the discursive dimensions of the coca leaf

The discursive dimensions of the Coca Leaf: Political Ritualised Practices in Bolivia

Pablo Andrés Rivero

Hamburg, 13th January 2011

Coca leaves have been cultivated in the South American Andean valleys for centuries

Coca: ‘traditionally’ consumed in the Southern Andes by people from indigenous backgrounds as in a custom and for miners, peasants, construction workers, and other labourers in both rural and urban areas alike.

Coca: a political and symbolic ‘deliverer’

Objects become ‘artefacts’ that acquire meanings, and then are employed as material forms of discourse and political ritualised practices

The articulation of standardised practices, repetition and symbolism is mediated by ambiguity and dramatisation, producing a ritualised action in which a particular ‘performance’ or ‘performer’ make sense of a certain reality; the world is re/constructed by linking the past to the present and the present to the future, and by employing powerful emotions to reaffirm, contest or disguise relationships in a social and political environment given

The consumption of coca leaf increased after the fall of the Inca Empire and the subsequent Spanish colony, an event directly related to the increase of mining (Mamani, 1986)

The coca leaf is essential element for indigenous and workers daily life, enjoys a complexly constructed ‘sacred’ quality bestowed by a number of rituals and beliefs among Andean cultures

Is in the environment of resistance to the eradication policies that the coca-growers’ organisations emerged, mobilised and constructed in twenty years one of the most important social movements in Bolivia

the coca leaf operates as an artefact embodying cultural, socio-economic and political representations, is presented as a symbol that gathers peoples’ identities and aspirations.

The economic dimensions of the coca leaf, within which cocaine is a very important factor, are critical for understanding its meanings in relation to social and power relations.

Photo: Reuters pictures

Both collective memory and imaginary are recently being articulated around indigenous, peasants, and miners, among others, social movements that has challenged the internal power relations and attempted to portray its discourse beyond Bolivian borders