The Spanish conquest had a profound effect on the political economy of coca.
Although the Church discouraged its religious uses, production of coca leaf
actually increased under Spanish rule; colonists conscripted native Andeans to
work in mines and paid them in coca to increase their work output. Mining took
a heavy death toll, as did punishing labor conditions on greatly expanded coca
plantations in the upper Amazon. In 1860 a German chemist developed a method
to refine pure cocaine from the leaves. For a time cocaine was touted as a
wonder cure for a range of ailments and was used as anesthesia in surgical
procedures; simultaneously its recreational use and abuse grew, and by the 1930s
cocaine was banned or severely restricted throughout North America and
Western Europe.
Although cocaine is distilled from coca leaf, the two must not be confused.
Masticated or consumed as tea, the effects of coca leaf are roughly comparable
to those of a cup of coffee or a cigarette. Coca is still consumed throughout the
highlands of Peru and Bolivia to energize the body and focus the mind for work;
it retains deep symbolic significance in native religious practices and has many
medicinal uses. As in Inca times, sharing coca leaf signifies amity and a
cooperative spirit. Guaman Poma’s drawing of a country farmer courteously
sharing his coca—“Take this coca, My Sister”—could (with a change in
costume) just as well depict contemporary practice.
Further Reading
Allen, Catherine J. The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002.
Betanzos, Juan de. Narrative of the Incas. Translated by Roland Hamilton and Dana Buchanan. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1996 [1551–1557].
Cobo, Bernabé. Inca Religion and Customs. Translated and edited by Roland Hamilton. Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1990 [1653].
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe. Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Complete digital facsimile edition of the
manuscript, with a corrected online version of Guaman Poma 1980. Scholarly editor Rolena Adorno.
Copenhagen: Royal Library of Denmark, 2001 [1615]. http://www.kb.dk/elib/mss/poma.
Pacini, Deborah, and Christine Franquemont, eds. Coca and Cocaine: Effects on People and Policy in Latin
America. Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival, 1986.
Ramírez, Susan Elizabeth. To Feed and Be Fed: The Cosmological Basis of Authority and Identity in the
Andes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María. History of the Inca Realm. Translated by Harry B. Iceland.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Salomon, Frank, and George L. Urioste, trans. and eds. The Huarochirí Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient
and Colonial Andean Religion. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991.
Steele, Paul R. Handbook of Inca Mythology. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004
■CATHERINE J. ALLEN