Again, I’ve been neglecting Argentinos Juniors in recent months. My day job has taken me to far-flung places, most recently Bolivia where it’s often too steep to lay down a decent football pitch. And even if you could, the difficulties of breathing at altitude make a kick-around almost impossible.
The Bichos have been bumbling along with a welcome 2-1 win at home last week over Estudiantes. It ended a barren spell during which the manager Luis Estrada resigned to be replaced by former player Carlos Mayor.
So in the absence of any first-hand football and the bollocks that comes with it….here’s a little of the drug-related activity that I’ve been occupying myself with:
The international war against illegal drugs continues unabated with thousands of victims in countries like Mexico and Colombia. There are sophisticated police operations against cartels trying to smuggle cocaine into Europe and North America and multi-million dollar drug eradication programmes are in place in South America where the raw materials for illicit drugs are produced. The enemy at the heart of this campaign is the innocent-looking coca leaf…a fundamental ingredient in the manufacture of cocaine. I’ve just been to Bolivia where the coca leaf is not just legal – it’s an intrinsic part of the society’s history, culture and economy.
Cocaleros --Eugenio y Julio
The town of Coroico is set in the lush, green hills of a region known as Los Yungas about two hours drive east of the Bolivian capital, La Paz. It’s a popular tourist destination with stunning views and a picturesque plaza. The plaza is decorated with green plants which on closer inspection turn out to be coca – the raw ingredient for cocaine. Only here it’s perfectly legal, it’s cultivation encouraged and promoted by the national government. How could it not be? The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is himself a former coca leaf grower who is still a member of their influential trade union. I was in Coroico for the meeting held once every two years to elect representatives to the local coca leaf growers’ council. Weather-beaten farmers arrived in 4×4 trucks to express their concerns, common to those involved in agriculture anywhere in the world – fluctuating prices, transport difficulties and weather conditions.
I traveled from La Paz with the Minister for the Development of the Coca Leaf, Dionisio Munoz, who the previous day in his office had told me that Bolivia, and its coca-producing neighbours Peru and Venezuela, were trying to convince the United Nations to legalize the production of the coca leaf. It’s been on the list of banned items since 1961. He showed me shampoos, teas, medicines and soaps…alcoholic and soft drinks containing the coca leaf. He expounded on its healthy properties. “The coca leaf is not cocaine,” he said.
Bolivia simply doesn’t have the money to invest in the development of these products which they’d like to export. Products containing the coca leaf would, as the current law stands, be illegal outside of Bolivia anyway –although an agreed amount is allowed to be exported to foreign pharmaceutical companies.
Farmers in the country are allowed by the government to produce a certain quantity of coca leaves legally…up to four harvests a year. But their crop is coveted by the illegal and often murderous drug cartels which require large amounts of the leaf for the highly lucrative production of cocaine. The leaf contains a small percentage of psychoactive alkaloid which is extracted and used in a complex chemical process to produce the drug. Poorly equipped and trained police and military fight a constant battle against the well-armed drug cartels which smuggle the leaves out from clandestine airstrips or across porous and poorly-guarded borders.
The plantation
Eugenio and Julio are coca leaf producers and union officials who drove me out of Coroico to their plantation. The gently sloping hills were covered in neat rows of bright green coca leaves for as far as the eye could see – broken in places only by thatched roofs used to shelter the workers and the harvested leaves from the sun. As they worked they took pinches of leaves from a plastic bag and placed them carefully inside their cheeks.
It was a sight I’d seen all over La Paz – men and women, mostly indigenous, their cheeks extended like hamsters as they chewed and sucked on the leaves. This was something the people here have been doing for thousands of years…in what’s been defined as a habit rather than an addiction. The coca leaf reduces tiredness and hunger. And as I found when Eugenio offered me a small bundle, it has a pungent, bitter taste that creates a rather pleasant numbing sensation in the mouth. What the raw leaf doesn’t do is produce the high experienced with cocaine.
The coca leaf is to Bolivians what beer is to Germans or wine is to the French…the leaves chewed then spat out or drunk as a tea.
Whether being used as the vital ingredient in a powerful and lucrative drug at the centre of a bitter and bloody war …or as a much revered stimulant at the heart of Andean culture — the coca leaf seems to wield a potency belied by is innocent appearance.
