Blessings Blessings damn leaf
The U.S. government has invested 5 billion dollars to eradicate. The Colombian government considers fuel the violence that afflicts the country. For two decades in the jungles of the South American nation, guerrillas and paramilitaries are fighting to the death for control of coca, a plant that is sacred Paez Indians, and with products based on your resume, they want to claim it
gaining ground
products already coca leaf are distributed in health food stores in Colombia. Given the demand, the chain supermarkets also have ventured to its sale. The profits generated by the coca leaf products are reversed in the Paez community.
Text and photos: Amalia Morales Correspondent in Colombia
Earlier this month, the Vice President of Colombia, Francisco Santos, traveled to London to launch there last season of his government: "The Curse of the coca. " That cross that demonizes the coca leaf, Santos, the official in a global forum on drugs.
In the spirit spirited a soldier in battle, Santos told his country stations from the British capital, that about two million hectares of rainforest in Colombia have been destroyed by the cultivation of this plant cursed with which cocaine is produced, whose main customers are in the U.S. and Europe.
Government Studies, Colombia produces 800 tons of cocaine a year, twice what the authorities believed. are planted over 100,000 hectares , six crops a year.
A kilo of cocaine as U.S. $ 35.000 is achieved and in Europe for 50,000 euros (63,000 dollars).
drug By year earns about $ 800 million, according the National Narcotics , DNE, Colombia. Therefore, the Vice President vehemently insisted, that we must raise awareness among Europeans.
Colombian vicemandatario While talking on the radio, in a two-story house in a neighborhood west of Bogota, realize the dream of some Colombian Indians, who think the exact opposite of the coca leaf, which is sacred and holy and has great potential food.
believe both the benefits of coca leaf, which six years have begun to produce coca tea, cookies and cake coca, coca wine, dried fruits with coca leaves, and the product king Coca-sek , a gaseous greenish yellow and was released less than a year ago.
"It's just not the same grape wine, so it is not the same coca leaf that cocaine," says Fabiola Piñacue, Paez Indian Cocanasa project leader, which is to vindicate the leaf others curse.
is not the first time I heard that demonize Piñacue coca leaf. Since Tierradentro Piñacue left in Cauca, southwest of the country where the coca plant thrives in hot and humid lands as palms on the seafront, only heard insults against the plant that is considered sacred to their ancestors.
"The coca leaf is not really a drug, the source of life, is a nutritional supplement that contains many vitamins and nutrients, and that is scientifically proven."
With those words that came with a cup of coca leaf tea, prepared by herself, Piñacue was winning over his colleagues on the career of political science at a university in Bogota.
With his thermos and is committed to the road claim that a child learned to chew, Piñacue started participating in craft fairs. Some will be reviled by selling that area, but most, he says, warmly welcomed his words and tizana of coca.
You got people to ask what was good the coca leaf. Fabiola unhesitatingly told they had medicinal properties for everything, "even for lovesick told it was good," he smiles.
"And it's true because the coca leaf contains natural alkaloids," he adds. Then, run a folding project, citing a scientific study at Harvard in 1973, describes the main properties of the 14 alkaloids the dark green leaf that grows in wet weather over 1.000 meters of height and less than 2.800.
coca leaf is a magic pill, a multivitamin lucky, he says, which speeds up the workings of the brain, prevents cardiovascular disease, is an antidiarrheal, regulates the production of melanin in the skin, speeds digestion, prevents gastritis, ulcers, analgesic, anesthetic, regulates the secretion of bile, improving liver function and to top it off, fights tooth decay. "If you look at men" Paez "are strong and hard, white teeth," says Ana Maria, one of the women working in the project.
In La Paz, Bolivia, a natural platform located over 4.000 meters , it is common for a newcomer who lacks the air, offered a tea coca leaves to regulate oxygen deprivation and reverse this "mountain sickness" or altitude sickness.
Using centuries
in Boilers, in Tierradentro, where Piñacue grew, the consumption of coca leaf starts when the first tooth erupts.
For more than five centuries, Indians have the habit of "Mambo", as she is chewing activity, before undertaking any task in the day. Also use it to their sacred rituals.
Early English chroniclers who arrived in Colombia wrote that "(...) the virtue of this herb is that any man who has these leaves in the mouth, does not suffer or hunger or thirst. "
However, the drug began to be produced with one of the alkaloids of the leaf, in the late seventies, and whose business flourished in the eighties with drug trafficking, and remains today, a little over the tradition of "mambeo" among Indians.
Currently, the Colombian government, backed by the United States spends millions of dollars to eradicate coca crops. The spraying of herbicides end up each year with thousands of acres, however, studies show that far from diminishing, the plantations thrive in the area of \u200b\u200bPutumayo and Caqueta.
indigenous law and jurisdiction of the armed groups
eradication, is supposed to save the indigenous communities, which are recognized by law as a cultural right cultivation and consumption sheet.
In Boilers coca leaf is grown, it will stop the mouths of its inhabitants and the drying oven Cocanasa project.
past couple of years, by a decree, allowing them to Cocanasa industrialization and commercialization of coca for cultural purposes.
"It's been a long battle to achieve that permit the marketing of the sheet with the cultural purpose, "said David Tanner, Cocanasa counsel.
Another battle is being waged on the ground, on plantations, where they often reach groups, paramilitaries or guerrillas, to pressure the Indians to sell their harvest. "These people pay twice what we pay, and as there is much need in the area, the Indians end up selling it. This has been a problem, although most of us sell it to us, "says Piñacue.
Coca-sek Energizing
With coca tea, the Indians have been went very well. In one year, they sold in Colombia more than 30,000 boxes of aromatic as well as tell the tizana.
With Coca-sek or gaseous sun, "in Castilian, the result has been equally encouraging. This line was launched in December in conjunction with an Indian party, has gained acceptance in the local market.
A batch of 20,000 cans of this energizing, which has successfully passed the medical records, disappeared in two weeks Cocanasa wineries.
Already coca products are distributed in all Colombian food stores. Given the demand, the chain supermarkets also have ventured to its sale.
The profits generated by coca products are invested in the community.
"revolving loans are made, schools have improved, the last thing you bought was an oven for drying the sheet, it only serves to remove toast protein you have, and so would not serve to make cocaine "he says.
The coca leaf products have already crossed the Colombian border.
addition to Bolivia, so far sent a wine coca leaf for the inauguration of President Evo Morales, the aromatic reached Mexican soil, Canadian, French and Dutch, however, neither country has yet been marketed as a health food product because the laws forbid it. The legal obstacles are by now a drag on exports.
Despite the market acceptance of products of the coca leaf, still outweighs the public opinion and in the imagination of people the discourse that demonizes the plant.
"This newsletter is a killer road that feeds into cocaine all the violence they are suffering the Colombian people, "summed up a few weeks ago Colombia's Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, announcing that next year, fumigated crops on the border with Ecuador.
La Prensa, 19 November. International Pag
Piñacue Fabiola's dream is that one day the Indians of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia
to industrialize and commercialize products based
facts coca leaf. ()
