REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTS PERTAINING TO THE PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS OF INDIGENOUS POPULATION

U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Economic and Social Council ENGLISH
Distr. Original: SPANISH
GENERAL
E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/1993/6 GE. 93-14223 (E)
9 July 1993


COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Sub-Commission on Prevention of
Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
Working Group on Indigenous Populations

Eleventh session
19-30 July 1993
Item 5 of the provisional agenda


REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTS PERTAINING TO THE PROMOTION AND
PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS OF
INDIGENOUS POPULATION
Information received from indigenous peoples'
and non-governmental organizations


INFORMATION SUBMITTED BY THE "TUPAY KATARI" MOVEMENT

COCA: AN ANDEAN CULTURAL TRADITION


I. BACKGROUND

1. The coca plant is as old as man. The cultivation and
consumption of its leaves, which were considered sacred by
pre-Columbian civilizations goes back over 4,000 years. Of
greatest significance is the fact that over time the shrub
has become an integral part of Andean culture and today, as
in the past, it represents the material and spiritual force
underlying the identity of the indigenous peoples.

2. In the Andes no plant is more appreciated and valued by
the Indians than the coca plant. The natives of the
Tahuantinsuyo Empire which included Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador
and northern Argentina planted it just as the vine is
cultivated in Europe. Historical record has shown that the
coca plant, which has been cultivated since time immemorial,
has always been omnipresent in the indigenous universe and
that it has not only enriched their ancestral traditions but
symbolized their vigorous resistance to colonial domination
and subjection.

3. Since the Spanish conquistadors identified it as one of
the essential elements of the magical, religious and
medicinal ritual of Andean tradition and as a factor that
permitted the conquered Indians to maintain their cohesion
and resistance, coca has always been persecuted and combated
as a "diabolic weed". Within the ethnocentric view of the
European colonizers, the mysterious leaf employed in rituals
and religious offerings to the Sun and Mother Earth hindered
the conversion of the indigenous peoples to Christianism.
The first adversaries of the coca plant appeared and
proposed its straightforward eradication under the pretext
of ensuring the salvation of indigenous souls.

4. Throughout the centuries the coca leaf has been attacked
and defended from all sides. It was attacked by the
colonizers as part of a process of cultural alienation and
by the Inquisition, behind which hid the ferocious appetites
for gold, silver and all the wealth that slumbered in the
depths of the Andes. Despite the inestimable contribution by
the pre-Columbian civilizations to old Europe in the form of
a number of valuable plants such as the potato, maize, the
tomato, okra, cotton, the chili pepper, quinoa and certain
varieties of bean, paradoxically coca is singled out for
discrimination. However, the aboriginal peoples identify
with the coca plant - a living expression of Andean culture
- and by defending it they have always defended the rights
of the Andean people to preserve their millennial traditions
and values.


II. ANDEAN TRADITIONS

5. Within the aboriginal peoples' way of life, the coca leaf
is not a commodity in the Andean world nor does it possess
any commodity value in social relations. The fundamental
role of the shrub, with its mythological connotations, is as
a nexus integrating and assuring the social cohesion of
indigenous families and communities (ayllus); throughout
their lives it is present as a symbol of fraternity,
solidarity, community spirit, mutual comprehension and
reciprocal tolerance among the members of the vast empire of
Tahuantinsuyo.

6. Coca has also played and continues to play a role in
mediating conflicts, as a factor of reconciliation towards
peace and peaceful communal work and finally as a medium for
transactions and deferred payment.

7. In connection with its spiritual function, the sacred
leaf of the Incas has been used for millennia by the Indians
in ceremonial and ritual acts to express respect and
gratitude to their gods and to Mother Earth for having
provided them with the means of subsistence for life to
continue.

8. In the Indian world view the coca leaf also acts as a
natural nexus for the balance between nature and the people
of the Andes; between labour - the barometer of their human
dignity - and rational enjoyment of their natural resources.
These peoples' harmonious development of a society which was
the most advanced and best organized of its time is a source
of inspiration today for all those struggling for the
survival of the Earth and of its vegetable and animal
diversity.

9. Among the manifold social functions performed in
traditional relations by coca, it inspires native
hospitality and generosity. It is the Indian's companion,
whether he is a miner or a labourer, from the cradle to the
grave. At times of physical and moral exhaustion, despair
and suffering, the small green leaves not only quell the
pangs of hunger, sadness and suffering, but like a pick-me-
up and a tonic they revitalize the Indians' resistance to
the vicissitudes of time, to the hard labour on arid soils
and the exploitation in mines, and provide them with comfort
better to support their status as a vanquished people,
discriminated against, exploited and affronted in their
dignity.

10. Furthermore, within the Andean civilizations' millennial
tradition, the coca plant has served as a spiritual and
material factor, as a source of knowledge and intuition for
the indigenous populations, thanks to which they were able
to diagnose and cure numerous illnesses, to foretell the
fate and destiny of the ayllus in the noble coca leaves and
predict natural occurrences (hail, frost, etc.) in order
better to prepare and adapt themselves to the rigors of the
weather.

11. Consequently, it is impossible to imagine the native
Andean Indians without their plant, which enshrines so much
respect and veneration. By virtue of its profound mystical
and mythical significance in religion, culture, health and
work, the coca leaf is a powerful symbol of Indian identity
and thus irreplaceable by any alternative crop. Those who
try to eradicate coca are guilty of undermining the very
foundations of the Andean cultural heritage, of uprooting
ancestral traditions and promoting the overbearing
penetration of Western so-called "civilization".


III. THE VIRTUES OF COCA

12. In the light of the research carried out and confirmed
by daily experience, one may assert that the coca plant is
essentially a medicinal plant par excellence, whose
preventive and therapeutic properties have demonstrated
their effectiveness throughout time.

13. According to research, the chemical composition of coca
leaves is more complete and rich in calories, proteins,
fats, carbohydrates, fibre, ash, minerals (calcium,
phosphorous, iron, potassium, magnesium, sodium, ascorbic
acid, etc.) and vitamins A, C and E than other food plants
and infusions in common use such as coffee, tea, camomile,
etc. Thanks to this research, it is nowadays recognized that
the coca leaf contains more proteins (19.9 per cent) than
meat (19.4 per cent) and far more calcium (2,191 per cent)
than condensed milk, and that it is richer in vitamin B-1
(276 per cent) than fresh carrots (see, Carter and Mamani,
Coca in Bolivia, 1980).

14. It is not by chance that the plant has acquired a broad
and diverse range of applications in the traditional
medicine of the indigenous people. Its irreplaceable
qualities have been demonstrated over time and throughout a
vast territory. The coca leaf has established itself as the
traditional remedy for treating physiological and
psychological illness, and by virtue of its composition it
is a powerful energy restorer for curing stomach and
digestive ailments, alleviating affections of the larynx and
vocal chords, preventing vertigo, regulating arterial
pressure and the metabolism of carbohydrates, and even of
improving sexual prowess.

15. Finally, a direct link has been established between
man's hunger, his physical and moral fatigue and the
traditional use of coca, which ranges from chewing, through
infusions to poultices. Under extreme poverty, characterized
by malnutrition and by disease due essentially to lack of
calories and vitamins, the chemical composition of coca not
only allows indigenous people to withstand cold and hunger,
but also provides them with a valuable source of vitamins
and energy.

16. In this respect, foreign tourists are even more aware
than the Indians themselves of the value of coca as the
basis of an excellent herbal tea for controlling altitude
sickness (soroche) and adapting to the climate of the
fascinating Andean altiplano. It is significant that during
a visit to Bolivia, Pope John Paul II consented to drink
coca tea and implicitly acknowledged the virtues of the
sacred leaf of the Incas.


IV. CONFUSION BETWEEN COCA AND DRUGS

17. Firstly, it is necessary to stress and distinguish the
fundamental difference between chewing coca in the Andean
setting and the unlawful use of cocaine in the West. In a
speech made in 1992 before the annual Assembly of the World
Health Organization, the President of the Republic of
Bolivia, Mr. Paz Zamora referred to these confused and
contradictory interpretations and observed that "coca is an
Andean tradition while cocaine is a Western habit" (Tribune
de Geneve, 7 May 1992).

18. Undoubtedly the consumer countries deliberately
assimilate the leaf with its profound significance and the
reviled drug, condemned by indigenous peoples but avidly
consumed by westerners in the form of cocaine, whose
perverse effects are destroying the health of present and
future generations in the consumer societies. In the view of
the adversaries of coca, trapped by their own logic of
supply and demand, coercion is sufficient to control drug
addiction: i.e. eradicating the plant to the detriment of
the survival of an ancestral Andean tradition.

19. Secondly, by virtue of its properties in medicine,
health and work, the traditional form of coca leaf
consumption is neither harmful nor injurious to the
organism, unlike caffeine, tannin and nicotine which have
spread and achieved universal recognition.

20. In contrast with growing alcohol and tobacco
consumption, the traditional use of coca in its manifold
forms is not and never has been a form of drug addiction,
but a natural indigenous custom which it is possible to give
up without producing any narcotic syndrome. No one can
claim, in the absence of scientific proof to the contrary,
that the Quechua and Aymara Indians, particularly in Peru
and Bolivia, who have been chewing the sacred leaf of their
ancestors since time immemorial, have become drug addicts.

21. Consequently, the indigenous coca producing populations
have every reason to be indignant about the lack of logic in
the contradictory arguments of the Western countries, which
maintain that the perverse effects of the drug in their rich
societies can be controlled without eradicating the
economic, social and moral factors that have engendered one
of the West's greatest scourges.

22. The adversaries of Andean culture, who condemn the coca
plant, with a glass of whisky in one hand and a cigarette in
the other, clamour for its eradication and treat its
producers as pariahs should give a plain answer to the
following questions: If alcoholism is one of the greatest
scourges in Europe and responsible for the slow
extermination of the indigenous populations in America, why
is the cultivation of the vine not eradicated, even though
the vine incarnates one of the elements of the old world's
identity? Since the tobacco habit is responsible for a huge
number of victims in consumer societies, why is it
impossible to prohibit the growing of tobacco? Obviously, no
answers will be forthcoming.

23. However, there is one irrefutable observation that needs
to be emphasized: was it not the gringo, the white man, for
whom gold, plants and even cultural artifacts embody
mercantile and monetary value who disembarked on Indian land
and transformed the coca leaf, which contains 1 per cent of
cocaine among its 14 alkaloids, into an illicit commodity.
The chemical processing of the leaves of the plant, with
their extremely varied therapeutic properties, into a hard
paste and the preparation and consumption of cocaine in the
West is part of the logic of the renowned market economy,
and like any commodity, is determined by capitalism's
economic laws of supply and demand.

24. In the light of economic reality, we have every right to
assert that the causes of this contemporary scourge are not
to be found in the Andean countries nor are they the fault
of the Indians, who are usually blamed. The true causes must
be sought in the huge drug markets, in the insatiable
economic and financial interests run by international and
multinational mafias, among those reaches of society nagged
by anxiety, by the constant fear of losing the rat race and
by despair. Finally, questions must be raised about the
attitude and complicity of the dependent countries' ruling
classes whose leaders only yesterday hypocritically viewed
coca as a means of depraving the Indians and then
shamelessly accepted the leftovers from the huge earnings of
the unlawful traffic generated by the West.

25. The paradox is that the United States of America, which
declared war on coca plantations, condoned the coup d'etat
carried out in the 1980s in Bolivia by the military-drug
traffickers, and nowadays in the name of democracy stand
surety for the policy of corrupt Governments and bestow
their generosity on regimes run by veritable mafias.

26. In this context, the cocaine consuming countries have
been caught up in the web of their own economic liberalism
and are the victims of their own way of life, morals and
license by which everything is permitted, except the
preservation of human dignity. As a result they have no
answer to the question of how to eradicate from a sick
social body those once accepted pernicious habits, and they
are even less able to find a remedy to restore the social
and moral balance of those excluded from the consumer
societies.

27. Meanwhile, the indigenous populations have for centuries
been suffering from the curse of their own wealth: in the
past they suffered from the curse of gold and silver and
nowadays they are the victims twice or even thrice over of
their coca plant, international crime, the pillaging of
their coca plantations, the military occupation of their
territories and the violation of their national sovereignty,
as well as suffering repression and affront to their
dignity. For this reason, the indigenous peoples
unhesitatingly condemn criminal acts that violate the
peoples' physical and moral integrity.


IV. AGAINST ERADICATION AND FOR LEGALIZATION

28. Under the United Nations Convention Against Illicit
Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances,
signed in Vienna in 1988, it is prohibited to sow,
cultivate, harvest, process and market coca leaves, against
which an undeclared war is being waged to achieve their
complete eradication, with the exception of lawful
consumption such as for chewing, medicinal use in herbal tea
and poultices, etc.

29. As has already been observed, in Western eyes the most
suitable solution to the unlawful traffic in cocaine paste
for export to the United States of America and Europe would
be the total eradication of coca plantations in the Andean
countries over a period of some six years at a cost of
millions of dollars.

30. This strategy, which has been developed by the Drug
Enforcement Administration of the United States Department
of Justice includes a vast programme to eradicate the Andean
shrub by abusively and unlawfully employing herbicides such
as hexazinone and tebuthiuron which have devastating effects
on vegetable life. Apart from definitively eradicating the
coca plantations, the arbitrary and unilateral use of
defoliants and other chemicals would render vast areas of
Andean land sterile and transform them into a desert. Even
more significant, by its perverse effects, this coercive
measure is a de facto violation of the spirit of the Rio
Conference on safeguarding biodiversity.

31. In addition to the campaign to eradicate and replace
millennial crops, which goes far further than we imagine,
there are other plans and methods of destruction. The
"scientists" of the United States Drug Enforcement
Administration even recommend the use of other "natural
enemies" such as insects and fungi. This pernicious plan,
which is inspired by research, envisages the use of the
larva of the eloria noyesi butterfly, whose voracity makes
it one of the most efficient weapons to eliminate the shrub.
According to research, the butterfly, which inhabits coca
producing areas and apparently exclusively feeds on coca
leaves, is allegedly capable of consuming over 50 leaves in
its one month of existence, and of destroying even the
shrubs' buds; as a result even the hardiest plants die under
the onslaught of eloria.

32. The report by the Drug Enforcement Administration also
recommends other "natural enemies" such as the larva of the
eucleodora coca fly which apparently only attacks certain
varieties of plant, the herbivorous ayromyernex ant, of
whose effects little is known, and the aeguidos pacificus
beetle all of which constitute a serious threat to the
survival of the Andean plant. However, cocaine and the other
alkaloids contained in the coca leaves offer natural defence
and resistance to the unsavoury pests manipulated by
"scientists" in the drug-consuming countries.

33. Whatever weapons are used to control coca growing and
cultivation, with its traditional roots among the natives of
the Andes, any sophisticated eradication and extirpation
campaign will prove illusory and utopian in the context of
the market economy and of uncontrolled economic
neoliberalism - the ideology of modern societies - whose
inspiration lies in the irrational instinct to produce and
consume more and more. Far from putting an end to the
extraction, crystallization, purification and chemical
synthesis of coca unlawful criminal acts which represent a
direct threat to the health and well-being of consumers -
the eradication of ancestral plants and the destruction of
aboriginal customs and traditions could generate social
conflicts with irreparable consequences.

34. In the light of the foregoing it is imperative to
legalize the sowing, cultivation, exploitation, marketing
and consumption of coca leaves to allow the rehabilitation
of their medicinal qualities and the reassessment of their
pharmacological properties, which should moreover be the
subject of scientific research.

35. In the eyes of the indigenous populations this is
undoubtedly the only way to bring the areas devoted to coca
growing gradually under control, absorb the surplus illegal
production, plan and organize marketing subject to special
regulations, with the overall objective of balancing supply
and demand for lawful consumption.

36. There is no other solution to the constant growth and
expansion of the drug trade in the industrialized countries,
unless Governments demonstrate the political will to
industrialize surplus production to manufacture medicines,
food, infusions, etc. It is now the responsibility of the
Government of consumer and producer countries to accord just
and equitable treatment to coca cultivation and resolutely
fight the international mafias which have infiltrated every
sphere of economic, political and social life.


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