Policing Development

The US Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the United Nations, political elites in Peru and Bolivia, policing and public health officials and an array of scientific experts joined together in an effort to implement international drug control in the Andes in the aftermath of World War II. Focusing on the effort to regulate coca commodities (including coca leaves, pharmaceutical cocaine, and Coca-Cola flavoring extracts), this paper examines the intersection of US-directed development policies, policing, and the expanding influence of US capitalism. A seemingly neutral language of science and public health was deployed to rationalize the implementation of a regulatory framework which selectively criminalized sites of coca cultivation, production and consumption. Drug control became a tool for silencing political dissent while “modernizing” the economy. Indigenous Aymara and Quechua peoples’ customary uses of the coca leaf were attacked in conjunction with efforts to limit the “legitimate” market to raw material exports destined for North American manufacturers. Influenced by longstanding colonial beliefs in Indian cultural and racial inferiority, officials labeled traditional consumption “addiction,” and advocated radically transforming the living and laboring habits of Indian peoples as part of a broader effort to create a productive wage-labor force

Black market · Capitalism · Coca · Colonialism · Consumption (sociology · Development economics · Drug control · Economic growth · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public health · Social science · Sociology · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law · Medicine · Psychedelics and Drug Studies

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