The WAR on COCA

In the Andean-Amazonian region, cradle of the Erythroxylum Coca, the sacred plant of the Andes, over several decades it’s the watchword: war on Coca …
The officially stated objective is the destruction of cocales, the crops of Coca, to avoid the artificial production of cocaine hydrochloride, known as white powder.
However, on the base of the full knowledges about the sacred plant of the Andes, that objective is badly formulated, if not downright false.

In fact the production of illegal drugs in general, including the cocaine hydrochloride, will not suffer any deflection, as long as the dynamics of demand stay still on domestic and international markets, although would disappeared from the planet all the Coca plants until the last one, as well as all the other plants potentially raw material for drugs.

Therefore, according to market dynamics, even the commercialization of drugs responds to the rule of demand and offer.

It’s obvious that, in absence of drug trafficking, the alkaloid plants would fulfill their natural functions in the field of biodiversity and cosmovision: in fact no one has ever guessed to obtain drugs from the sacred Andean Coca, which has existed for 5000 years, until the demand of drugs has worldwidely appeared on the markets.

However, in order not to ignore any far extreme possibility, even though all the alkaloids plants, actual raw material for drugs, would disappear, if the demand of drugs won’t decrease, the markets would continue to be stocked of them, since synthetic drugs are already produced in the laboratories…

Therefore, if the reason for the massive destruction of the green Coca crops is the elimination of drugs abuse and narco-business, that doesn’t seem the right way to go, because it would only lead to more hazardous and inextricable mazes…

The frontal attack to the offer of Coca, whose leaves can be artificially manipulated, is the cornerstone of the war on Coca whose strategy is contaminated and ineffective, having a wrong target, namely a plant rather than drug trafficking.

The actual scenery is just absurd, as the war on Coca devours astronomical figures in economic terms, burning precious energies as matter of time and human resources, being directed against the wrong goal, turning out as an ethically and rationally unjustified expenditure, which must necessarily have some further justifications, maybe more profound, occult and not declarable, but bearing a geopolitical and economic considerable weight.

About the war on Coca … in fact some situations lead to serious reflections: in a global society that preaches – perhaps only in words – the respect for minorities, the definitely destructive attacks against the sacred green Coca badly affect the integrity of the Andean cultural roots of People irreversibly condemned to the crumbling of his identity; the inevitable consequences of the fragmentation of the community’s frames and patterns involve the infiltration in the Andean-Amazonian reality of a variety of social problems, such as alcoholism, family violence, individualism, youth discomfort, material and moral poverty …

The obstinate refusal to access to the beneficial properties of the Andean Coca becomes the main ally of the proliferation of illegal drugs abuse and trafficking networks.

The war on Coca has become a world dictat, directed by the most powerful Nations, both politically and economically, getting great advantages from it: if the Andean-Amazonian populations remain trapped in the wrong war on their plant, they will become dependent, fragile and easy to manipulate … therefore poor actors of little relevance on the international scene.

If the most powerful Nations worldwide accept an expenditure so heavy and senseless for the war on Coca, there must be some valid justification: I thinking, for instance, to the actual instability in the Middle Eastern Countries, markets of petrol, the new oxygen of the industrialized world … surely some new rich deposits to exploit in other regions of the globe would be very welcome …

Therefore … ?Why not direct ravenous appetites toward the black gold of South America, initially more available in Venezuela, but also sleeping under the Coca crops in the Andean-Amazonian regions, along with an untold rich patrimony, including natural gas?

I feel pretty sure that the above mentioned reason would be more than sufficient for the maintenance of Andean Coca destruction’s policies, with the obvious consequence of annihilating the natural habitat, with incalculable damage to the biodiversity, tearing up the cultural tissue of the communities identified with the sacred green Coca.

The indigenous groups would be forcibly compelled to a new exasperating and despairing diaspora, finding themselves deprived of roots and livelihoods.

The realm of the sacred green Coca, abandoned by its People, would become a wasteland ready for egoistic exploitation of its natural resources and for the construction of military bases, focused on the geopolitical control of South America, as a new and recurrent attack, in violation of the Andean cosmovision…