Cocaine Agency

The evolution and metamorphosis of production and use coca and cocaine is analyzed and presented by Paul Gootenberg as a “new drug history” (3) in his book “Andean Cocaine: the Making of a Global Drug.” (2008). He structured the book to help the reader better understand the supply, demand and political chaos that surrounds the initially local coca in the culture of the Andean peoples to the global explosion of the manufactured phenomena of cocaine.  He refers to this structure as a fourfold arc to tell story of cocaine in particular with a better understanding of the coca leaf culture/market as a far secondary focus.

 

First, unlike tea, coffee and bananas, cocaine is not a natural substance, but a product of a laboratory.  In 1860, Albert Neimann, a German scientist, isolated the “active principle” (22) or alkaloid creating cocaine, he opened an unexpected connection between Latin America and Europe (an eventually the world).   Gootenberg uses the Latin American, specially the Peruvian influence, to set up a new dynamic in the standard commodity chain story; here he alludes to more of a “dual pole” relationship.  The best example of this is his many comparisons between the works of transplant Peruvian Alfredo Bignon and Sigmund Feud.  In doing so he is saying Latin scholarship is at the same par with vaulted European thought, a premise that not only bring agency to Peruvian knowledge, but established equality with the European elites.

Changing gears a little, James’s blog brings up the concept that it was the progressive movement that actually used government regulation to quash cocaine use in the 1920’s – I also agree the social aspect of the progressives was the “evangelical pietism” which helped bring prohibition to the drug.  One might even go further to say the “artificial and regulated” market of cocaine of the teens to the 50s created a latent demand for the drug and in essence create cocaine recent illicit chapter.

This book was built of what Gootenberg calls “newly found archival documentation”. (6)  His research turned up hundreds of sources in North America, South America, Europe and Asia and due to the recent illicit phase of cocaine, very challenging.  The book is well reviewed by his colleagues, suggesting he joins the pantheon of commodity scholars such as Ortiz, Mintz, Topik and Goodman (Victor M. Uribe-Uran, “The Americas”).  With his concise and clear writing style supported by charts and maps and his “new” way of telling the whole story of cocaine, I believe Gootenberg has convinced me he deserves a place in that pantheon and in my list of books to keep.