Coca »»
One of the first cultivated crops in the Americas, coca has a complex and tangled existence in Andean culture. The coca leaf is best known as the basic ingredient of cocaine. Coca leaves are also famous for having been in the soft drink Coca-Cola, which initially had two main flavor ingredients in it: coca leaves and the kola nut.
However, the coca leaf's main use in Bolivia is either as a tea, called mate de coca or chewed as single whole leaves. Coca leaves are excellent for those suffering from soroche, altitude sickness, and also toothaches, high blood pressure, stomach aches, fatigue, and more. The indigenous people of the Andes have relied on coca since Incan days, at least. Consumption of the coca plant can be traced back to at least 2,000 B.C.
It is very important to distinguish coca from cocaine. Then-President Paz Zamora said in a speech to the World Health Organization, "Coca is an Andean tradition while cocaine is a Western habit." Since the times of the conquistadores in Bolivia the coca leaf has been a symbol of indigenous unity and, more generally, national sovereignty from, at first the Spanish, and, more recently, the yanquis del norte, the United States.
Bolivia »»
With a population smaller than Los Angeles, Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. It is also one of the richest in terms of culture and natural resources.
Bolivia has the highest percentage of indigenous people in all of South America with roughly 60% indigenous people. In addition, about 2 out of 3 Bolivians are native speakers or either Quechua, the language of the altiplano, Aymara, the language of the valleys, or Guaraní, a language of the Amazon.
map from wikipedia
Bolivia is a landlocked nation, sharing borders with Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay. Since achieving independence from Spain in 1825, Bolivia has sustained over 200 coup d'etats.
History »»
Coca eradication was first attempted by the Spaniards, who saw the use of the coca as resistance to Christianity and Spaniard rule. They eventually gave up as there was a real fear that the mining of Bolivia's vast silver mines would stop if the miners were deprived of their coca-chewing habit. In 1569 King Phillip II ruled that coca could be used as a stimulant.
In 1859 German chemist Albert Niemann isolated the active alkaloid cocaine from the coca plant. One early enthusiast was Sigmund Feud, later publishing several papers on cocaine, notable Über Coca in 1884. Over forty chemicals are needed to extract this alkaloid from the coca leave and to make a pound of cocaine requires over 180 pounds of coca leaves.
What first began with the League of Nations, in 1961 the United Nations, under strong pressure from the United States, officially classified coca as a Schedule One narcotic. The Bolivian government ratified this decision as represented by the Single Convention on Narcotics and in 1962 passed a decree prohibiting the planting of new coca fields.
In 1986 U.S. President Reagan declared a 'War on Drugs', focusing on the original sources of the drug, primarily regions outside of the United States, such as Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.
In 1988 the Convention Against Illegal Trade in Narcotics and Controlled Substances was passed. As with the previous decree of 1961, it too called for the eradication of coca. This time, however, the Bolivian delegation "registered a reserve to the agreement, maintaining that the coca leaf in itself is not a narcotic and causes no psychological or physiological harm when used traditionally."3
The United States is the single largest reason why there has been this enormous eradication project going on in Bolivia. In 1989, President Bush began the 'Andean Initiative' with a budget of over 3 million dollars to fight cocaine trafficking. President Clinton, in continuing the Initiative, supposedly shifted the focus of the Initiative to one of "democratic institution building", though in reality over sixty percent of the 1997 budget was allocated for the police and military.4 "Over the past ten years Bolivia has received an average of about $175 million a year from the United States."5
The controversial Law 1008 was passed in Bolivia in 1988. Most grievously,
it presumes guilt unto proven innocent and set up an independent judicial
system and police system (the FELCN)
for those charged with illegal drug cultivation, while also prohibiting
bail for those awaiting trial. It is not uncommon for a cocalero
to wait months in jail before a trial began, and accusations of human right
violations at the hands of the independent police are rampant.
This Law also defines the legality of coca cultivation for traditional purposes. Law 1008 designated three areas for coca cultivation for traditional use purposes: an old coca settlement in the Chapare, a region west of Cochabamba, and two areas in the Yungas, which is located east of La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. Up to 5,455 acres are legally allowed within these zones. Any excess in these zones was to be 'voluntarily' destroyed over time with financial compensation and support for alternative development.
Coca grown outside of these legal areas, or newly planted coca in the allowed zones, were, with the passing of Law 1008, immediately considered illegal and thus subject to eradication.
Due to growing campesino and labor struggles, one key issue included
in Law 1008 was the requirement that alternative development must "assure
sufficient income for the subsistence of the family unit"6.
In addition, one provision of Law 1008 banned chemicals use in eradication
efforts, in order to avoid the environmental problems Colombia was facing
due to the wide use of defoliants and herbicides by anti-narcotic police.
For many campesinos, "the failure of crop substitution or other economically viable options to materialize negates the legality of the government's continued pursuit of eradication goals"7. Clashes between the cocaleros and the police have resulted in many injuries and deaths.
The Permanent Assembly on Human Rights is one among many groups which claims the U.S. played a large part in drafting Law 1008, stating in fact that the law was first drafted in English. One thing for sure is that the Reagan administration, in 1988, froze half of U.S. aid to Bolivia until Law 1008 did indeed pass8.
President Bush has asked for over 730 million dollars for Fiscal Year 2005 for the Andean Counterdrug Initiative9. For Fiscal Year 2003, 842 million dollars went to Bolivia.
The United States has supplied large amounts of arms to Bolivia's police and
military. For example, in 1988, "weapons deliveries included 1053 M16A2
(5.56mm) assault rifles, 576 9mm pistols, 68 grenade launchers, 2 M60 (7.62mm)
machine guns, four 5.56 mm machine guns, 190 12 gauge shotguns (20" barrel).
In addition, the report says that 200 M2 carbines were cannibalized to provide
spare parts for other weapons, implying that the BNP
have operational M2s"10.
Despite all this effort, the number of acres growing coca is on the rise. According
to the U.S. State Department, there are over 28,000 hectares of coca being
grown in Bolivia, where only 12,000 are considered legal. In early March
2004, the newly-installed Mesa Administration and the main cocalero
organizations agreed to begin the process of decriminalizing coca. Furthermore,
the two sides agreed to make a formal proposal of decriminalization to the
United Nations Commission on Drugs that will meet next month in Austria.
However, a few days later, Robert Charles, an official from the State Department, met privately with Bolivian President Mesa. As a result, many believe the Bolivian government will continue to follow Washington's orders and will not meet, as planned, with the cocaleros and begin the steps towards decriminalization.11.
Resistance »»
There have been many instances of Bolivian resistance to injustice and
perceived threats to Bolivian sovereignty. The most recent examples, however,
have resulted in victories of a sort, and have begun a tremendous change
in how Bolivians view themselves as a nation and more generally how they
are viewed by the world.
In 2002, the campesino and labor movements succeeded in ousting the Bechtel Corporation from control of Bolivia's water, resulting in the famous Cochabamba Declaration on the Right to Water12.
In early 2003, of the two main candidates, one was a U.S.-backed U.S.-educated
heavily-accented Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and the other was Evo Morales,
a Quechua indian and head of the coca growers' union. Morales received 21%
of the vote. Lozada became President of Bolivia with 22% of the vote. Just
months later, in October 2003, Lozada resigned under tremendous public demonstrations,
road blockages, and strikes.
A large determiner in Lozada's resignation was over the exportation of Bolivia's
natural gas through Chile. Called the Gas War by some, the arguments by
the protesters was that the resource should be nationalized and directly
benefit all Bolivian, versus, as had been done with almost all of the country's
natural resources (silver, tin, rubber, etc.), exported for quick profit
to a few wealthy individuals.
The resistance in Bolivia is seen by many as an extension or manifestation
of the general social movements coming to prominence in the world recently,
as seen in the demonstrations against the WTO
and other groups, and also as seen in the holding of mass conferences such
as the World Social Forum, last held in Dubai, India with over 20,000 participants.
Archiving the Future »»
In Bolivia, one can find many publications on these recent popular struggles.
It is unclear whether or not Bolivia's National Archives and/or National
Library keep copies of these publications, pamphlets, newspapers articles,
etc. Although the Archives and Library moved into a entirely new building
in 2002, their web presence contains very little information as to its collections13.
There is an unfortunate reality to many social justice movements, that
being their not being remembered once the movement has ended or shifted
towards a new goal. As most social justice movements usually involve the
underrepresented and marginalized fighting against a ruling group, be it
by class, race, gender, or a mixture of all three and more, the 'forgetting'
makes sense. Without the resources to continue with the movement, much less
fund an archive or or any kind of informational center, invaluable material
will continue to be lost over and over again. And, with some time, be it
years or decades, the same issues, ideas, and history will be relearned
and rewritten by a new movement the hard way - from scratch.
There are two main users in any archive: those who create the documents that populate the archive, and those who are interested and affected by the documents in the archive. The publications I have found, through UCLA's library and on-line, are all either in English or Spanish, neither of which is the language most spoken by the campesinos and cocaleros of Bolivia.
According to one source, only one percent of Bolivians are online (78,000
out of 8.4 million)14. In comparison,
in the United States, three out of four people have access to the internet
(204 million out of 272 million)15.
Considering both the percentages and languages involved, this site, like
so many others on Bolivia, is catering to that second group, mainly those
interested and (somewhat) affected by the cocalero and campesino
movements in Bolivia. This site differs, however, in that the information
being collected in almost entirely online and, furthermore, attempts in
particular to gather information created and/or disseminated by the activists
themselves.
Archiving online material is a very sticky and still largely undefined and untested field. When archiving material that exists already in an offline, that is physical, format, the questions and complications are fewer, or at the least,lessen in urgency when compared to material that quite possibly exists online for a few weeks only. Determining how to appraise the quality or importance of such information is (way) beyond the scope of this site.
However, I do see a need for 'container' sites that hold material and keep
it safe until such time as it can be processed. In the physical world, this
can be seen in countless overburdened archival processing rooms and on archivists'
desks, etc. In the digital world, however, there is too little of these
kinds of sites. The closest I can really see of such a site would either
be web portals, that usually consist of links only, or sites such as archive.org
with its 'Wayback Machine'16.
Granted there are many issues to deal with this 'container site' concept, not
the least of which is the same problems that archives have dealt with for
years, namely, appraisal, preservation, and accessibility, even in this
initial stage. But the risk of losing such material is not one to be dismissed
lightly and, if this idea of mine is not the right one, then something needs
to be figured out.
For now, for this site and project, I have gathered links to pages within quite often much larger websites. I've downloaded copies of movies, audio, photos, and text, that otherwise could quite possibly, as has been the case for all the audio and some of the photos already, disappear.
One major issues bothered me throughout this project: I am not Bolivian. The spirit behind and really guiding so much of this social change on Bolivia is based on or comes from a sense of unity with other Bolivians, of pride in a shared ancestral culture, and a strong feeling of wanting complete independance from over-bearing imperialist nations like the United States. As a citizen of the United States, am I just re-asserting control over rebellious colonial history and memory? I hope not.
Another issue others potentially could see would be my lack of neutrality in assembling these various bits of Bolivian material. Personally, it's not a concern since I do not believe any profession(al) can be entirely neutral and so as long as I am not hiding behind some mask of 'detached professional', then I feel OK with taking stances and adding subjective remarks.
Resources »»
Some quick links:
About »»
This site was put together by Andrea Hull.
It is the final project for IS 430: American Archives and Manuscripts taught by Anne Gilliland-Swetland during the Winter 2004 quarter at UCLA:
Archives and recordkeeping are critical instruments that can be used not only for reinforcing existing power structures but also for empowerment. ...Prepare a paper or project that relates in some way to the societal value of archives, record, and memory for a community or communities that are racially or culturally diverse, underrepresented, or marginalized. Your assignment may treat any medium -- text, sound, film, home video, oral history, photographs, or any historical or contemporary case or event that relates to records or memory-keeping (or absence thereof), or collection of archival materials.
...Your paper...or project should comment upon what you have interpreted as a source as well as where and how you located your source material. It should also comment upon the extent to which archival theory and practice, as you have learned about them in this class, address or might need to be extended to address, issues that you see arising from the topic or case you have chosen.
The structure of this site was adapted from Jason Kottke's online
portfolio. I believe in web standards as a key aspect of online accessibility.
This site tries to comply with W3C
XHTML and CSS standards.
Comments, questions, and rants can be sent to me here.
March 22, 2004.
