The coqueo
The old habit of chewing leaves of coca in the Argentinean northwest
The coca, scientifically erythroxylumcoca according to archaeological studies, it was well-known and used in the "preincaicas"cultures , with healing and nutritious ends. Later on the Incan Empire diffused everything for its vast territory its medicinal use and the " chaccar " habit the leaves of coca to combat the cold, the hunger and the fatigue.
Suckled by Ocllo and Handless Capac - children of the sun - they are who brought the plants of the plants", and it is certain that from those remote times we inherit the mythical even effective "coqueo".
It was as the coming of the Spanish Conquest that you began to transform the sacred thing in merchandise, like a strategy more than social control for the primitive accumulation of the nascent capitalism.
The Inca Garcilaso of the Vega described in his Real Comments the following thing: ... " most of the bishop's rents, of the canons and of the other ministers of the Church of the Cuzco, they came from the tithes of the coca, and the transport and the sale of this product enriched many Spaniards... "
Investigations carried out in the University of Hardvard, The Service of Agriculture and the Museum of Botany of U.S; and also in the institute of Regional Pathology of "Salta", they checked that the coca has a high content of proteins, hydrates of carbon, in some superior cases to those of several vegetables. Also, all coincide in pointing out that, the alkaloids that contain the leaf of coca don't produce the effect of the cocaine in the action of the coqueo
Clinical studies and of laboratories carried out to chronic "coqueros" they throw normal results, observing you as advantage, the longevity reached by people that chew it from the adolescence; in definitive, they are not observed physical, neither psychic modifications, neither the smallest dependence indication, neither of abstinence for their interruption, essential parameters to define that kind of illness.
It is opportune to transcribe a paragraph of the Newspaper of sessions of the Camera of Deputies of the Nation of September of 1989, when the holding and the consumption of leaves of coca dedicated to the "coqueo" was liberated, forbidden during the military dictatorship. There the deputy Dr. Juan C. Castiella interpreted the customs and necessities of the town, and it exposed this way: ... " I do it from the 20 years graduated of lawyer, I was Deputed twice Provincial, Conventional constituent and National, married Deputy, three children, and if some degree of idiocy can be some scientist, from I will already be grateful to who can point out it."
But the continuous normative incoherence; on one hand you despenaliza the entrance of the leaves of coca It is necessary to wonder if it is correct and convenient to destroy a healthy autochthonous habit, nothing else because in other cultures their chemical transformation is used as great business.
The cocaism of the developed countries should not be confused, with the practice of the coqueo in the Andean Cultures
Dr. PEDRO ANTONIO ALVAREZ, Salta
" THE COCA IS GOOD FOR THE HUNGER,
FOR THE THIRST FOR THE FATIGUE, FOR THE HEAT, FOR EVERYTHING IT IS GOOD.
IT IS GOOD FOR THE LIFE
WITH THE COCA THE ALIVE ONES LIVE.
TAKING COCA AMONG THE HANDS THE DEADS LEAVES.
TO THE COCA THE SORCERERS ASK. WITH THE COCA it is GIVEN TO THE HILLS
LAGOONS AND CHARMED RIVERS
THE COCA is WISE AND BENEFICENT.
Of the book THE WORLD is WIDE AND OTHER PEOPLE'S of Ciro Alegrķa.