Overview of Land and History 33the symptoms of the soroche ( altitude sickness). For this
reason, some Bolivian tour companies have foreign clients
chew coca leaves when descending inhospitable highland
mine shafts.
Economists within the Movement Towards Socialism, Evo
Morales’ coalition, have come up with a creative alternative.
Why not industrialise the coca leaf into medicinal and other
legitimate products? Rather than exporting a raw material,
coca or otherwise, a strategy with few local economic benefi ts,
why not develop added value products? By industrialising
prior to export, jobs are created and different economic
sectors are bolstered.
The idea is not new. Think of Coca Cola.
The Cocalera March: an Historic Preview of the
Dramatic Events between 2000 and 2005
The seventeenth January 1996 was a historic day in the
evolution of the coca issue and the enfranchisement of
indigenous Bolivians. More than 300 women coca growers,
some carrying infants in their colourful shawls, arrived on
foot in La Paz after 30 days and more than 500 km (310
miles) of a penurious march that had begun in the most
controversial coca growing region, the Chapare. The march
was catalysed by escalating skirmishes in which government
anti-drug forces attempted to forcibly eradicate coca fi elds.
Three deaths resulted from the confrontations, including that
of a child. Several other peasants in the region were maimed
in the confl icts.
Knowing that the women cocaleras ( coca growers) would
inspire broad-based sympathy in all sectors of Bolivian
society, the government of MNR Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada
(Revolutionary Nationalist Movement) attempted to intercept
the march in its incipient stages. (The MNR was the historic
consolidator of the 1952 Bolivian revolution and resurfaced
in the 1980s to espouse orthodox neoliberal privatisations
a la Thatcher.)
The march proceeded, from the lowland tropics into the
valleys and Yungas gorges, mainly uphill, under the battering
showers of the rainy season. No woman was exempt from