Anthropology of Work Review

VISUAL REVIEW ESSAY

Occupational Hazards of Drug Crop Cultivation in Latin America

Coca Mama-The War On DrugsJan Thielen. 52 minutes. Color. New

York: Filmakers Library, 2001.

Voices of the Sierra TarahumaraRobert Brewten and Felix Arthur, Gehm. 52 minutes. Color. Berkeley: University of California

Extension and Center for Media and Independent Learning, 2001.

M. Barbara Leons, Towson University

One of the ironies of the impact of the global marketon commodities that enter international commerce is thatsome of the commodities in highest demand, recreationaldrugs, for example, are deemed illegal. Those whosework is to produce the raw material for thosecommodities, such as the peasant producers of such cropsas coca, marijuana and opium poppy, are criminalizedand exposed to violence from the state and/or from drugtraffickers (whose high profits are derived from the veryillegality of their product). For peasant producers of drugcrops, and for their families, their livelihood depends onbeing in harm's way. Both Jan Thielen's film, CocaMama — The War on Drugs, and Brewten and Gehm's film,Voices of the Sierra Tarahumara, offer valuable portrayals ofthe growers of drug crops: coca in the Andes and opiumpoppy and marijuana in Northern Mexico. (Opiumpoppy growing in Colombia is not addressed in either.)Coca Mama, filmed in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, iscritical of the state sponsored eradication of coca, whichcreates hardship for indigenous peasant producers of acrop native to, and used traditionally in, the region(though now grown on a much expanded scale to feedthe illegal demand). Voices of the Sierra Tarahumara, on theother hand, appears to be seeking the eradication ofintroduced drug crops to protect the native inhabitants ofthe northern Mexican Sierra Tarahumara, an area namedfor them, from coerced cultivation and landinvasion. Although the two films seem to have verydifferent points of view, the situations they portray havemore in common than is at first apparent.

* * * *

Voices of the Sierra Tarahumara was filmed sporadicallythrough the 1990s (but with the date of each film segmentclearly indicated). It focuses on the concerns of humanrights and environmental NGOs, particularly the ConsejoAses6r de la Sierra Madre, with the threat to theindigenous Tarahumara, or Raramuri, as they callthemselves, from loggers and drug traffickers in collusionwith corrupt police and politicians. The film makes clearthat the concerns, desires, land titles and lives of theindigenous people of the Sierra Tarahumara are

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irrelevant to those who would profit from the area's resources(including aptness for drug crop cultivation and proximity tothe border). Drug traffickers have taken over some of the bestTarahumara land to grow marijuana and opium poppy andhave distributed seeds of those crops, obliging farmers to growthem or face violence and the destruction of their food crops.

Interestingly, the same ground is covered in an article byAlex Shoumatoff, "Trouble in the Land of Muy Verde," and byBill Weinberg, in his book Homage to Chiapas. Taking them alltogether provides a more complete story. Both Weinberg andShoumatoff interviewed, or discuss, many of the same peoplewho appear in the film, for example Edwin Bustillos, whoheads up the NGO Consejo Asesor; Gumercindo Torres, anorganizer who had barely survived the attack ordered by alocal drug boss that killed his brother; and Augustin Fontes,the assassin. Weinberg provides later information on thesituation in the Sierra. However, while deploring the very realendemic violence and coercion, both make clear what the filmdoes not: many Tarahumara voluntarily supplement theirmeager income by growing marijuana and poppy, whichbrings them a return far higher than the staple of corn.Shoumatoff points out, again as the film does not, thatBustillos is not critical of traffickers who pay a fair marketprice for their crops. He quotes Bustillos, "You see, I do nothave a problem with drug dealers, as long as they are peaceful.It's the cruel ones—the ones who kill people and destroy theforests — that we must stand up to" (Shoumatoff, 1995:63).

The violence and exploitation faced by Tarahumarafarmers is not unique. It appears similar to that faced by cocagrowers in the Upper Huallaga Valley of Peru, who wereterrorized by Colombian traffickers until the Shining Pathguerrillas recruited their support by providing protection fromboth traffickers and state eradicators (Morales 1989). Nor is thecorruption of police and politicians by drug traffickers ("si haydinero, no hay problema" [with money nothing is a problem],as the film puts it) confined in any way to Mexico.

* * * *Coca Mama is the better film of the two, more ambitious

(and better financed), better informed, and more skillfully puttogether to comprehensively touch all the issues raised bycocaine control through coca crop eradication. After

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Anthropology of Work Review

disappointing results with other forms of interdictionsuch as drug seizures (which become merely a businesscost) and imprisonment of drug traffickers (who, at alllevels, are easily replaced), the U.S. backed "War onDrugs" has become a war on the coca plant itself and thepeople who grow it. The complex implications of this arethe subject of the film.

One of the film's virtues is its breadth. Althoughfocused on cocaine and not the other drugs in illegalcommerce, it recognizes that the cocaine trade is indeedglobal and cannot be understood within the boundariesof any one country. Nor can the role of the United Statesas principal consumer and hegemonic power beoverlooked. The film intercuts scenes of coca productionin the Andean countries with others set in Washington,D.C., where spokespersons for, and critics of, U.S. drugpolicy are interviewed. It starts with traditional growersand consumers of coca leaf in Peru. A shift to Boliviatakes us to the Chapare, where coca cultivation greatlyexpanded in response to the global demand, drawingcolonists able to support their families at a basic level onthe $100 or so that the coca crop provided monthly. Yetwe should note that it is the very illegality of cocaine thatensures that coca growing remains in peasant handsrather than consolidated into agribusinesses. The risks ofinterdiction have been shifted to these small growers(Leons and Sanabria 1997). The work of the UMOPARdrug police, criticized for abusive behavior toward localpeasants, is shown as they seek out and destroy the smallmobile labs scattered throughout the region that convertcoca to cocaine paste. However, it is the Bolivian military$iat is in charge of the present U.S. backed policy offorced coca eradication. We see young conscriptsuprooting coca fields, leaving desperate peasants in theirwake. Without alternatives, as crop substitution andother development projects have dismally failed,peasants are shown to be determined to go on plantingcoca despite the consequences. Although the amount ofcoca grown has greatly diminished, former BolivianPresident Sanchez de Lozada admitted in a recentinterview that the government has been stymied in itsefforts of eradicate the last five-to-ten-thousand hectaresof coca remaining in the Chapare because "they areplanting as fast as we can rip it out" (Miami Herald 2003).

While a spokesperson from the U.S. Office of NationalDrug Control Policy calls the eradication of much of theChapare's coca a "noteworthy success," critics such asColetta Youngers of the Washington Office on LatinAmerica (WOLA) counter that it been but a "virtualsuccess," as coca production has moved to Colombia.This provides a good illustration of the "balloon effect,"whereby pressure on coca growing in one area simplydrives it elsewhere. It is to Colombia that the film thenmoves. Finished cocaine in Colombia in the eighties wasrefined primarily from coca paste imported from Peruand Bolivia. The amount of coca eradicated in those twocountries was matched by the expansion of its cultivationover the past 10 years in southern Colombia, where it hadnot been extensively grown. Coca fields have replaced

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rainforest as colonists, who are often political refugees, growcoca in the context of a forty-year-old civil war between theColombian government and the FARC guerrillas. As was thecase with Shining Path in Peru, the FARC mediates betweencoca growers and drug traffickers, taxing the latter. Therainforest destruction in Colombia parallels the forestdestruction in the Sierra Tarahumara. Since the FARC controlsthe coca growing areas, militarized manual eradication as istaking place in Bolivia would not be possible. Here, eradicationpolicies are carried out through the aerial spraying ofherbicides (illegal in Bolivia and Peru), which destroys foodcrops and, incidentally, alternative development projects suchas legal cash crops and fish farming. Additionally, aerialspraying has been blamed for environmental destruction,sickness, and even cases of child mortality. Yet, during thesame period that fumigation has been carried out, cocaproduction in Colombia has increased threefold. Although nottreated in this film, which focuses on coca, it should be notedthat opium poppy cultivation as well has greatly expanded inColombia, despite the targeting of poppy fields for herbicidespraying, bringing with it many of the same consequences(Forero and Wiener, 2003:1).

The amount of ground Coca Mama covers in 52 minutes isextraordinary, as all the major issues involved in theimplementation of coca eradication policies are discussed in acoherent and comprehensive way, from the lack of alternativesand desperation of those who grow coca to environmentaldestruction and violation of human rights. These costs arejuxtaposed to the ultimate ineffectuality of the policy inreducing either the amount of coca grown in the Andeanregion as a whole or the amount of cocaine available in the U.S.Particularly noteworthy are scenes inside Bolivian prisons,which are crowded with low-level drug offenders, and theColombian footage within FARC controlled territory, whichincludes interviews with FARC commanders on several levelswho freely admit the FARC protects coca growers and taxescocaine paste buyers. The complexity of the Colombianpolitical situation cannot be done full justice in the timeavailable, and the film ends before the breakdown of the peacetalks between the FARC and the Colombian government, but itdoes clearly explore the implications of coca eradicationpolicies.

* * * *1 have shown Coca Mama in the classroom, where students

followed it easily and discussed it with animation. The filmincludes extended on-camera interviews with coca growersthemselves in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, focusing on workand livelihood. Thus, the film is particularly appropriate asbackground for discussion of these issues from ananthropological perspective. Voices of the Sierra Tarahumara isnot as coherent or polished as Coca Mama and is not asencompassing. Its obligatory denunciation of U.S. "War onDrugs" policies appears tacked on, not emerging from what hastranspired in the film itself. Nevertheless, it illustrates an areathat is not well known and does give "voice" to local townsmen,activists, and the Tarahumara themselves, testifying to theviolence and corruption that they must contend with. In ananthropology class, showing the film, or selected portions of it,with extensive instructor commentary could be valuable.

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ReferencesForero, Juan, and Tim Weiner. 2003. Latin American

Poppy Fields Undermine U.S. Drug Battle. The NewYork Times. June 8.

Leons, Madeline Barbara, and Harry Sanabria. 1997. Cocaand Cocaine in Bolivia: Reality and Policy Illusion. InCoca, Cocaine and the Bolivian Reality. Madeline BarbaraLeons and Harry Sanabria, eds., Pp. 1-46. Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press.

Miami Herald. 2003. A Conversation with Bolivia's PresidentJune 8. http://miami.com.

Morales, Edmundo. 1989. Cocaine: White Gold Rush in Peru.Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Shoumatoff, Alex. 1995. Trouble in the Land of Muy Verde.Outside 20(3)56-63,149-154.

Weinberg, Bill. 2000. Homage to Chiapas: The New IndigenousStruggles in Mexico. London: Verso.

BOOK REVIEW ESSAY

Reconciling Contingencies in Work, Costs of Living, and Community Responsibilities

Caring and Doing For Others: Social Responsibility in the Domains of Family, Work, and Community.Alice S. Rossi, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Nonstandard Work: The Nature and Challenges of Emerging Employment Arrangements.Francoise Carre, Marianne A. Ferber, Lonnie Golden, and Stephen A. Herzenberg, eds. Champaign, II:

Industrial Relations Research Association, University of Illinois, 2000.

Richard Zimmer, Hutchins School, Sonoma State University

Luke Larkin is a person many of us do not remember.He is Horatio Alger's creation, one of the many"successful" characters in Alger's stories. Yet, in this one,Alger belies his own title about the elements of success,when he concludes about Larkin's life:

"He has struggled upward from a boyhood ofprivation and self-denial into a youth andmanhood of prosperity and honor. There has beensome luck about it, I admit, but after all he isindebted for most of his good fortunes to his owngood qualities." (Horatio Alger, Struggling Upwardor Luke Larkin's Luck, original 1886 [Alger 1965:80])Alger says that in the now secularized society of the

late-nineteenth-century, people prosper and achievecommunity recognition because they have good qualitieswithin them. These good qualities are the current versionof religious grace in another form. Alger, and so manyothers who wrote about Americans and achievement,have focused on the individual's attributes, not the socialconditions that lead to success and honor. People are seennot as products of their society and history, but ascreatures who transcend them. Social conditions andsocial policy are irrelevant for them: they will just "makeit."

Would that were true for most people in American—or any—society! Few succeed to prosperity and honor.Most people would like a decent living, access to housingand health care, and a chance to be part of theircommunity's life. The two books under review, Caringand Doing for Others, Alice S. Rossi, ed., and NonstandardWork, Francoise Carre, Marianne Ferber, Lonnie Golden,and Stephen Herzenberg, eds., argue in different ways

that people need adequate work and housing and medical careto be "somewhat" prosperous, "somewhat" honored, and"somewhat" involved inside their communities. Those of usconcerned with work and social policy will find thecontributions to these two compilations helpful in formulatingnew ways of social action.

Rossi's volume expands Bellah's Habits of the Heart (1996),and argues that Americans, at least most of those who havefull-time jobs, are and can be deeply involved in family,community, and the national political conversation becausethey have full-time jobs (and benefits). People who do not havethese kinds of jobs are more marginally involved in non-economic activities. Rossi and her contributors suggest thatmost Americans who have full-time jobs, and some who donot, vary in the degree of social commitment over the course oftheir lifetimes. They contend that Americans, even if they arenot politically committed, are socially active in voluntaryassociations that help others, more than any European country.The economy and, by implication, the larger society workprecisely because of this high level of activity, especially inlight of an increasingly disengaged federal government whichshifts burdens to state and local governments.

The book edited by Rossi raises the question of whathappens in the world of contingent workers (i.e., those withunstable or inadequate employment, as in temporary and/orpart-time positions). The book edited by Carre et al. does notaddress that larger question directly; rather, it focuses on theways in which this segment of the workforce is increasing incertain sectors and regions. It attempts to answer the question:are more Americans becoming contingent workers? Thecontributors note an increase in certain subtypes of this workas businesses cycle through various reorganization patterns.

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