National symbols
Taki
Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Bolivia’s ruling party is demanding that Coca-Cola drops the ‘coca’ from its name to ‘dignify’ the ‘bioenergetic’ leaf that provides the main ingredient in cocaine. Before any cokeheads get the wrong idea, this is no laughing matter. ‘If we are not permitted to commercialise coca, then why should Coca-Cola be allowed to do it?’ said the Bolivian president of the Coca Committee, a party which is part of a nationwide Bolivian group which demands a new constitution based on coca. In other words, let’s stop hiding behind our finger and tell it like it is.
For reasons I do not care to go into at this particular moment, I cannot disagree with the Bolivians. In fact, I agree with the Coca party. The Saudis don’t knock oil, nor do the Greeks put down olives. The Swiss, needless to say, are never beastly about banks. The Bolivians are good people. They all look the same, are all short, have straight hair, Roman noses, and can work for days without food thanks to the coca leaf. Now they want to put the leaf on their flag. Who are we to say no? And who is Coca-Cola to say that its product is the real thing? (It used to be until 1916.) As everyone knows, big Yankee companies are terrific bullies. Coca-Cola is a company worth dozens of times more than all of Bolivia, and its product contains a flavoured essence of the coca leaf, but not cocaine. The company insists on keeping the name Coca. I say boo to the bully company. It should be sued for false advertising. Coca means coca leaf, which means cocaine. This is where the Bolivians come in. ‘The state recognises that the coca plant in all its varieties as a natural, economic, renewable strategic and bioenergetic resource is a sacred symbol of Andean Amazonic cultures,’ says a government proclamation. (Mind you, the government spokesman who wrote this was obviously a patriot and under the influence of the natural bioenergetic sacred symbol.) And it gets better. A government commission has proposed that the laurel and olive branches which currently adorn the national seal should be changed for branches of the sacred and ancestral coca-leaf plant to symbolise popular culture and social cohesion.
I am quite ignorant about national symbols except for the obvious ones: cheese for France, a stiletto for Italy, a Panzer tank for Germany, electrolysis for Greece, and so on. But if any country deserves the coca leaf as a national symbol, it’s Bolivia. Washington, of course, is not best pleased. Since Evo Morales, a leftist but a nice guy who likes to get high, became president, the Bushies are really pissed off. They’ve already cut off millions of dollars in counternarcotics aid, which means that the Bolivians will grow more and more coca in order to make ends meet. When Condi Rice visited Bolivia quite recently, the hospitable natives gave her a miniature guitar to take back to Gringo land. She refused it rather insultingly when it was pointed out to her by Morales himself that the guitar was lacquered with coca leaves. (Guitarists the world over shed a bitter tear over that one.) A Bolivian senator, Antonio Peredo, took me aside and told me that the current symbols contained in the seal — olive and laurel in the talons of a condor — are a legacy of Bolivia’s colonial past, while the coca leaf corresponds to ‘Tahuantinsuyo’, referring to the ancient Inca empire. Which means that the Coca-Cola company is using Bolivia’s sacred patrimony as a commercial label to induce millions of slobs the world over to drink its product. As a Greek, I fully sympathise with my Inca brethren. Imagine if Donald Trump took the Parthenon as his company’s logo? Or Madonna used the Crucifixion to sell her videos? (She has.) Institutionalising the coca leaf will put a stop to its exploitation by the big bad Yankees.
Since he took office last January, Evo Morales has legalised coca plantations and is pushing coca to be declared a medicinal substance. It’s medicinal, all right, but it also has terrible side effects. Logorrhoea, for example, i.e., diarrhoea of the vocal chords. If one is unfortunate enough to be cornered by a bore on coke, it can be awfully tiresome. Ironically, the more coca leaves Bolivian peasants chew, the less they talk. This is because of the peasants’ inherent dignity. No Hollywood types they. Talk to them is cheap. Unlike them, under the influence we northern types chatter away like canaries. Just imagine Tony Blair on coke and head for the hills.
Bores and side effects aside, fairness demands that Coca-Cola acknowledge its debt to the coca leaf and pay Bolivia reparations for having exploited its patrimony. Twenty thousand million greenbacks would be just about right. And here I must declare an interest. A Bolivian politician promised me the nation’s highest award if I campaigned for reparations from the Coca-Cola company. I am told the award will get you 10 to 20 in any Western country except for Hollywood. So I politely declined, asked to be shown just a tiny sample, and wrote this column.
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