ney My friend Dr. Linterna, a former Colombian narco-trafficker—and a poet, journalist, activist, father of seven and founder of a Christian children’s school in the deepest part of the humid Peruvian Amazon—told me that by growing marijuana and coca, former Colombian coffee producers take revenge for their historic exploitation. According to Linterna, farmers were demoralized by the low cost of coffee and so turned to marijuana in the seventies and coca in the eighties. “Coca for cocaine production was like a social revolution in itself,” he said to me. I cannot stop thinking about this unconventional analysis. I see a lot of honesty in it. Perhaps it is not just the consumers, growers and traffickers, but also the very unjust, capitalist, profit-oriented global economy that is perpetuating this illegal parallel market. The rules that define product commercialization and the abstract forces that control prices ought to be held accountable for the existence of this illegal and harmful market. Is the global economy truly interested in giving better options to farmers to substitute for their illegal crops? The commodification of the sacred coca and its subsequent demonization has created a negative stigma for those who defend it. Sadly, cocaleros in Peru are not only not respected, they’re viewed as narco-traffickers, as terrorists, revolutionaries, insurgents, remainders of the Shining Path guerrilla group, people who destabilize the country and delay its development. Don Orvil Matta, a journalist, technical agronomist and sociologist who was the principal advisor of the municipal government of the Ucayali in 1990 and recent advisor to Nancy Obregon (a cocalero congressmember), believes that there is a campaign to weaken and disrupt the cocalero movement in Peru. In 2003 and 2004, some fifteen thousand people from several coca regions walked to Lima on Marchas de Sacrificio, or Marches of Sacrifice. By giving up work, spending days away from their families and walking long distances through challenging routes, the marchers hoped to peacefully pressure the government to consider their struggle for land and
Ana Maria Rey Martinez ’08 with Dr. Linterna and his family.
rural development, to oppose forced eradication practices and aerial fumigations and to defend the traditional and cultural importance of coca leaves. Taquileños appeared unaware of this struggle. Their silent way of living and gentle interactions with each other and with nature reveal how removed they are from this much louder, political and troublesome reality that cocaleros from the Andean and Amazon regions are facing. My experience in Taquile was a reflective one. Overtaken by silence and a sense of reverence for nature and humanity, I was able to reconsider past experiences and emotions and my perception of silence and loudness as opposite environments. Unexpectedly, without having chased it, I came across an effervescent, dignified and passionate social movement. Although not fully formed and organized, lacking consolidated ideas, strategies and goals, and evidently demoralized by high politics and media, I found people devoting their lives to defending coca in rural and urban Peru. Some work at influencing public policy, others research coca’s nutritional benefits, others want to commercialize coca in legal, healthy ways. Some in the cocalero movement organize events to celebrate the existence of coca and so create awareness. Others simply grow and sell coca in the market. Still others buy it. Some are more radical, some more diplomatic, some live a better life than others. Many times they have been divided by external and internal forces, but coca unites them and they network when necessary. They all chew coca after all.
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