered to Latin American Studies Assn., Miami (1989), p. 10Google Scholar.

47 Ray Henkel, ‘The Bolivian Cocaine Industry’.

48 James Malloy and Eduardo Gamarra, Revolution and Reaction, p. 157.

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50 Ibid. p. 162.

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63 Colin Sage, ‘Drugs and Economic Development in Latin America’, p. 45.

64 Ibid. p. 44.

65 Since then the price has dropped precipitously. Spedding, Alison, ‘Wachu Wachu: Coca Cultivation and Aymara Identity in the Yunkas of La Paz (Bolivia)’, unpublished PhD diss., Social Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science (1989), p. 131Google Scholar, reports that in the region the 1984–5 period when the price of coca kept up with or surpassed the inflation rate is viewed as ‘the golden age’.

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71 Jack McIver Weatherford, ‘Cocaine and Economic Deterioration in Bolivia’, p. 420.

72 Kevin Healy, ‘The Boom Within the Crisis’, p. 126.

73 Ibid. p. 127.

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81 LAB-IEPALA, Narcotráfico y Politico, p. 71.

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83 Ibid.

84 Christian, Shirley, ‘Bolivia Switches Crops as Coca Market Falls’, New York Times (20 05 1990)Google Scholar.

85 Anthony Henman, ‘Cocaine Futures’, p. 152.

86 Ibid.

87 See Kevin Healy, ‘The Political Ascent of Bolivia's Coca Leaf Producers’.

88 The involvement of several hundred coca growers in cocaine paste production is seen by some Bolivians as ‘a shrewd move by the traffickers who have thus popularized the illegal trade’ (Latin American Weekly Report (21 July 1988), p. 3, emphasis mine). The Report goes on to point out that growers who process face the severest legal penalties and could become leaders in peasant protest movements.

89 As I did extensive field work in both Yungas provinces in the 60s with my then husband, William Lėons, it was fascinating to learn, twenty years later, that many identified Don Guillermo as that Gringo and believed that the time we spent in the coca fields and the many photos we took there was to document coca production so that it could be illegally established in the United States.

90 René Bascopé Aspiazu, ha Veto Blanca, p. 79.

91 Kevin Healy, ‘The Boom in the Crisis’, p. 127.

92 The chemical inputs are not primarily brought from La Paz direct to the producing communities but rather are obtained in the provincial towns. Alison Spedding, ‘Wachu Wachu’, p. 138.

93 Nash, June, We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (New York, 1979), pp. 7, 156Google Scholar.

94 In an apparent extension of this belief, the explanation given in 1992 for why so few mementoes remain of the wealth generated by cocaine paste production and sale is that it is a thing of the devil so naturally nothing good could come of it.

95 Alison Spedding, ‘Wachu Wachu’, p. 25.

96 Investment of the profits of cocaine paste processing in the acquisition of trucks is similarly reported for the Chaparé by Kevin Healy, ‘The Boom Within the Crisis’, p. 115.

97 See Léons, Madeline Barbara, ‘Race, Ethnicity and Political Mobilization in the Andes’, American Ethnologist, vol. 5, no. 3 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Anthony Henman, ‘Cocaine Futures’, p. 151.

99 Ibid.

100 One such buyer came with a younger sibling in two who was learning the trade while occasionally serving as security for debts.

101 Adler, Patricia, in Wheeling and Dealing: an Ethnography of an Upper-Level Drug Dealing and Smuggling Community (New York, 1985)Google Scholar, a study based on participant observation, reports a similar class influence on drug distribution in the U.S. Street pushers are not usually upwardly mobile into the ranks of mid-level distributors. These distributors came from middle-class backgrounds and their contacts and/or access to starting-up capital brought them into the business at this level.

102 In the Yungas there are campesinos of African ancestry who have lived there for generations. They are the descendants of slaves imported into the region during the colonial period (see Madeline Barbara Léons, ‘Race, Ethnicity and Political Mobilization in the Andes’).

103 See Morales, Edmundo, ‘Coca and Cocaine in Peru: An International Policy Assessment’, The International journal of the Addictions, vol. 25, no. 3a (1990–I), pp. 304–6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed for a discussion of coca paste addiction. Jack McIver Weatherford, ‘Cocaine and the Economic Deterioration of Bolivia’ discusses this problem in the Cochabamba area of Bolivia.

104 Alison Spedding, ‘Coca Eradication a Remedy for Independence?’, p. 6.

105 Henman, Anthony, ‘Coca, an Alternative to Cocaine?’, Critique of Anthropology vol. 10, no. 1 (1990), p. 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 Alison Spedding, ‘Coca Eradication a Remedy for Independence?’, p. 8.

107 Latin American Weekly Report (16 March 1989), p. 9.