Gootenberg, Paul Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Andean Cocaine traces the obscure processes and transformations of
the global coca and cocaine commodity chain. Gootenberg documents the traditions
of the Andean coca leaf, the birth of cocaine as a medical commodity, the early
twentieth-century decline of licit cocaine, and cocaine’s reemergence as a
global illicit good following World War II and the decades that followed.
The commodity chain of coca and cocaine began with the
extraction of alkaloidal cocaine from the dried Andean coca leaf. This
discovery by German doctoral student Albert Niemann would soon transform
cocaine into a world drug commodity. Initially, cocaine was essential as a
high-value medical commodity. Medical uses of cocaine included treatment of
opiate addiction, hay fever, asthma, or other respiratory ailments. Cocaine’s
greatest medical impact in the United States and Europe was as a local
anesthetic used during surgery. In Europe, cocaine’s commodity chain was
defined by the coca elixir Vin Mariani developed by Corsican physician and
chemist Angelo Mariani. Cultivated by Peruvian and Bolivian peasants living in
the Andean Mountains, the coca leaf would be dried and shipped to the United
States or Europe for refining. Due to the herb’s limited shelf life during
transportation, the alkaloidal cocaine extracted would lose potency. The
development of Peruvian crude cocaine by Arnaldo Kitz accelerated the
industrialization of cocaine. Kitz’s cocaine extraction method involved
processing the dried leaf on location in Peru into a crude form that could
withstand global shipping.
Peruvian initiative and crude cocaine became the
economic lifelines that would spur the licit cocaine boom at the end of the
nineteenth century and on into the twentieth. By 1900 Peru had a world monopoly
on the product. Crude cocaine created a global connectedness in Andean networks
of coca and cocaine. There were two major commercial chains: a
German-European-Andean circuit and a United States-Andean circuit. Minor French
and British nodes of cocaine science and culture also existed, but all combined
to institutionalize and embed channels for the flow of research, medicine, political
ideals, and influences in an attempt to monopolize and control the cocaine
marketplace.
Declining medical demand and the United States’
anticocaine policies helped lead to an end of the licit cocaine era. By 1950
the illicit cocaine commodity chain was on the verge of erupting into one of
the most prolific underground economies in the world. Contrary to popular
belief, Colombians came to cocaine, not the other way around. Andean peasants
continued to cultivate the coca bush, but by the 1970s Colombians would be
responsible for the refinement and marketing of cocaine. Sociopolitical
conditions in Colombia enabled narcos, like Pablo Escobar and Blanca Ibáñez, to
aggressively manage the sale of cocaine in places such as Miami and Hollywood.
Nineteen Fifties-America witnessed cocaine consumption
turn from an already declining licit trade to strictly illicit. Changing
cultural tastes turned American drug users from harmless marijuana to the rush
of cocaine. With Cuba as the pioneer test market for cocaine, the drug made an
easy jump into Miami where there existed a large Cuban diaspora community
already familiar with the drug. Increasing drug surveillance and international
police cooperation between the United States and several Latin American
countries resulted in futile attempts to end the illicit cocaine trade.
Ironically, the United States policing of cocaine worked within its borders,
but failed when imposed on other countries.
During the latter half of the twentieth century,
several global changes occurred that unleashed the illicit cocaine boom. The
first occurred in Peru. The Huallaga Valley, the central location of coca and
cocaine activity in Peru, experienced a collapse of postwar development
schemes. This paved the way for coca-growing peasants to actively intensify
their cocaine activities. Second, the cocaine capitalism in the Andes created a
rising class of Colombian narcos who crafted new heights and new markets for
cocaine. Finally, Nixon-era politics and policies led to a vast new demand for
cocaine. As recreational cocaine usage skyrocketed, Nixon’s politically
constructed war on cocaine could not put a dent in the growing American cocaine
trade or consumption. The main objective of the newly established Drug
Enforcement Agency was to raise the price of cocaine to deter consumer use.
Instead, the opposite happened.
Given its Andean genealogy, coca and cocaine held
important cultural meanings in Peru. The scientific interest in cocaine was
part of an awakening of Peruvian scientific nationalism. Lima’s medical elites
and modern chemistry transformed the coca plant into medicinal cocaine in the
nineteenth century. Peruvians took an herb steeped in Incan history and changed
it into an exclusive and modern good. This early study of coca combined science
and patriotism. Peruvian scientist’s proximity and experiences lent a
privileged place as compared to scientists in Europe. With help from Peruvians like
Moreno y Maíz and J. C. Ulloa, elite scientific nationalism made local and
traditional coca and universal and scientifically modern cocaine into national
subjects, or what Gootenberg calls “highland Andeanness.”
Peruvian scientist Alfredo Bignon’s place in the
genealogy of cocaine as a world commodity cannot be underscored. His cocaine
papers, published between 1884 and 1887, were investigations into coca and
cocaine, but also laced with Peruvian nationalist and commercial overtones.
Bignon’s prolific contributions to cocaine science rival that of Sigmund Freud.
His cocaine papers were translated and published in major American, French, and
German journals. Scientists like Bignon, combined with coca and cocaine, created
an innate Peruvian nationalist culture and global commodity.
Despite the
turn towards Colombian narcos for its sale and marketing, the cultivation
remained in the hands of coca-growing peasant population of Peru and Bolivia.
Peasant cultivation knowledge did not easily progress, and as such the
cultivation technology remained largely unchanged. Significant changes in the
history of cocaine technology occurred when Kitz began his crude cocaine
refining technique. Without question German scientists deserve a nod for their
contributions in the science of coca and cocaine. The late nineteenth-century
principal center of cocaine research, production, and distribution was Germany.
Emmanuel Merck and others came from a well-financed and influential
pharmaceutical and scientific European bloc. With modern research models,
Germany was able to dominate the early coca and cocaine commodity trade.
After the epic invention by Bignon, the Peruvian
migrant Kitz was able to install coca profitably into the Amazon. With
nationalist undertones cocaine was promoted as a commodity by native Peruvian
Augusto Durand. Even during the decline phase of cocaine during the first part
of the twentieth century, Peruvian merchant Andrés A. Soberón continued the
exploitation of the Andean plant and cocaine. Coinciding with the rise of
anticocainism in the twentieth century, cocaine passed underground to nameless
and faceless chemists and narcos who continued to develop cocaine into one of
the world’s most lucrative commodities.
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