The CHRONOLOGY of COCA

2500-1800 BC In Northern Peru a remarkable finding of traces of Coca leaves in the area of the ruins of Huanca Prieto.

2100 BC In Valdivian culture of Ecuador and in ceramics of Nazca and Mochica cultures in Peru (600-360 BC) relevant findings of traditional use of Coca.

1200-1475 A kind of oils essence extracted from Coca leaves was used by Incas, when practising surgical excision of brain tumors.

1499 The properties of Coca leaves are spread for the first time in Europe by the priest Tomás Ortiz, while some items for the traditional use of Coca are found by Amerigo Vespucci in coastal areas of Venezuela.

1567 The Second Council of Lima condemns Coca as being without utility and very close to the abuse and superstition. Juan de Matienzo defends it, saying: without Coca, no Peru.

1573 In the mines of Potosi (Bolivia), a town of considerable size at that time, the amounts of Coca leaves used by the miners were equal to the monetary value of 450 kg of gold; the use of the leaves was recognized and spread aiming to increasethe resistance at work especially in the mines.

1607 The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega devoted a chapter of his Comentarios Reales al Tabaco y a la Coca, saying: There’s no reason to put at side the plant that the natives call Khuka in quechua, which is the main wealth of Peru. 

1786 The Coca plant is recorded in the Botanical Encyclopedia of Lamarck in the family of Erythroxylaceae of the genus Erythroxylum.

1794 Hipólito Unanue presents in Mercurio Peruano with Disertación sobre el aspecto, cultivo, comercio y virtudes de la famosa planta del Perú nombrada Coca.

1858 Coca becomes famous in Europe thanks to the treatise Sulle virtù igieniche e medicinali della Coca e sugli alimenti nervosi in generale by the well known Italian physician and anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza.

1859 The chemist Albert Niemann of Göttingen (Germany) extracts from Coca a natural alkaloid and calls it cocaine.

1863 The chemist Angelo Mariani (1838-1914), native in the island of Corsica, produces a Coca Wine, that won acclaim of many contemporary celebrities.

1880 The Therapeutic Journal includes cocaine in the Official List of Medicaments in North America.

1884 Doctor Sigmund Freud publishes his first article About Coca. He becomes the first consumer of cocaine in the history.

1884 The German ophthalmologist doctor Karl Köller uses cocaine for ocular anesthesia; doctor William Hall (USA) uses it for dental anesthesia, while doctor Halstead (USA) is the first one to inject cocaine directly into the nervous system.

1884 The pharmaceutical industry Parke Davis & C. Manufacturing Chemist in Detroit (USA) produces cocaine in small quantities and later on an industrial scale.

1886 A drink made from Coca leaves and Cola nut, derived from the famous Wine Mariani deprived of alcohol, produced by pharmacist John Pemberton, is launched in the USA, named Coca Cola.

1889 In the Royal Botanical Garden of Kiew (UK) Morris identifies the Erythroxylum novogranatense.

1901 North American medical people get to know the virtues of Coca in the monumental History of Coca (William Mortimer, Peru)

1905 Einhorn synthesizes procaine or synthetic cocaine. The natural cocaine is withdrawn from the market and will be prohibited later.

1912 In The Hague (Netherlands) the Opium Convention includes cocaine and Coca, its raw material.

1913 Peru endorses the Opium Convention. It’s the beginning of a negative campaign against Coca plant, promoted by Peruvian psychiatrists (Valdizán, 1913)

1914 The Harrison Law (USA) prohibits the legal use of cocaine.

1947 The Government of Peru requested the United Nations to form a Commission to study on Coca leaf.

1950 The report prepared by the United Nations Commission, established for that purpose, results in Peru and Bolivia’s protests, due to the arguments and content clearly filled by prejudices.

1953 A Commission of the World Health Organization (WHO) declares that the ancient traditional use of Coca, called coqueo, pijcheo, aculliku, must be considered a form of drug addiction.

1961 The Government of Bolivia, under President Victor Paz Estenssoro, signs the Geneva Convention, namely the basis of all modern legislation regarding Coca, Opium and Cannabis. The Convention includes the prohibition of Coca and its traditional use.

1961 Together with cocaine hydrochloride also Coca leaves comes under the Unique Convention of Narcotics of the United Nations, in the List of drugs subjected to greater restriction on narcotics.

1961 In the Unique Convention of Narcotics Coca Cola Company obtains, in exception to the international legislation, a dedicated article (# 27), which literally states: The parties may authorize the use of Coca leaves for the preparation of a flavoring agent that does not contain alkaloids and, to the extent necessary for such use, authorize the production, import, export, trading and possession of those leaves.

1961 The Unique Convention of Narcotics (New York, 1961) includes an agreement on the destruction of Coca crops, subscribed by Peru.

1971 Bolivia also joined the plan designed to destroy Coca crops and the President-in-Office, General Banzer, signed an agreement in Santa Cruz (Bolivia) with Henri Kissinger, the North American Secretary of State.

1976 Harvard University (USA) publishes a study on the composition and characteristics of Coca, which nutritionally is comparable to the best known cereals and foods.

1978  In March the Law Decree 22095 is promulgated in Peru: it is known as the Drug Law, putting together Coca leaves and drug, farmers, drug abusers and drug traffickers.

1978 The defense of Coca is fully assumed in a complete dedicated monograph of América Indígena (# 4, Vol. XXXVIII, Mexico, Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, 1978).

1988 In Bolivia is effective the Law 1008 on Coca and drug all together, stating that everyone must be considered drug user, until the contrary is proved … fully ignoring the universal precept of presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

1988 After several years of local spontaneous initiatives to produce common and beneficial green products with Coca as an ingredient, a law is promulgated in Bolivia to control the industrialization of Coca.

1995 On March 3^rd the conclusions of the COCAINE Project of WHO-UNICRI are published, including the following point: Coca leaves consumption does not seem to result in adverse health effects and it expresses therapeutic, social and religious aspects, positive for indigenous Andean Peoples.

1999 In Cusco (Peru) K’uychiwasi Association, founded by Italian doctor Emma Cucchi, acts in defense of biodiversity and Respect for Life, the valorization of Andean culture and sacred green Coca, also in a pilot project to make natural green products with Coca.

2005 In November 2005 (Cusco, Peru) the microenterprise © The Coca Shop Company S.A.C. takes action with the collaboration of the Peruvians heirs of K’uychiwasi, led by Christo Deneumostier.

2005 On December 18th Evo Morales Ayma becomes the President of Bolivia: he is an aymara trade unionist and the maximum executive of the Federation of Peasants Workers of the Tropic of Cochabamba (FETCTC), as well as the main leader of the cocaleros in the region of Chapare (Bolivia).