Bolivia demands coca plant legalized – 17. February 2011
Across Bolivia, people protest against the coca-chewing by the UN are illegal. For Bolivia’s indigenous coca plant is quite a natural part of everyday life.
One of the first things Evo Morales promised in 2005 when he was elected president of Bolivia, was to legalize coca cultivation.
Morales is himself a former coca farmer and leader of coca farmers’ movement. Chewing coca is now legal in Bolivia, but in the rest of the world coca leaf still considered an illegal substance. It would Morales and his government now do something about.
Specifically, the Bolivian government started a campaign in the UN to change the UN convention of 1961 which classifies the coca plant as illegal.
But the U.S. does not want the Convention as amended, and Denmark has placed himself on America’s side in the conflict. (Read: Denmark in the embarrassing role).
Protests
In past weeks, the Bolivian peasant movement and indigenous movements all over Bolivia backed the government’s campaign in the UN. Especially, the movements protested over the West’s obstructions against their campaign.
The protests have specifically targeted against the United States will not support the Bolivian government’s desire to legalize coca. Among others, coca farmers and indigenous peoples’ movement demonstrated in front of U.S. Embassy in La Paz. Here they kept talking and then of course chewed coca leaves, writes several media.
Besides the protests have also been held more positive events across Bolivia.
Among others were held festive events at several of the regional parliaments around the country. There have been chewed coca leaves, and have been informed about the plant and how it has for generations been used by the indigenous peoples of Bolivia.
Special focus has been on it representing a quite a familiar thing to chew coca leaves and not a criminal act.
Criminally
According to the Bolivian government is where the UN goes wrong in town. They criminalize coca tyggerne by putting coca leaf in the list of banned substances.
Since cocaine was discovered as a powerful and addictive narcotic substance is coca been demonized. The poor farmers who grow it, has been equated with drug traffickers by previous Bolivian governments and particularly the U.S., writes the International Forum of the Association’s magazine Gaia.
The assistance programs that would help farmers to find alternative crops has previous governments and foreign aid agencies refused to cooperate with peasant organizations.
Coca peasants have thus since time immemorial been the victims of foreign hunting coca plant and peasants and indigenous peoples against the plant has not been accepted among those in power.
Sacred
In Bolivia, and among the population of the country looks entirely different on the coca plant and significance
– Coca is sacred, and many could not live without, says a Quechua woman who sells coca at a market in Cochabamba. The Swedish magazine Latinamerika.nu have talked with the woman who has much more to tell:
– Koka-leaf is the best natural medicine. It is good for stomach problems, diabetes and many also use coca to calm nerves.
– Coca can also be used as a cure for rheumatism, by that bogs leaf and mix it with urine, says Quechua-woman. You put the mixture on for example the knee, which was sore and the day after the pain is gone. Urine may also be swapped out with alcohol.
That coca is a medical plant, supports Lidio Guerrero Toro, director of the landless movement MST-B, Movimiento Sin Tierra, Bolivia, Santa Cruz:
– Koka is a medical plant which can also be used to keep awake. It gives a strength and potential. It is medicine for stomach ills and against colds. Some say it is a drug, a drug, but only when it is being smuggled it from being considered a narcotic substance.
Felipa Merino, head of an organization that organizes indigenous people and women in Santa Cruz also believe that coca is sacred:
– Coca is sacred and our people have been using it since past. Our government here in Bolivia have asked to get done coca legally. Coca is not cocaine, it is people who make it to cocaine. Coca chewed by people in the village, but also by those working in transport and of students to enable them to cope with studying. We are going to fight to the last for coca legally must be throughout the world.
Koka is also used ritually as an offering and incense.
/ Ln
this is translated from danish with google translator and cut from;
Bolivianerne kræver koka-planten legaliseret
Dagbladet Arbejderen
