my cocaine museum

General Knowledge time, kids!

So for my Anthro 102 module, I've been reading this ethnography by Michael Taussig, an Australian anthropologist, titled My Cocaine Museum. It's about the situation on the ground in Colombia, which is basically the center of the cocaine industry. It links the history of gold to coca to cocaine, and it is infused with (while admittedly very beautiful) lofty literary style of discourse. I felt like though this was a fresh take on writing an ethnography, I wasn't really able to connect to what really going on at the root of the international War on Drugs - that is, until I hear one of my teacher's presentations on his own fieldwork in Bolivia.

Dr. Thomas - I have the deepest blue eyes and most amazing hair - Grisaffi presented to my 102 class for about an hour and a half today on his 2 years spent in Bolivia, and I must say, its the stuff that movies are made of. He worked mainly with coca farmers, helping with the harvest and spending time with them on a daily basis. With the legal restrictions and US crackdown on the cocaine industry, coca leaves are now only legally exported through the central legal coca market for very specific purposes (ie; COCA-COLA).

Things started to move from interesting to downright hardcore when he started telling us about how the extreme economic destitution drives people to the most obvious, lucrative, and while dangerous, frankly practical alternative of exporting of coca leaf for cocaine. So he tells us about how he carries bags filled with coca leaves into the jungles to the secret cocaine factories where children stomp on a tarpaulin with a mixture of coca leaves, oil and sulphuric acid, to be mixed later with industrial cement (because chalk is to obvious a material to bring in) to neutralize the cocaine base. And then the cocaine base is smuggled out on a 5hr trek to the main road through means ranging from putting the base in condoms and swallowing them, to wrapping tubes of base around babies, and (this made my jaw drop) putting the cocaine base into the bodies of dead infants. Oh, and an anthropologist got apparently MURDERED for getting too embroiled in the drugs side. Intense much?

Underscoring all this is the climate of terror and fear inspired by over 24,000 police in the area (thats almost one policeman per family), and the heavily armed paramilitary groups. The corruption, the fear, the intense levels of violence, death and poverty is what seemingly characterizes the situation. The wider links to America cannot be overlooked - the US pumping billions of dollars into Colombia -and Bolivia as well- to arm, and train Latin American troops has irreversibly militarized the region. And while all this takes place, no one seems to realise that by outlawing wild coca plant (how can you outlaw a plant that grows spontaneously like a weed across the entire landscape?) what is being outlawed is the very livelyhood of these people. Cocaine is doubtlessly a narcotic, but coca leaf is not - how else are they going to practically sustain themselves?

And so the US war on drugs rages on - a trillion, billion, bucket load of dollars later, cocaine prices have gone down, and cocaine purity has gone up. Thousands of peasants have been killed, Bolivia and Colombia have certainly become exponentially militarized, and to what results?

It's listening to my teacher's go on about their fieldwork and their passion which really gets me inspired about Anthropology, and the feeling that while what I'm studying appears esoteric, it really is (in my humble opinion) one of the most relatable, and increasingly important fields of academic study out there. It's dealing with real people, and real situations which is what I love about Anthropology - and I hope I've been able to share with you guys just how exciting and meaningful my random degree can be.