This chapter will start by describing what coca is as a product and how it relates to cocaine. With the characteristics of coca in mind, I will contextualize both locations using a historical perspective. This perspective will aid in understanding why coca farmers started to incorporate coca in their livelihood strategies.
3.1 Coca as a product
There are approximately between 75 and 250 species of coca, all known as the Andean crop Erythroxylum, which can be found in the lowlands of the western Amazon basin (Plowman, 1984). Early pre-Colombian civilizations already acknowledged the psychological effect of the alkaloids present in the coca leaves.
Therefore, they started to cultivate two species of the coca family, namely E.coca and E. novogranatense. The primary archaeological evidence of coca leaf cultivation dates to around 2000 BC and was found in the Andean area of Ecuador (Plowman, 1984). Nowadays, coca cultivation mainly occurs in the Andean regions of Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru, and the product is being used both for licit and illicit purposes.
The coca crop, which typically has a height of one to two meters, does not require fertilizers and is not susceptible to pest problems. Furthermore, the crop grows well in soils containing relatively low amounts of nutritional components and can be harvested three or four times every year (Hellin, 2001). These characteristics make that relatively little (financial) investment is required for starting to cultivate the crop.
The dried leafs obtained after harvesting the crop are known as la hoja de coca or simply coca. Examples of the historical use of coca include chewing of the leaf like tobacco. The product is also consumed as a tea, used as an ointment, or a bathing solution (Sanabria, 1993). The reported benefits of the use of coca are better physical acclimatization at high altitudes, better social connection, health benefits, and increased energy levels. There is a difference in 'cultural and historical embeddedness' in Colombia and Bolivia. In Colombia, only a small number of indigenous groups (Paeces, Arhuacos, Huitotos, and Tukakoans) use coca nowadays. In these communities, the use of the product is limited to chewing and to some medicinal applications (Clemencia-Ramírez, 2011). In Bolivia, coca is part of the country's cultural heritage and is also considered a natural resource, comparable to coffee, plantain, etc. The strongest coca tradition can be found in Las Yungas, north of the capital La Paz. Since 2005, the Bolivian Ministry of the Interior
clearly distinguishes between coca leaf and cocaine (UNODC, 2008). Such differences partially explain why coca cultivation is more repressed in Colombia than in Bolivia, where coca is more culturally and historically embedded.
Regarding the cultivation of coca in Colombia, the total number of hectares cultivated was 154,000 in 2019. In Bolivia, this was 25,500 in the same year. In Putumayo and El Chapare, 29,000 and 8,800 hectares were cultivated, respectively.
It was estimated that the production of coca in Colombia contributed to the gross domestic product (GDP) for approximately 0.2 % (UNODC, 2019a) and in Bolivia for 1.1% -1.3 % (UNODC, 2019b).
As can be seen above, coca is culturally, anthropologically, and politically a different substance than its cocaine isolate. It is therefore evident that coca and cocaine cannot be used as synonyms. Every product is potentially poisonous, depending on the dose of use. It might have been these thoughts that inspired Evo Morales on the 19th of September of 2006 in a talk to the UN General Assembly to plead for the disassociation of coca from the use of (illicit) cocaine. This speech supported the withdrawal of Bolivia from the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, in which the coca leaf was declared illegal, along with, for example, cocaine, heroin, and opium. Morales wished to re-join after coca chewing is recognized as a licit activity.
3.2 Putumayo: from a remote and empty place occupied by colonos to a coca dominated department
The department of Putumayo is located in the South of Colombia and generally has a hot and humid climate. The department's area is 25,000 km2 with an elevation of up to 3,800 meters above sea level. Putumayo’s existence on the state's margins is not a recent development but has had this status for a long time, both geographically and conceptually. This also becomes apparent because Putumayo's municipalities only depend on two roads to move people and goods from and to the center. Another characteristic of the department is that public transportation is limited and that buses, or in many cases improvised buses, mostly have to use unpaved roads to reach the so-called veredas, i.e., the rural precincts of the department’s inhabitants (Wylie, 2013).
The majority of the department's population does not have origins in the region but elsewhere in the country. There have been several migration waves into Putumayo.
The first migration wave started in the 19th century, lasted until 1946, and consisted of Roman Catholic missionaries attempting to colonize the region (Arteaga Montes, 2020). These missionaries constructed roads from the country’s center to this area.
The second wave of migration into the region was the result of the period known as La Violencia. This violence was the result of clashes between conservative and liberal politicians in the center of the country. When the conservative president Mariano Ospina came to power in 1946, many liberals were persecuted, leading to a mass exodus of people from the central areas to the outskirts of the country, including Putumayo. The third wave of migration into the area resulted from the entrance of the Texas Petroleum Company (Texaco) in 1963. This company started to explore oil in a number of municipalities in the region. This generated several projects and expectations to find jobs in the region, which attracted more people moving to the department. However, Texaco hired only 1,000 Colombians. The fourth wave of migration was due to the coca boom in Colombia in the seventies of the previous century. This boom attracted more colonos to the region, leading to a relative decline in non-coca subsistence agriculture. Because of an absent state that never managed to realize control in the area, it was from this period onwards that the cocaine business became dominant in Putumayo. This dominance caused the fifth wave of migration. Between 1987 and 1996, even more migrants from areas such as Huila, Cauca, Valle, Nariño, and Caldas moved to the region (Gootenberg &
Dávalos, 2018).
From an economic perspective, coca is the preferred crop in Putumayo, more than crops cultivated in other regions, such as corn and plantain. Campesinos consider coca crops in the western Amazon area to be the exclusive means of survival in a context of an absent state, a lack of public services, and professional alternatives (Clemencia Ramírez, 2011).
3.3 El Chapare: from recent colonization to an established coca region
The hot and humid Chapare region is around 24,000 km2 with an elevation of 200 to 500 meters above sea level. Since the Spanish colonization, El Chapare was considered a region full of resources with the potential to develop the economy of the Cochabamba region. However, it was only inhabited by small hunter-gatherer and fishing groups, such as the Yuracarés, the Yuquis, and the Trinitario-Mojenos.
In total, these groups comprised around 4,000 people. The region's existence on the state’s margins and the lack of infrastructure made the development of El
Chapare region impossible for a long period. In 1952, the first road was built from Cochabamba to the eastern city of Santa Cruz by the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) government, leading to the colonization of the eastern lowlands.
The government encouraged the Bolivian population from elsewhere to populate the land in the region. The idea behind this policy was that if this area would be populated, it would be less susceptible to falling into foreign hands (Weil, 1983).
After the infrastructure project was completed, two primary migration waves could be distinguished.
The first wave mainly consisted of Quechua-speaking peasants from the valleys of Cochabamba. This group was encouraged by the National Colonization Institute, which provided them with land (up to five hectares) and with tools for performing labor activities on these lands (Bruzzone & Clavijo, 1989). However, there was a certain degree of unhappiness among the new settlers, as they felt they had little freedom to choose which crop to grow. The government agents tried to determine this for them, which led to the fact that new settlers increasingly decided to stay away from the government programs. Another characteristic of the first wave was that many newly arrived migrants chose their new location and land plot based on information obtained from friends or family members who already settled in the region. This led to the establishment of family-run farms on plots up to twenty-five hectares where crops such as bananas, oranges, rice, and yucca were grown. Coca was also started to be grown, despite this crop still being illegal based on the UN treaty (Weil, 1983).
The second wave of migration to El Chapare region resulted from the increasing demand for cocaine from the United States in the seventies of the previous century.
This steep rise in demand made coca paste (the semi-finished cocaine) the most lucrative export product. In the 1980s, the annual turnover of coca paste on a national level equaled one billion dollars. This value was higher than the value of all other export products in total (De Franco and Godoy, 1992). The increased demand led to an increased supply, which implied that more campesinos started to cultivate coca. The fact that the era between 1979 and 1985 was called to coca boom was legitimate, more so because of the country's economic crisis due to hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and a long period of drought in the country's highlands.
During this period, around 10 to 20 percent of the national population managed to acquire a job related to the lucrative cocaine business. Many farmers from other regions who migrated to El Chapare had no idea about the negative impact of the production and the consumption of cocaine. However, these farmers were simply
looking for a livelihood (Bruzzone & Clavijo, 1989). After completing the second wave of migration to El Chapare, the region had about 350,000 inhabitants in 1989 (Sanabria, 1993).
In this chapter, I described what coca is, how it relates to cocaine, and how coca farmers in Putumayo and El Chapare had to incorporate coca into their livelihood strategies. Then, based on this contextualization, I will present how coca has historically shaped a relationship between cocaleros, their (violent) states, and the social movements they are connected to in Chapters 4 and 5 for Putumayo and El Chapare, respectively.