Coca Yes, Cocaine No: How Bolivia's Coca Growers Reshaped Democracy

by Thomas Grisaffi

In Coca Yes, Cocaine No Thomas Grisaffi traces the political ascent and transformation of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS) from an agricultural union of coca growers into Bolivia's ruling party. When Evo Morales—leader of the MAS—became Bolivia's president in 2006, coca growers celebrated his election and the possibility of scaling up their form of grassroots democracy to the national level. Drawing on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with coca union leaders, peasant farmers, drug traffickers, and politicians, Grisaffi outlines the tension that Morales faced between the realities of international politics and his constituents, who, even if their coca is grown for ritual or medicinal purposes, are implicated in the cocaine trade and criminalized under the U.S.-led drug war. Grisaffi shows how Morales's failure to meet his constituents' demands demonstrates that the full realization of alternative democratic models at the local or national level is constrained or enabled by global political and economic circumstances.

272 pages, Hardcover

Published February 15, 2019

Reviews

[Rohit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great on-the-ground look at the politics, culture, and organizing of the coca growers' unions in Bolivia. Good insights into how these unions developed such a strong, cohesive, and militant organization, their contributions to putting an indigenous socialist party into power, and the subsequent contradictions between the party and the unions. Since this is an ethnography based on interviews in a particular locality, the book will be inherently "skewed" in a sense, and a general theme is the disenchantment of coca farmers with the MAS government, but the reasons why are clearly articulated and theorized.

Highly recommended for those interested in the details of Bolivian politics and socialist strategy, although this is best read if you already have a good grasp of Bolivia and MAS.