THE COCA

5000 years using the coca tradicionally without hearting the human organism show that the problem came when the western man (the white conquerors) touched the coca's leaf...and turned it into cocaine.

We have recently visited Perú and we are now in Bolivia; two of the biggest producers of coca in the world.
We haven't spent so much time in here, but we have already realized that the contumption of coca in that countries has been and still is something cultural and traditional.
The cultures from the Andean Mountains have been living in symbiosis with this plant since more than 5000 years using it as a medicine (anaesthetic), as a religious reason, to make their works easier and they even believed that the coca was healthfull for their body and mind.
But everything changed when the "white man" arrived. First of all, "los conquistadores" thought that the coca was the "plant of the devil" and it was forbidden, but later on, when they realized of its efects it was used to make the natives word harder and longer; in the 19th century the Coca-cola was invented (this product had some coca's sustances and has been the best seller we all know) and now, finally, tha plant has been manipulated to obtain and sell illegally one of the most used drugs in the world, the cocaine.
Nowadays, in some south american countries there is an argument about the right of "the campesinos" (country side workers) of using and cultivating coca in a traditional way, because since the cocaine exists there are lots of ilegal cultivations of coca and their respective mafias...
...and we are wondering: Isn't it unfair what's happening to this people that has nothing to do with the drugs dealing?

S. S. H., La Paz