On Coca As Food – From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

In the final Desk Dispatch of the year, we have Carmen Posada Monroy writing about the different complications of coca in Colombia for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Between drug use and corporatization, much knowledge has been ignored. Posada asks, “Can the industrialization of coca as a foodstuff be achieved without falling into extractive, corporate patterns?”

Carmen is a Colombian food systems consultant, communicator, and journalist. She has worked with various Indigenous and campesino communities in projects focused on showcasing Colombia’s edible biodiversity and telling the stories of the people and the territories that safeguard it. Through her work, she learned about the culinary uses of the coca leaf. The powerful plant captivated her, which led her to create the first festival celebrating and reclaiming the value of the coca leaf in Colombia: Futuro Coca.

By Carmen Posada Monroy, photos by Alejandro Osses

In 2008, the Colombian government aired a campaign on national television and radio called “No cultives la mata que mata” (“Don’t grow the plant that kills”). The ad featured a voiceover of a little kid with a disturbingly cute tone claiming that the coca plant was to blame for the “rivers of blood” and “hail of bullets” flooding the country, and that coca growers should eradicate their crops to end the cycle of violence and death. “Coca, marihuana and poppy kill. Don’t grow the plant that kills.” The message played over a pixelated, low-quality animation of a fake rural landscape, where a peasant scraped the “bad” plants depicted with carnivorous mouths and evil eyes.

This campaign flashes me back to my childhood in the 1990s, when Colombia was plagued by weekly bombs in planes, theaters, and city streets; mass killings; and assassinations of state ministers and presidential candidates. In reality, I was 21 when the campaign aired—a trick played by the memory of many in my generation. The ad marked nearly two decades of military persecution of peasants and Indigenous coca growers who voluntarily or forcibly grew coca for drug cartels—the ones in charge of consolidating Colombia’s reputation as the world’s largest cocaine producer.

While the ad flooded Colombian media, Indigenous Nasa leader Fabiola Piñacué was leading the battle to defend the Indigenous peoples’ ancestral right to use coca, suing and pressuring the government to stop airing the campaign for being offensive, demeaning, and stigmatizing to Indigenous peoples. Her next legal fight defending coca would be against Coca-Cola, when the food giant would sue her for using the word coca in her Coca Nasa company and products (the Indigenous enterprise she founded, the first to industrialize coca in Colombia).

Indeed, coca is a millenary sacred transversal element of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous cosmogony—a theory around the origin of the universe. In the Caribbean north, the Arhuaco and Kogui people of the Sierra Nevada assure there won’t be peace on Earth until we make peace with coca—Ayu, as they call it. The Amazonian Muinane Huitoto people use it to connect with the spirits of the jungle and in political decision-making gatherings. Under the stars, sitting around the fire beside the Maloka (an Indigenous communal house), members of the tribe pass around the powdered coca leaf (mambe) after placing a heaping teaspoon inside their inner cheeks. Coca “sweetens the word,” which is why, after managing the initial discomfort of the powder inside the mouth, it’s great for listening and dialoguing intently. They listen to their elders’ legends and wisdom; they decide whether they will collaborate with other communities or with non-Indigenous folk on various endeavors. They receive messages from the rainforest about the world’s end.

The ongoing tension between these two opposing forces—state efforts to reduce and equate coca to cocaine, and Indigenous ancestrality and resistance—depicts how the perception of coca has historically swung in the minds of Colombians. Nothing in between. No relatability to the majoritarian non-Indigenous population who generally don’t consume cocaine. Could there be an in-between?

Around 15 years ago, the idea of considering coca as food started to take shape. Coca Nasa began by developing coca cookies and coca tea. More recently, they expanded to drinks like coca energy drinks and coca-infused liquors and beers. Other Indigenous enterprises followed and developed coca caramels, sweets, and cakes.

In 2019, coca sparked the interest of the gastronomic community in Colombia, giving birth to the first Reto Coca, or Coca Challenge. A gathering of professional chefs, cooks, restaurateurs, and journalists learned about the culinary uses of coca from campesino communities in Cauca and experimented with its use in their own dishes and recipes. This resulted in surprising textures and flavors: coca noodles, coca arepas, coca-infused cocktails, coca butter, coca chocolates, and coca bread. The trend expanded and, currently, coca is present in various restaurants serving contemporary Colombian cuisine.

As a result of this, the perception of coca has begun to slowly shift in our Colombian collective imaginary. In his book Mama Coca (1978), anthropologist Anthony Henman, who lived among the Nasa people for two years, wrote: “I fear that very few Colombians would share the opinion that the plant is a vital and crucial element of their national heritage, one which deserves to be studied, defended, and even diffused among the population as a whole.”

Overcoming the mental barriers that equate coca with cocaine, or solely Indigenous cultures, could transform Henman’s fear into a powerful symbol of resistance against colonial exploitation and cultural erasure. Nothing is as omnipresent and uniting as food. If, through culinary innovation and Indigenous entrepreneurship, coca becomes part of the Colombian pantry, it could unite diverse communities, bridging gaps and creating a shared identity rooted in respect for cultural traditions and progressive development. Coca as food could be a symbol of Colombianness—just like coffee—but more valuable, because it’s the other side of the same coin: cocaine as a source of shame and coca as a source of pride.

For this to happen, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Colombians would have to agree on the terms and consequences of considering coca food. This has its own challenges. How exclusive should the right to grow coca be? Should all glyphosate-sprayed coca currently used for cocaine be now used for foodstuff? It is inherently an Indigenous plant, and it has been Indigenous people who have carried the weight and suffered the consequences of claiming its proper recognition as sacred. Beyond its alternative uses (food included), can and should it be separated from its ancestral relationship with Indigenous peoples? Would doing so be equivalent to taking away something that rightfully belongs to them, which they’ve historically struggled to protect? Can the industrialization of coca as a foodstuff be achieved without falling into extractive, corporate patterns?

For the Nasa people from the Cauca region—one of the regions of Colombia most ravaged by the violence of guerrillas, paramilitaries, the army, and drug traffic actors—viewing coca as food is not new, nor is it a “discovery” made by Colombian fine dining circles, as Piñacué argues. The first time I met her, she didn’t look me in the eye for at least an hour. The second time we spoke, her look was cautious and cold, albeit direct. The third time, she smiled at me with her piercing black eyes.

Her perspective is critical and necessary. Using coca—Esh, in Nasa Yuwe tongue—in haute cuisine to “exalt” its value perpetuates a colonialist narrative, as it implies that the plant had to be beautified to be recognized as food. “Many of our ancestral wisdoms are intangible and have not been documented, and the West exploits this to claim they ‘discovered’ that coca can be used as gourmet food,” Piñacué says. For her, creating Coca Nasa was about pedagogy, awareness, and new sources of income for Indigenous people. Non-Indigenous folk understand practicality, “and what is more practical than eating?” she asks.

The Nasa people regard coca as food depending on the occasion of consumption. When coca is consumed before a long day of working the land or walking through the mountains, it’s considered food because it suppresses hunger and provides energy. In this context, coca is akin to coffee, which, although a stimulant, is anthropologically and commercially conceived as food. When coca is used to cure ailments or in ceremonial gatherings, it’s regarded as medicine. (The plant’s medicinal properties are wide-ranging, from stomach and toothaches to high altitude sickness and birth pains.)

However, even this distinction between food and medicine is quite Western, as I realized while speaking to Piñacué. She explained this categorization but concluded by clarifying that, for her people, food is medicine. The way you cultivate your food and the connection you have with the land that provides it are combined into a unified concept of food: food for the land, the soul, and the body. This connection of coca to territory has been guarded by the Nasa people for centuries, which is why she considers coca as collective property of the Indigenous peoples and believes it should be recognized as such, even in monetary transactions. That is, non-Indigenous folk should pay a fee to Indigenous people if, when alternative uses of coca are properly regulated and allowed, they want to exploit it.

Gory Neyedeka is part of the Muinane Indigenous people of the Amazon. The lines on his face and the thickness of his skin reveal the decades he has lived deep inside the sweltering jungle. For him, all the functional properties of the plant are superficial. Yes, it gives energy; yes, it’s nutritious (high in protein, calcium, and iron). But for his people, coca is mainly a food for the spirit, because it connects you with the living world. “Jiibio (coca in Muinane tongue) gives life to humanity,” says Neyedeka. “It’s guarded by us (Indigenous communities), hence it cannot be patented or exploited unilaterally by anyone.” If a food giant developed a coca-based drink and wanted to patent its creation, this would be inadmissible to Neyedeka. Wait: Hasn’t Coca-Cola already succeeded in this endeavor?

Neyedeka and his people use coca as mambe, a mixture of roasted coca leaf and yarumo tree leaf ash. The fresh coca leaves are carefully selected and harvested, then put in a clay vessel that goes over the fire to be roasted. The mambe master skillfully tosses and moves the leaves with a small broom made of straws to avoid burning them. During this process, Indigenous chants accompany and nourish the preparation. Once roasted, the leaves are first crushed with the hands and then transferred to a wooden cylindrical structure called a “pilón,” where they are pounded into a fine powder with a wooden mallet. Finally, a large branch with many leaves of a Yarumo tree that naturally fell off is placed directly into the fire to be consumed and transformed into ash. These ashes are mixed with the powdered coca leaves to form mambe, a sacred green substance that is consumed by putting a spoonful in your inner cheek and letting it dissolve slowly in your mouth. The taste is slightly sweet, earthy, creamy, and matcha latte-like. One could argue that the process of preparing mambe is itself an act of cooking: technique, fire, and rituality.