L<\/span>urching along cobbled roads in Bolivia\u2019s Chapare region on his mud splattered motorbike, coca farmer Umberto Flores searched for his relatives and friends because he had coca seedlings ready to plant but needed more help. Eventually his nephew, Angel, agreed to join him within the hour. He had to\u2014Umberto was his\u00a0padrino,\u00a0<\/em>or godfather. Umberto told Angel that soon he would be going on another \u201ctrip\u201d and invited him to join him, a subtext Angel understood immediately as referring to processing cocaine paste, the first step to refining pure cocaine. ..<\/p>\n In Bolivia\u2019s lowland Chapare region, much of the population grows, dries, and sells coca leaf, and some directly process cocaine paste or smuggle the final product. However,\u00a0Bolivia is the one country in the Americas that has\u00a0avoided much of the violence<\/a>\u00a0so commonly associated with drug production.<\/span><\/p>\n In Colombia, for example, incoming president Gustavo Petro is\u00a0determined to shake up<\/a>\u00a0the country\u2019s U.S.-driven 30-year war on drugs that has failed to reduce the flow of drugs northward while bringing repression, violence, fumigation, and forced eradication to those at the bottom of the drug hierarchy: the peasant farmers who grow coca leaf. His administration might do well to take a look at Bolivia.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not Mexico; this is not Brazil!\u201d insisted a retired police official who asked to remain anonymous. \u201cWe do not see extreme violence over the control of territory here. Occasionally we see the settling of scores, but they are only ever isolated incidents.\u201d The reasons for this noticeable lack of violence lie in how the drug trade is embedded in local\u00a0cultural norms and values<\/a>.<\/p>\n Umberto embodies this. He first got involved in the drug trade 30 years ago in high school. Working with his uncle, he soaked shredded coca leaf in solvents to extract the cocaine alkaloid. Sometimes he traveled by bus to the lowland city of Santa Cruz with two kilos of paste stashed in his bag. \u201cFor one kilo, you got $100. It was easy\u2014there wasn\u2019t a lot of control,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But then when he was 20, he carried five kilos of cocaine to Brazil and was caught. Umberto was locked up for two and a half years. \u201cThey are very violent there,\u201d he said, putting two fingers in the air to imitate a gun.<\/p>\n For Umberto and Bolivians like him in tropical agricultural zones, involvement in the cocaine trade is a mundane affair, a commonsense way to make money in a place where turning a profit from farming is tough. \u00a0\u201cWe all live from this,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe protect it…It generates work.\u201d The drug trade in Bolivia, he said, was nothing like Brazil: \u201cHere it is peaceful. We look after each other; we respect each other.\u201d<\/p>\n For Chapare\u00f1os, to be entangled with one another through debt and obligations is the very basis of sociality. Reciprocity, writes anthropologist\u00a0Catherine Allen<\/a>, is the \u201cpump at the heart of Andean life,\u201d with responsibility for community and kinship relationships falling mostly on women. Anyone who gets ahead is forced to reinvest surplus back into the community. These age-old customs, that infuse coca growers\u2019 involvement in illicit activities often explicitly exclude outsiders while successfully coexisting with market-oriented strategies.<\/p>\n Seventy-three year old Silvio Zavala remembers how his family migrated to the Chapare in the 1960s, clearing land and planting maize, rice, and some coca. \u201cWe practiced\u00a0ayni<\/em>: it\u2019s reciprocity. One day, I work for you and another day you work for me\u2014all with no pay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n While Indigenous peasant drug workers\u00a0rarely get rich,<\/a>\u00a0the trade nonetheless represents an avenue for unparalleled social mobility even if these drug workers rarely act as profit-maximizing individuals. Working together as a corporate unit ensures the community a steady production of coca and cocaine paste for the benefit of all. Far from generating chaos, disorder, and inequality, the illegal drug trade contributes to the Chapare region\u2019s\u00a0prosperity and stability<\/a>.<\/p>\n When Silvio first moved to the Chapare, \u201cpeople had anemia, kids\u2019 bellies were always swollen\u2014the aim was just to survive. We grew coca, it was the only thing that made sense. We cut out our own roads, built our own schools, made our own laws,\u201d he said. Self-governing unions\u00a0became the local government<\/a>, controlling land tenure and administering justice.<\/p>\n Coca growers normally only admitted people they already knew into their unions. These were usually extended kinship networks of neighbors from the highlands and old friends. Disagreements, including robbery, boundary disputes, or outstanding debts are still resolved at community-wide union meetings.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we say something, we make people respect it. We are very strict,\u201d said Chapare coca farmer Alfredo Higuera. \u201cIf you are expelled from the union, you lose your land, your family, your neighbors\u2014it is like you are an orphan.\u201d<\/p>\n During the 1980s, the booming U.S. cocaine market pushed up the price of coca and attracted impoverished Bolivians to the Chapare in droves. People knew where the coca leaf that they processed into drugs ended up even as they used it to heal themselves, to make offerings to deities, and in divination ceremonies. When coca growers insist that \u201ccoca is not cocaine,\u201d they are stating a heartfelt truth: sure, it can be cocaine, but that is not its essence.<\/p>\n In 1986, U.S.-financed repression began in earnest. Twenty years of economic hardship and human rights violations later, Evo Morales and the coca grower unions political party, the Movement Towards Socialism, won a landslide victory in the 2005 national election, thrusting Morales into power for the next 14 years. Morales continued a policy adopted in 2004 that legalized growing a small amount of leaf. This encouraged coca unions to self-police and front-loaded development assistance to\u00a0allow economic diversification<\/a>. \u201cOne reason the drug trade remains peaceful in Bolivia is precisely because of the government\u2019s harm-reduction approach,\u201d argued a retired anti-drug police officer.<\/p>\n Unlike Colombia, where armed groups dominate the trade, in the Chapare, no single person, family clan, or gang has ever been in control. Fifty-year old Ivan Choque has worked producing cocaine paste most of his life. \u201cEveryone directly or indirectly involved is from here,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Coca farmers produce anywhere between four to eight 25-kilo sacks of leaf every three to four months. To transform this into paste, the equipment is cheap, the skills easy to learn, and the chemicals available at a hardware store or gas station.<\/p>\n But only local people have the necessary relationships to succeed. Because the union controls access to land, only its members can grow coca. They sell their crop to mostly women coca merchants who are part of their extended kin-group. In return, merchants provide farmers with cash advances and act as godparents to their children.<\/p>\n The next step is paste production, which requires gasoline. However, local gas stations are only allowed to sell one tank per car per day, and police at checkpoints search vehicles and impound suspicious chemicals. As a result, taxi drivers smuggle fuel; almost all are coca growers. They only sell to people they are tied to through kinship or who are close acquaintances.<\/p>\n \u201cTrusted\u201d young men then make the paste, guided by a more experienced \u201ccook.\u201d On the top rung are the\u00a0acopiadores<\/em>\u00a0(collectors), wealthier local farmers who transport bricks of cocaine paste to either the city or remote jungle refineries. The acopiador, too, is part of the web of godparenthood relationships.<\/p>\n \u201cI have to sell to my\u00a0p<\/em>adrino<\/em>,\u201d explained Umberto. \u201cHe paid for my wedding, so of course I must!\u201d\u00a0Hormigas<\/em>\u00a0(ants) smuggle out one or two kilos at a time.<\/p>\n Anyone with surplus cash who does not invest in social relations is considered immoral.<\/span><\/span>Those directly involved in drug production earn more money and are under strong pressure to pay for school graduation trips, a band for a fiesta, or matching uniforms for the local football team.\u00a0Anyone with surplus cash who does not invest in social relations is considered immoral.<\/span>\u00a0Drug workers with a great many \u201cgodchildren\u201d are held in high esteem and deemed worthy of community protection. This guarantees them both a steady supply of coca leaf or chemicals and no local interference.<\/p>\n Outsiders are treated with great suspicion, and anyone thought to be acting against the community\u2019s interests can suffer vigilante justice, such as being stripped naked and tied to the palo santo, a tree that is home to thousands of poisonous biting ants. Most coca growers support this approach, believing that violent punishment acts as a strong deterrent. \u201cCriminals are afraid to come here\u201d and \u201cthey don\u2019t dare commit crime here,\u201d are repeated frequently.<\/p>\n The coca unions also resist state control. If the police fail to ask permission to enter an area from a union leader, they run the risk of violent assault. A local police commander complained, \u201cWe have the law on our side, but the unions have more power. They decide who comes and who goes.\u201d<\/p>\n While Bolivia is the only country in Latin America with low drug violence, other communities in the Americas have seen similar success. In the highland region of the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, geographer\u00a0Gabriel Tamariz<\/a>\u00a0found that strong community organizations allowed Indigenous peasant farmers to successfully resist the incursions of marijuana and opium poppy traffickers. With 75 percent of land owned by rural communities, he argues that \u201ccommunal land ownership and the community assembly have been particularly significant in\u2026negotiating government \u2018eradication\u2019 of [drug] crops and relationships with drug trafficking organizations.\u201d This resonates with the history of Mexico\u2019s drug trade where \u201cup to the 1970s, violence was rarely employed to sort out disputes between drug traffickers,\u201d writes historian\u00a0Benjamin Smith,\u00a0<\/a>\u201cDeep ties of blood, marriage, friendship and neighborhood\u2026prevented the frequent use of force.\u201d<\/p>\n To make cocaine (known locally as\u00a0l<\/em>a fi<\/em>na<\/em>), cocaine paste passes through a second and more complex stage of processing. It requires skill, equipment, and industrial chemicals that are difficult to come by. Start-up costs are high, somewhere between $150,000 and $300,000.<\/p>\n Over recent years, crystallization labs have crept south into the\u00a0Chapare<\/a>. Local security forces have discovered and destroyed several\u00a0mega laboratories<\/a>, some of which can process up to\u00a0500 kilos of pure cocaine per day<\/a>. In communities where the labs are located, traffickers pay the local villagers up to $500 a week for work and protection.<\/p>\n Chapare locals worry about this expansion.<\/p>\n \u201cViolence is reaching us, bit by bit,\u201d warned Ivan. \u201cThe armed guards who protect la fina will not hesitate to silence anyone.\u201d The larger investments, concentrations of capital in fewer hands, and faceless dealers, rupture long-standing reciprocal relationships.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore, drug trafficking was more communal,\u201d Ivan said. \u201cWe all shared the benefits.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/coca-cocaine-bolivia-peru\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/127\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-02-at-21.30.18.png\")
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