Green Gold, Green Hell
Coca, Caste, and Class in the Chaco War, 1932–1935
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7098436 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrew Ehrinpreis (Queens College, CUNY, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 217-245 |
| Publication date | 2020-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Americas A Quarterly Review of Latin American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1615 • E-ISSN: 1533-6247 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/tam.2019.110 |
| OpenAlex | W3023528928 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
This article investigates the use of coca by the Bolivian Army during the Chaco War of 1932–35. I present research that reveals the surprising extent to which the Bolivian Army provisioned coca to its soldiers as a substitute for adequate nutrition; as a morale booster; as a stimulant; and as a medicine. The article explores the social and cultural implications of mass coca consumption by Bolivian soldiers, many of whom were mestizos who had never before chewed the leaf. Ultimately, I argue that the pervasiveness of coca within the traumatic popular experience of the Chaco War sowed the seeds of a historic transformation of the politics of coca in Bolivia. The Chaco War initiated a process by which coca in Bolivia was transformed from a neo-colonial marker of the Indian caste to a material and symbolic element of an emergent interethnic working class . Through a comparative analysis of the Bolivian army's use of coca in the Chaco War with the German army's use of methamphetamine during World War II, this article concludes with a consideration of the ways in which the present case study expands our understanding of the crucial but under-studied historical relationship between drugs and warfare
Archaeology · Caste · Coca · Colonialism · Ethnology · Geography · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Psychedelics and Drug Studies
| Highly cited | No |
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