On the road with the "Cocaleros"
- 17 Mar 06, 03:06 PM
Never, ever, will I diss the Toyota Land Cruiser again. I have just driven 460km from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba, taking from 6am until 8.30pm. The last third of it, time-wise, was through some of the most spectacular mountainous tropical forest I have ever seen 鈥 and not a tourist trail in sight. In fact, in some parts of it, there is not a road in sight 鈥 hence my newfound respect for the big beast we are driving. What was in sight was clouds 鈥 below us, above us, around us; landslides 鈥 ditto. And lightning. And the pitch black dark..
The day started with a long, fast exit through the agribusiness heartland around Santa Cruz. After about two hours, the endless green of agriculture gave way to the rainbow of greens that the tropical biosphere displays. Almost exactly at this point the MAS flags appeared. Evo Morales鈥 鈥淢ovement Towards Socialism鈥 has a flag striped like a liquorice allsort: brown, white, blue, white brown. It is on every other homestead once you get to the tropics, where small farmers replace agri-companies, usually alongside the Whipaca, a flag based on the indigenist rainbow but pixellated into something resembling a Dulux paint swatch.
The MAS flag is the flag of Evo鈥檚 party 鈥 the Whipaca is what he wants to be the new flag of Bolivia, after he is through redesigning the constitution.
We stop off in Chiapare 鈥 the main district for growing coca. You enter and exit through computerised military checkpoints, and the area is under military control. Before Evo came to power, the Bolivian government was engaged in a US-backed eradication campaign against the coca leaf, combined with development aid to wean the farmers off it. Evo has called a halt to military activity and is trying to broker a deal with the US whereby one half of the coca crop goes for domestic consumption, as now, and he other half is replaced by alternative industries. You already see a lot of signs for USAID, DFID and the EU on projects here 鈥 including rebuilding the road we struggled along tonight 鈥 and if the deal goes through, a lot more aid money will pour in to do the persuading.
Because the farmers of Chiapare are wedded to coca for sound economic reasons. It鈥檚 not cocaine, they say, it鈥檚 a medicine. As I arrive at the official coca market in Shinahota there is only one way to break the mood of wariness among the farmers drying and packing the crisp, heady-smelling leaves: soon I have what seems like a kilogram of the stuff inside my cheek, and the local youngsters gather round to give me advice on the finer points of chewing it and ejecting a stream of green spit.
As their toddlers frolic around in piles of dried coca leaves, the farmers tell me that a lot of this stuff goes into Coca-Cola 鈥 an assertion the company has repeatedly denied. In fact Chiapare, though not the main source of the raw material for cocaine, has certainly been one source of it. The stimulant taken from the leaves being swirled around by Quechua women in ethnic skirts and hip-length pigtails may, in a few weeks time, find its way up the nose of a rich party girl in Notting Hill, or a stick-thin prostitute in Hackney. But this depressing thought is not likely to move opinion on the streets of Shinahota.
In the first place, coca is an excellent crop to grow. It only takes three months to grow back once you鈥檝e striped the leaves 鈥 Felix, the local leader of the coca-growers union and MAS activist 鈥 shows me how to tell when the leaves are ready to pick, as we stumble through a small grove of the bushes, about head hight, in blinding sunlight: the berries go bright red. Four harvests a year are not the only attraction: unlike most primary commodities, coca鈥檚 price has not plummeted over the last 20 years. In addition, the Indians see chewing it as an inalienable part of their culture. Though Evo Morales is a local boy made good, and was once himself a leader of the coca-growers union, they want the Constituent Assembly called for July to guarantee their right to grow coca. And they want the American anti-drug presence kicked out. And they are watching and waiting, Felix tells me, to see if it happens.
鈥淲hen does the buzz kick in?鈥 I ask the farmers, as they try to force me to load another handful off leaves into my, by now stinging mouth. 鈥淭here is no buzz: it is just medicine, it will keep you alert.鈥
And you know what, as we rattled the Toyota along boulder-strewn dirt roads, nipping in and out of the foglamp glare of oncoming petrol tankers, I think it did.
Comments Post your comment