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I’ve always marvelled at the resilience of “backward” peoples. You know the types. They live in lands far across the sea. They speak in strange tongues and often dress in very colourful and weird costumes. They have strange customs and many of them have “benefited” from colonisation. These people often suffer from strange diseases and under the guidance of “modern” medicine have been able to slow their death rates from “easily” preventable diseases. Quite often our histories show them to have been indigent and unmotivated prior to the arrival of the colonists.
The history books show us that these peoples were totally unaware of the great wealth that lay beneath their feet and the fact that they had not attempted to develop these great natural resources demonstrates their heathen ways. After all, had not God said that “mankind should subdue the earth”? And so it was that developing capitalism and Christianity was brought to these “backward” people and with that the wealth of their lands was accessed and the benefits expatriated to God fearing foreigners.
What the history books and therefore the accepted common wisdom abroad within our society is, is that these people’s were somehow lessor beings, unclean and slow of mind. We are led to believe their intellects are so undeveloped and so lacking in potential that their only saving grace was as labourers and maids. And so it is, that today we marvel at the ignorance of these peoples as they are dragged into the modern global society and attempt, in their own pitiable fashion to adopt the trappings of “our ways” and embrace democracy. And so we turn to the latest ‘disaster’ facing another South American nation as they emerge from their weekend elections.
The people of Bolivia are seemingly on a course of self destruction if we heed the warnings of the corporate media. They have elected a socialist who received nothing more than high school education and, what’s more, is and indigene. Imagine! A nation electing a person who doesn’t read much, is a self confessed lover of sports and who has said, “The worst enemy of humanity is capitalism.” What are we to make of a nation that elects someone like this to lead them? And his background? He’s a coca grower. You know, cocaine! Let’s see what we know about coca.
If like me you have been reading the corporate press for most of your life and listening to and watching the corporate media, you will know that cocaine is a drug that makes people go mad, gets them killed by drug lords and has been lionised in a gazillion Hollywood movies as coming from, that’s right, Bolivia, a dark and mysterious place. It’s grown there by men who like bling, have big breasted girlfriends and who speak a funny version of English. They also have powerful friends in the US who often dress in white suits, carry big guns and who are more evil that Hitler.
You will also know from the great education sources listed above that the people in the background of these movies, the ones who are shown picking the crops, drying the leaves and packing the cocaine into the bags, are poor, backward peasants who must give up their pretty daughters to the drug barons and whose sons are shot often for no other reason than being there in the first place. If, like me, your education about Bolivia includes watching hours of US cops shows on TV you will be familiar with the fact the poor people are usually silent (unless they’re being tortured in which case they scream a lot) and remain poor. That’s because of their low intellect and that they don’t know the value of the wealth below their feet.
Meanwhile, in the real world, these peasant farmers and the coca croppers know a thing or two about their history and the value of their crop for medicinal purposes. For instance if you are being treated for eczema or shingles, the topical ointment you are applying is more than likely derived from the coca plant. Until recently it was the basis of most local and spinal anaesthetics. It is used to treat altitude sickness, bruises, headaches and as a stimulant in some forms of tea.
When Bolivia was a leading producer of tin the mine owners literally fed the miners on coca because it made them seem less tired, more awake and therefore more productive. It also seemed to make them less susceptible to colds and flu. However the locals warned the mine bosses that consuming too much of the leaf was not healthy and transgressed their social mores. The leaf of the coca plant was not seen as a gift from the gods or anything, it was just that over millennia the inhabitants of the region came to understand that it was a means to an end. Namely their survival at high altitudes and as a vital source of some vitamins, minerals and energy.
In the mid 1800s when the Europeans discovered the key ingredient and developed a way of extracting the alkaloid cocaine from the leaf, that was when its use as a white (and more recently black) drug of choice became prevalent. In fact the first recorded use of cocaine was in a wine called "Vin Mariani" that was quaffed by such notables as Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, Thomas Edison and Pope Leo the XIII. In short, this “wealth”, liberated by the “advanced” chemists of the Europe, was a rich person’s drug of choice long before it be came widely available.
So, I ask you, whose history of the coca plant is more humane and necessary? That of the exploiters and colonists who extracted a now dangerous and deadly drug that is sold to the poor in “developed” nations, or the traditional uses to which the peasants put it in order to get through each grinding day?
Evo Morales is not an educated man and neither are the vast majority of his people. But he does know a thing or two about humanity and the desperate plight of his people under the yoke of capitalist oppression. He was first elected to the Bolivian congress in 1997 but was ‘removed’ after he was involved in two campaigns. The first was against the US company Bechtel (remember them, they are a leading contractor in the war in Iraq) who wanted to seize the water supply of Cochabamba and increase the price of water. The second was his leadership of a revolt against a US sponsored terrorist campaign to eradicate (murder is the correct term) coca farmers.
In short Evo Morales is more concerned about the sustainability of his native culture than he is about maintaining the US led distortion of his cultural heritage. Morales is a realist. He understands the need for his country to play a role in the global community. However, unlike the dictators and corruption riddled regimes before him, he wants to rewrite the constitution to protect the natural resources under the feet of his people and ensure the wealth that lies there is not expatriated to foreign coffers. I’ve always marvelled at the resilience of “backward” peoples and once more I’m humbled by the leadership of the poor and uneducated.
My Christmas wish for 2005 is that we take far more notice of what these “backward” people are showing us can be done with “democracy” than heading the hollow warnings of our so called ‘leaders’ of dire times if we resist the status quo and not strive for social justice, equity and peace on earth.
May your god go with you into the New Year and may the peace you seek motivate you to strive for understanding.