Tairona Heritage Trust
Some Notes on the Use of 'coca' in South America
The word
'coca' derives from an Aymara word that means simply 'tree'. Prior to the
Conquest, Indians used various names for the several varieties of cultivated
Erythroxylum. The Spanish took the name 'coca' from the southern reaches of the
Incan empire and bought it into use throughout their domain. The Incas regarded
it as a gift from the gods intended to improve human life; its leaves are
sacred and the spirit of the plant is personified as Mama Coca, a divine and
beneficial aspect of Nature. By the tenth century, when Inca civilization was
at its height, coca was well established in the Andes. The Incas believed that the Gods
presented coca to the people to satisfy their hunger, to provide them with new
vigour, and to help them forget their miseries. They venerated coca and it was
intimately involved in their religious ceremonies and in the various initiation
rites - shamans used it to induce a trance-like state in order to commune with
the spirits. It was a far too important commodity to be used by the common
Indians, and their exposure to coca was very limited before the invasion by
Pizarro and his 'conquistadores'.
Coca chewing suffused
South American life and the stimulant properties of its leaves have been known
from at least the Nazca period (around AD 500). 'We know this because of the
discovery of the mummified remains of a Peruvian potentate of this era
accompanied by several bags of coca leaves. In addition, pottery of this period
frequently depicts coca chewers with their characteristic distended cheeks.'
(Mann J.) 'In the Pre-Columbian Quimbaya culture of Colombia some of the finest
gold objects were containers for the lime that was chewed with the leaf
(whilst) it is obvious from hundreds of Mochica (Peru) ceramics that the
coca-chewing ritual was not only an important and complex one with many stages
but one that was associated with war and sacrifice.' (Coe, Snow & Benson
1986: 158).
In much the same way that
coca is used in South America, betel is used in Asia, and pituri in Australia. 'Betel is a concoction made from
leaves of the vine Piper betel and slices of the seed of the palm Areca
catechu in admixture with lime, which helps to free the alkaloid
constituents from the vegetable matrix. In Asia various spices like cloves,
tamarinds, turmeric, and cardamom, are also added to the mix, and the resultant
quid is chewed, producing copious amounts of red saliva. An estimated 200
million people in southern Asia and the islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans use betel at the present time,
and although its origins are unknown it has been used for many centuries. It
has mild stimulant properties, although some say it produces a feeling of
euphoria akin to that produced by alcohol; and, although the constituent
alkaloids have been identified, it is not clear how betel exerts its
psychoactive effects. Such uncertainty does not attend the ethnopharmacology of
pituri. The Aborigines of Australia have for centuries used the leaves of
certain varieties of the desert shrub Duboisia hopwoodii as a
stimulant. The leaves are roasted, moistened, formed into a quid, then chewed.
During social rites known as 'Big Talks', a communal quid was passed around
from mouth to mouth. The main constituent, nicotine, increases the production
of adrenalin and alleviates feelings of hunger and fatigue.' (Mann J.)
The Plant
'Coca leaves are derived
from shrubs of the family Erythroxylaceae - namely Erythroxylum coca
(Bolivian or Huanuco) and E. truxillense (Peruvian or Truxillo),
cultivated in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Indonesia. In Bolivia and Peru coca is cultivated at an altitude
of 500-2000m. The cultivated plants are usually pruned so as not to exceed 2m
in height. Three harvests are collected annually, the first from the pruned
twigs, the second in June and the third in November. The leaves are
artificially- or sun-dried and packed in bags. Coca leaves contain about
0.7-1.5% of total alkaloids, of which cocaine, cinnamyl-cocaine and
a-truxilline are the most important. They occur in different proportions in
different commercial varieties. Other substances isolated from various
varieties of the leaves are hygrine, hygroline, cuscohygrine,
dihydrocuscohygrine, tropacocaine (3b-benzoyloxytropane), crystalline
glycosides and cocatannic acid. There are over 200 species of Erythroxylum
found throughout the tropical and pantropical regions of the world.' (Trease
& Evans.)
Coca and the West. (Much material for this section
is taken from John Mann.)
Coca was first introduced
into Europe by the returning conquistadores,
and wildly exaggerated claims about its properties began to circulate. It was
said to be an 'elixir of life', and the Gentleman's Magazine in 1814 contained
an editorial that exhorted Sir Humphrey Davy (as a leading scientist of the
day) to begin experimentation, in the hope that coca could be used as a
'substitute for food, so that people could live a month, now and then, without
eating...'. It first found commercial success in the wine, lozenges and other
preparations of Angelo Mariani in the 1860's. 'Vin Mariani' was a great
success, for which were claimed analgesic , anaesthetic, and carminative
properties and Pope Leo XIII gave the wine an official seal of approval. In
America, pharmacist John S. Pemberton of Atlanta, Georgia formulated a drink
which contained extracts of Erythroxylon coca, together with extracts of Cola
nitida (i.e. caffeine) and wine, claiming it to be an excellent tonic, aid
to the digestion, and stimulant of the nervous system - an 'intellectual
beverage'. When prohibition began in Atlanta in 1886, Pemberton removed the
wine from his recipe and replaced it with sugar syrup, calling the new drink
'Coca-Cola: the temperance drink'. The name had become so famous that when, in
1904, fears about the narcotic properties of cocaine led to the deletion of the
coca extracts also, the name was allowed to remain as it had become part of the
language.
The active constituent,
cocaine, had been isolated in 1860. Sigmund Freud experimented with the drug
and his assistant, Carl Köller, demonstrated its efficacy as a local
anaesthetic by applying a solution to his eye and touching the cornea with a
pinhead. Cocaine, and its salts, became the local anaesthetics of choice in Europe and New York for the removal of cataracts and
other eye surgery. Because of their toxic and addictive qualities, their use is
now almost entirely confined to ear, nose and throat surgery - elsewhere they
have been superseded by wholly synthetic drugs such as procaine. But it is the
use of cocaine as a recreational drug that has brought infamy both to it and to
coca. The crude alkaloids may be extracted from the leaves with dilute
sulphuric acid or by treatment with lime and petroleum or other organic solvents.
The process depends on the fact that cocaine, cinnamyl-cocaine and a-truxilline
are closely related derivatives of ecgonine, which is produced by hydrolysing
the leaves with boiling dilute hydrochloric acid. This ecgonine hydrochloride
is purified and converted into the free base which is then benzoylated and
methylated to give methylbenzoylecgonine or cocaine. The latter is converted
into the hydrochloride and purified by recrystallization. Much illicit cocaine
is extracted locally in South America and in spite of the unsophisticated methods can
attain a high degree of purity.
Coca v. cocaine
Because of the
association of coca with cocaine, there is a widespread belief that Indians
are, by extension, addicted in the same way that Western users are, but this is
erroneous. When refined cocaine is absorbed via the mucous membranes in the
nose ('snorted') or smoked (as with 'crack') it has an immediate and powerful
stimulant effect on the pleasure centres of the brain. 'Some understanding of
the pharmacology of this addiction is now available, and it seems that cocaine
blocks the re-uptake of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. This
substance is especially important in those parts of the brain which control
pleasure responses, the so-called pleasure centres; and like other synapses,
those involving dopamine have a salvage mechanism for unused neurotransmitters.
By blocking the uptake of excess dopamine, cocaine potentiates its effects on
the pleasure centre neurons.' The mechanism of action of cocaine when chewed in
indigenous fashion, however, 'is similar to, though quite distinct from, that
involved in the brain. At adrenergic neural junctions the excess of the
transmitter noradrenalin is taken up into the releasing or receiving cells, and
is then not available to interact with noradrenalin receptors. Cocaine inhibits
this re-uptake and thus potentiates the activity of the transmitter, with
resultant effects on endurance, etc. The Indians may actually obtain some
benefit from the leaves. These are high in vitamins C, B1, and riboflavin, and
chewing quids may help to prevent scurvy and other deficiency diseases in
regions where fresh fruit and vegetables are in short supply. The Indians also
use coca to relieve the pains of rheumatism and headache, as an aphrodisiac,
and to relieve the symptoms of asthma. However, there is little evidence of
efficacy. At the present time we can thus view at least 1500 years of Indian
culture based upon coca'. (Mann).
Colombia
Coca-leaf chewing may
have been the preserve of royalty amongst the Inca, but to the north-west it
was always available to everyone as this account shows. From a journal of
Amerigo Vespucci during his second voyage to America, in 1499, describing an
encounter off the Caribbean coast of what is now Venezuela:- 'We descried an
island in the sea that lay about 15 leagues from the coast and decided to go
there to see if it was inhabited. We found there the most bestial and ugly
people we had ever seen: very ugly of face and expression, and all of them had
their cheeks full of a green herb that they chewed constantly like beasts, so
that they could barely speak; and each one carried about his neck two gourds,
one of them full of that herb that they had in their mouths and the other of a
white powder that looked like pulverised plaster, and from time to time, they
dipped a stick into the powder after wetting it in the mouth, then put the
stick in the mouth, an end on each cheek, in order to apply powder to the herb
that they chewed; they did this very frequently. We were amazed at this thing
and could not understand its secret or why they did it.' The green herb was
certainly Erythroxylum novogranatense, of the variety now known as Colombian
coca, and the white powder was almost certainly lime made from roasted seashells,
one of several alkalis that Indians use with the leaves in order to make the
chewing of them more enjoyable. Other alkalis are used. 'In the Huancavalica
area of Peru, peasants use (amaranth) stalk
for its high calcium content. After harvesting the seed heads, they burn the
stalks and later mix the ash with water (and shape them into) hard balls about
an inch in diameter. Villagers scrape the ball with their teeth as they chew
the leaves, and the calcium in the amaranth ash releases the alkaloids in the
leaves, enhancing the coca's effect as a mild stimulant.' (Foster and Cordell
1992: 29-30).
References
- Coe M., Snow D. & Benson E. Atlas of
Ancient America. Facts on File. 1986.
- Foster N., and Cordell L. Chilies to
Chocolate. Univ. of Arizona Press. 1992.
- Mann J. Murder, Magic and Medicine. OUP. ?
- Trease & Evans. Pharmacognosy. Bailličre
Tindael.
Home
PageContents