'Mother Coca' Wins in Bolivia -- Can Evo Morales Foster World Coca Market?

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina-- The resounding election victory in Bolivia of coca grower and indigenous leader Evo Morales clearly troubles U.S. drug warriors. But coca advocates and some Latin American media see an opportunity for "Mama Coca" to emerge as a legitimate economic resource for South America's poorest nation.

The U.S. style of fighting the drug war stresses plant eradication. As part of his left-leaning platform, Morales has vowed to decriminalize the harvest of the coca plant, which can be used to manufacture cocaine but has been grown and chewed traditionally in the Andean corridor for millennia.

"It's not at all far-fetched to imagine that China and Europe could be great markets for coca tea," writes José Mirtenbaum, a sociologist and coca expert, in Bolivian alternative bimonthly El Juguete Rabioso.

Mirtenbaum writes that even U.S. space agency NASA has experimented with coca gum to prevent dizziness in astronauts, and that coca has hundreds of possible applications -- he cites high-chlorophyll toothpaste, pharmaceuticals, an alternative to chew tobacco, anti-diabetics and nutritional supplements. But stigmatization and prohibition have prevented Bolivian science from researching coca's potential, Mirtenbaum says.

For advocates, coca is the ginseng of the future. Their hope, and that of the highly organized cocaleros, as Bolivia's coca growers are known, is that with their man Morales as its spokesman the leaf might finally clear the legal and political hurdles (and prejudices) that block the creation of a legitimate world coca market.

Some call for an amendment to enshrine coca's sacred status in Bolivia's constitution, which will undergo revision.

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