Informant38

a symbol of national pride
The United States pays the Bolivian government $100 million a year to wipe out coca leaves destined for the drug trade. (A small amount is legally sold for traditional domestic use.) While the Bolivian military has had intermittent success in suppressing cultivation, the coca-growers, or cocaleros -- some 50,000 families, in a population of 8 million -- are leading a groundswell of hostility to the army's efforts.
In elections in 2002 the cocalero Evo Morales, who called for an immediate end to eradication, missed winning the presidency by only 1.5 percent of the vote, while his party won one-fifth of the seats in congress. Morales opposes almost every policy the United States supports, including IMF-style fiscal austerity plans; his popularity surged after the then-US ambassador spoke out against him. Many believe that if new elections were held tomorrow the cocaleros would come to power -- placing US policy makers in an awkward position.
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Coca was one of the natural stimulants Europeans found when they first came to America, along with chocolate and tobacco. The latter two became world commodities, while coca stayed at home -- for a while. It took on a higher profile in the 19th century when German chemists isolated cocaine from coca leaves and hucksters promoted it as a tonic, most notably in the form of Coca-Cola.
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...Tupac Katari, who laid siege to the Spanish city of La Paz in 1781, leading a major revolt just as British colonists won independence in North America.
Unlike Washington and Adams, Tupac Katari was defeated and executed. But two centuries later his memory is revered. The manifesto of the pro-indigenous "Katarista" movement announces, "Tupac Katari vive y vuelve, carajo!" (Tupac Katari is alive and returning, dammit!)Ω{my trans-bot says 'carajo!' means 'fuck it!'}
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During Tupac Katari's uprising, insurgents crammed coca leaves in the mouths of Spanish speakers and forced them to chew, humiliating those who saw in coca a symbol of native people's inferiority. There is something of the same defiance in the cocalero movement today. On the floor of congress, their representatives often give speeches in native languages and chew coca.
�Jeremy Mumford/Boston Globe 09.28.03