El Cocalero
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Specifically, this film will chronicle the story of Bolivian coca from
pre-Columbian civilization to present day conflicts in the Chapare and
Yungas regions. Because this story of coca is so expansive, focusing on
one nation, the republic of Bolivia, will allow this vast history to be
presented within the framework of a full-length documentary. The story
will be framed in terms of interrelationships formed around the coca plant
– it will fundamentally be the story of Bolivia, a story of peoples
and their national plant.
By the 1970's, one hundred years after the cocaine alkaloid was first
isolated from the coca, cocaine went mainstream, and it did not come cheap.
This accelerated drug use reverberated throughout the new world, spawning
new wealth and new economies, migrations and revolutions, and breathed
fresh drama into the story of the coca, which is now once again a highly
charged currency between cultures. The story of Americans and their drugs
illuminates an aspect of how humanity has grown up in the new world, its
new house, and come of age by unraveling the biological secrets of the
earth, and poking its scientific curiosity into every crevice of that
mother. Humanity has always made one vice or another its obsessive focus,
but the impulse points to a more fundamental aspect of our original nature,
which is our interdependence with plants.
Inevitably, the movie will dwell in present time, examining the tragedies
and ironies of coca's role in our epoch, with its new mantle as antagonist.
There is a world of meaning in this reversal of fortunes, and a series
of dualities seem to play out continually as the story unfolds, with polarized
views coming into conflict, switching, and masking themselves to conceal
hidden motives. These dualities are only the lenses of outsiders looking
in. The Bolivian campesinos have an unconflicted relationship with the
coca leaf, which is unchanged from pre-conquest times, steeped in ritual
and reverence--one would be hard pressed to find a single indigenous ceremony
or celebration that did not involve some manner of coca offering or exchange.
Beyond the coca plant's role as a cultural link to the ancient past, it
is now a symbol of resistance to foreign powers, who would attempt to
manipulate the internal affairs of a sovereign people.
Dualities are excellent dramatic tensions. The story line will work its
way around these divided views in a fair and balanced way, through interviews
with prominent indigenous leaders as well as the American embassy. The
fundamental disparity in viewpoints is not, at least on the surface, the
coca plant itself. Coca is acknowledged to have vast vitamin and mineral
content, with no known toxic effects. Curers employ coca for hundreds
of ailments, and the Bolivian medical establishment has canonized its
proven medicinal value. In an often-cited study from 1975 by Messrs. Duke,
Oulik, and Plowman of Harvard, 100 grams of coca is determined to contain
the recommended daily intake of calcium, iron, phosphor, Vitamin A, B2
and E. In an impoverished region where malnutrition is rife, clearly this
supplement is crucial to the often-deficient diet of the Bolivian peasantry.
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The contested issue, then, in regards to drug policy, is on which end to combat the cocaine epidemic, at the supply or demand. Washington's view has never wavered: cut off drugs at the source by eradicating the coca plant. Of course there can be no official acceptance of coca leaf chewing within this policy, because even tacit approval equivocates the eradication program, which naturally faces fierce resistance from the indigenous population. The DEA, then, has had to assert itself with force, and has ramped up the issue with the rhetoric and actions of war. In a conference on the coca and cocaine question, John T. Cusack, former chief of staff of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, asserted Washington's view as follows: |
As a major producer of coca, Bolivia has failed in its effort to license and control coca production, they really have not addressed the problem of coca leaf chewing, and it is a problem that is similar to many of the problems in their territory which they are unwilling or unable to address. Its just another problem, people say. Well, they have so many problems that they have to assign priorities; coca is not a high enough priority. These countries international obligations under law today are quite simple. They have an obligation to phase out coca chewing and the coca that is being produced for chewing. And secondly, their main obligation to every nation in the world today, particularly the developed nations that are most severely affected by cocaine, is to bring under control, in their territory, the unlicensed and illicit production of coca leaf.Interestingly, Cusack allows for the production of licensed coca, though not for chewing. What uses does he then refer to? Perhaps he is referring to coca that is "legally" sold to U.S. businesses, for use by the pharmaceutical industry and perhaps Coca-Cola. One only need look in the federal register at the yearly application for the Stephan Chemical Company of New Jersey to learn that the U.S. is an importer of coca leaves. Our film will explore the complicated relationship between some of these industries and coca production, a secretive and lucrative trade that persists despite the demonized image of the coca plant.
With the collapse of the Bolivian economy in the early eighties, and the
subsequent advent of the cocaine boom; coca, cocaine, and related industries
became the dominant economic force in the republic. Coca production absorbed
tens of thousands of workers, quickly becoming an economic dependency
for the entire nation. For one of the poorest countries in Latin America,
why would Washington persistently push for a zero coca policy, despite
the obvious destabilizing effect on such an economy? That is to say, if
the U.S. imports large amounts of coca, why not just purchase it directly
from the growers? Analyzing apparent contradictions such as these, the
viewer will be presented with all facts available in an attempt to reconcile
the apparent duality of the American position.
One of the main voices in the film will be that of Congressman Evo Morales,
president of the coca grower’s federation. He presents a counterview
to the ostensible position that drugs must be controlled on the supply
side, as well as a possible explanation for the apparent contradiction
in the American stance.
The war against drugs is just a pretext for the U.S. to control our countries.
The origin of the narcotics trade is the U.S. itself, which constitutes
the principle market for cocaine. Why don't they eradicate the demand?
If it were not for the money that the U.S. drug trade moves, not a single
leaf of coca would go towards the drug trade. And its not just consumption.
According to the U.N., 50% of drug money is laundered in the U.S. You
can only stop that by getting rid of banking secrecy laws. I think the
main interest in the war against drugs is penalizing social protest. In
the1960's they accused the Bolivian miners of being communists in order
to persecute them. Then they accused poor people of being "narcos"
in the 1980's and 1990's, and now, after September 11, they are calling
us terrorists. These are forms of criminalizing protest.
Once a marginalized and underrepresented group, the coca growers union
is now a powerful player in national politics, to the chagrin of the American
embassy. When the union president of the Chapare growers association,
Evo Morales, began polling disconcertingly well in the presidential elections
of 2002, then ambassador Manuel Rocha blurted out his now infamous threat.
"If you elect those who want Bolivia to be a major cocaine exporter
again, this will endanger the future of U.S. assistance to Bolivia"
The threat backfired, and the Morales campaign surged to 20% of the vote,
a mere 2 percentage points behind the winner, the American educated Gonzalo
Sanchez de Lozada. A veteran of countless violent clashes in the eradication
struggles, Morales and the MAS party (movimiento a socialismo), which
had taken 6 seats in the 27-member senate in the same election, converted
their itinerant social movement into a political body, eschewing the strategy
of violent confrontation for the electoral approach. As many have noted,
it was the first time an indigenous movement has projected itself to a
position of power in Bolivia in 500 years.
Perhaps Morales felt a pressure to allay the fears of the Bolivian public, who remember the mounting death toll through nearly a decade of confrontation with the military in the Chapare. The ubiquitous graffiti, "Evo=mas muertos" can be seen scrawled on the walls in every major city in Bolivia. It was in this context that Morales and the Chapare coca grower’s federation remained complacent last October, when unrest began to roil across the Aymara region of La Paz in what would become "the war for the gas.” By the time MAS had joined the fray, Lozada was spending his last days in the country. A five year term was cut to a year and a half, and suddenly Morales was a more moderate alternative to Felipe Quispe, the Aymara “malku” who led the uprising. What began as an Aymara dispute with the federal government over vigilante justice, became a nationwide battle against the forces of privatization. Indeed, in July’s referendum on natural gas, which has had a very ambiguous outcome, Morales encouraged his people to participate in the electoral process, while Quispe encouraged subversion. Another one of the tensions in this tale is the differing approaches of these two preeminent leaders, both of whom will be extensively interviewed. The indigenous movements of Bolivia have organized themselves into powerful political bodies. Combining elements from the mine workers’ unions as well as traditional Quechua and Aymara political forms, these bodies are incredibly effective at enfranchising and mobilizing populations of campesinos. But just as they are having their first taste of national power, the entities they perceive to be antagonistic--multinational corporations, the American embassy, the coca eradication corps, and the military establishment--remain stubborn in their demands for privatization and eradication. Their threat remains to withhold aid or loans, to block access to markets, and to ratchet up the low intensity conflict that continues to simmer in the Chapare and, increasingly, the traditional growing region of the Yungas. |
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Much of the story of coca is also the story of these movements. By delving deep into the worlds of the Yungas and Chapare growing regions, the film will explore the rich lore and history of coca. Just as the coca leaf is inextricably linked to the development of civilization in pre-Columbian South America--unequaled among familiars to the human organism--so too does it elucidate relationships between disparate societies. Coca finds itself a point of conflict or negotiation between groups that are unequal, in tension, racially and culturally different, but nonetheless bound together symbiotically because of common needs and currencies. When an economy has fallen, a mine has been exhausted, or an agricultural export has been devalued on the world market, the one commodity that remains valuable and available is the coca leaf.
By the very mechanics of the human/coca relationship, it is apparent why
this product was so important in the formation of ancient societies. Coca
made a necessity of trade from long distances over difficult terrain.
Life on the altiplano, at 13000 or more feet, is difficult to endure without
coca, which alleviates sorojche, or altitude sickness. Yet the coca must
be grown in the lowlands, thousands of feet over the edge of the Andes.
This dynamic was an essential element of the Inca empire, and remains
analogous to the coca trade throughout the ages. This dawning epoch of
man's relationship to the coca plant will be drawn into the present through
our study of the Yungas region, which is the traditional growing region
of Bolivia. While the Chapare is a land of colonists--a new coca department
that grew out of the economic upheavals of the 70's and 80's--the Yungas
is the ancient coca-producing region of the Inca, and the Tiwanakos before
them. It is in this lush, semi-tropical, terraced paradise where the Andes
drop off over the mountains of La Paz, that the American embassy is attempting
its latest militarization project, and in the face of organized and experienced
resistance. It is here we will meet various coca growers, and in verite
style we will visit the blessings and tribulations of their lives. Among
them is an afro-Bolivian coca grower from the village of Tocana. Through
this character, and the rare experience of the tiny afro-Bolivian community,
layers of history will converge and the most current tensions will unfold.
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Coca remains the economic engine of Bolivia, even as the country battles for control of the vast natural gas reserves beneath its soil. Indeed the struggle to control natural resources is a recurrent theme in Bolivian history, and intricately interwoven with the coca story. Through the epochs of silver and tin, ore was not revalued without a reaction in the coca markets. Though the Spaniards initially perceived the Indian obsession for coca with religious alarm (in 1569 a church council decree ordered eradication because it was deemed coca had satanic properties) their ambivalence was soon clarified. It became gloweringly obvious that Indian slaves could not work without coca to shut out hunger and exhaustion, and coca growing became mandatory. The first eradication program of the post Inca era had come to an abrupt end. Immediately upon reversal of policy, the Yungas bloomed and economically boomed with Spanish coca fields, and they profited handsomely. This was just the beginning of Bolivian economic monoculture, which is characterized by coca balancing against an export behemoth, unrefined and foreign owned, which was has been silver and tin, and is now natural gas. |
The "war for gas" that deposed Lozada in October of 2003 is far from over, and president Carlos Mesa finds himself in a very tenuous position in respect to both the military and the indigenous movements. True to history, the issue is still to what extent foreign interests may own the earth and what lies beneath it. More than any nation, the U.S. is viewed as primarily culpable, imperialist in its aspirations to control Bolivia's most valuable resources. Moreover, the U.S. is perceived as having been involved in the Condor operations of the 70's and 80's, which cost the lives of scores of Bolivians.
Coca is intricately interwoven with this story as well, and in capacities
other than the war on drugs. This issue will be discussed in all interviews
conducted, and any radical claims will be thoroughly investigated. Naturally,
we will conduct a thorough interview with Ambassador David Greenlee, as
his input will be essential to bring a
balanced perspective. As we shall see, the story of U.S. involvement in
Bolivia is also in the veins of the coca leaf, and it is an essential
piece of the unfolding drama.
Through these various lenses and techniques, this film will present a
collage of ancient and living history and a comprehensive look at one
of the abused gifts of the new world--the hidden history of an untamable,
irrepressible coca plant, unused and virtually unknown in North America.
For more information contact britneyannewislow@yahoo.com
www.projectilearts.org
