Gootenberg and Cocaine

            Paul Gootenberg covers a lot of information in Andean Cocaine.  He seems particularly concerned to demonstrate the initiative, scientific achievement, and economic skills of the Peruvians who cultivate coca and turn it into coca paste following a chemical process that was developed in Peru.  The distribution of cocaine once it had become an illegal commodity was a Latin American activity involving a network with multiple actors starting in Peru, winding through Bolivia, on into Chile, and ultimately utilizing Cuban distributors in U.S. cities.  Gootenberg points out that this commodity chain was created and existed long before the skillful Colombian entrepreneurs of Medellín dominated the cocaine distribution network after 1975.  In fact U.S. pressure on Chile in the early 1970s, resulting in the overthrow of Allende, caused the Chilean outlet for cocaine to close, and this provided Medellín with an opportunity to access to the commodity chain.

            In the early twentieth century after cocaine’s value as an anesthetic had been superseded by other drugs and the United States had become disenchanted with the use of cocaine in tonics and elixirs, the United States attempted to convince the world that cocaine was a substance that should be outlawed.  Cocaine did not become an outlawed drug until after the Second World War.  But it was the massive consumer demand for cocaine and its variant, crack cocaine, in the 1970s and 1980s that launched the U.S. war on drugs including eradication programs in Peru that had a dire impact on Peruvian coca cultivators.  Gootenberg’s criticism of the U.S. war on drugs is a major theme of this history. (9)  He implies that official U.S. attitudes about cocaine are misguided, and he suggests that fear of urban African-American usage of crack and the anti-establishment use of recreational drugs during and after the Vietnam War were key to the intensity of the U.S. war on drugs.

            Another point Gootenberg makes is that cocaine as a global commodity can best be understood when it is grounded in a local setting, in this case its Andean setting. (5)  This raises the question of what the point of studying commodities is all about.  Commodities do highlight aspects of the global economy.  They demonstrate that increasingly trade is international, and we see that commodities can be and are produced successfully in countries far from the original source of the commodity.  Demand too can spread internationally.  From an economic point of view a study of commodities definitely reveals basic economic processes that are independent of location.  But when we study a book centered in the Andes aren’t we really trying to see what a commodity, whatever it may be, can tell us about the history and the lives of the people who live in the Andes?  We can’t delve deeply into the history of every country a particular commodity touches.  There are significant relationships between the country of the consumer and the country of the producer, and it is important to explore these connections.  Nevertheless, when we pick up Andean Cocaine I think we should learn primarily about Andean history.  I argue we cannot do that without more information about Andean politics and Andean economics.  Why are coca farmers growing coca?  What other options do they have?  What is their government doing to raise their standard of living and improve the Peruvian economy?  What is the relationship between the government and the majority of the people?  The questions I have are not completely answered by Gootenberg’s book, or possibly I got lost in the detail and repetition.

            Here is a link to a short article called The Lure of a Cash Crop that I found on the internet.  It provides some useful information in a direct fashion without the hyperbole and outrage that permeates Gootenberg’s book.

http://aliciapatterson.org/stories/lure-criminal-cash-crop

This article describes the incentives motivating coca farmers, the causes of the significant population increase of the Huallaga Valley, U.S. and U.N. efforts at coca eradication, and the unfortunate ecological consequences of coca cultivation.