I took a couple anthropology classes last semester and learned about the coca rituals so these two pieces were something I was already interested in. However, I didn’t know the plant was culturally significant so recently as well. The tradition of a newly married couple planting and harvesting coca and raising the plant with their family was something I found very sentimental.

‘The Cultural Life of Coca’ depicts the cultural significance and just a few of the various ritualistic traditions that coca has in Latin American culture. The piece introduces the plant with the more grand uses of it, then finishes by describing its casual and social uses.

‘The Coca War’ describes the brutal ways in which the US War on Drugs destroyed coca crops and impacted Latin American lives. Militarization was introduced to stop production. This was a frustrating read because you can identify the source of a lot of problems. Of course, this is not the sole source, but it surely added to hundreds of years of prejudice. In the US, coca had no cultural bearings and was solely associated with cocaine. Thus, rather than looking intrinsically, they went to the source to try and stop problems within their own country. This led to the destruction of the livelihood for many innocent victims. This also led to an association with Central and South America with drugs.

You can notice the actor-observer effect at work here. The actor-observer effect is the notion of thinking other people do bad things because they’re bad, but when I do bad things, it’s situational. The US saw the popularity of coca in Bolivia as a 2-D issue and a reflection of bad character, lacking to take in the multifaceted nature of the plant. On the other hand, they took the multifaceted nature of their own country into consideration and deflected the issue onto others. This led to hostility and brutality. My second point is that this also has heavy notes of nationalism which had increasing significance, especially at this time.

Foreigners enter with a lack of awareness or cultural intelligence and their actions have fatal consequences. It is a narrative repeated over and over and over. My question this week is in the context of other cultures, what is the coca plant comparable to? Not only in the act of destruction, but also comparable in cultural significance and rituals.