Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug (review)

Placed within what the author terms “the new history of drugs,” written by professional historians during the 1990s and thereafter, this study by history professor Paul Gootenberg of Stony Brook University in New York documents the global and historical transformations experienced over more than a century by this peculiar mind-altering commodity derived from the Andean coca leaf, the divine plant of the Incas. First, the book looks at the invention and spread of Peruvian cocaine as a coveted world commodity in the years between 1850 and 1900, when it turned into a proud national industry and even experienced an export boom. Next, it examines cocaine’s rapid decline into outcast status between 1900 and 1945, a process in which, contrary to its initial excitement about the substance, the United States played a leading role. Finally, it traces cocaine’s international boom as an illegal drug between 1945 and 1975, involving the active participation of not only Peruvians, but also Bolivians, Chileans, and Cubans —Colombians not yet having emerged as the leading entrepreneurs they would become in the following decades.

During colonial times, the ritual chewing of the coca leaf by Andean natives was rejected by Europeans who considered it degrading and repulsive. However, in the early post-colonial years, it awakened the curiosity of travelers who wondered about the leaf’s active ingredients and medical properties. By 1860, through the use of alcohol, sulfuric acid, carbonate of soda, and ether, a German doctoral student at Gottingen University, Albert Niemann, was the first to use the Andean bush to refine alkaloidal cocaine. By 1884, when it was found to have anesthetic properties, a practical application of the substance became a reality and its reputation grew among researchers, including Sigmund Freud, who wrote a series of “cocaine papers.” Much research produced at the time by other scholars suggested cocaine’s therapeutic uses, ranging from the cure of stomach and digestive diseases, tooth and labor pains, to the treatment of anemia, typhus, malaria, influenza, asthma, and fatigue. In the early 1860s, Angelo Mariani, a Corsican chemist, developed a wine based on coca, which two decades later Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton transformed into Coca-Cola, a health beverage. By that time, for a variety of medical reasons, the United States was excited about the production and consumption of cocaine and its related products. During the same years, at the hands of Alfredo Bignon, a French-born chemist raised in Peru, and through the dominant agency of local liberal politician, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and caudillo, Augusto Durand, cocaine had become a prestigious national commodity and a dynamic export product in this Andean nation, with several hundred metric tons of it being sold worldwide. The business was not just handled by Peruvians, for the Dutch, the Japanese, and the Americans also became heavily involved in the commodity networks. However, the boom lasted only into the 1910s, when a steep decline began in cocaine’s social and legal acceptance, and also in sales. By 1950, anti-cocaine laws, policies, and campaigns, resulting from changes in medical ideas and popular customs, became common in various individual nations and internationally. Thereafter, the trade was taken over by smugglers. All of these and other fascinating historical developments are addressed in this important and profusely documented monograph, illustrative of how social constructions shape the world where we live as well as the products we use, find acceptable, consider medicinal or, conversely, decide are dangerous and illegal.

Overall, the book relies on a wide array of innovative and fascinating archival documents; puts the discussion into a global perspective; builds on studies of commodity flows; highlights the social and political processes that shaped the perception and policing of cocaine; and underscores the historical agency of Andeans from all walks of life, from chemists and diplomats to peasants and smugglers. Gootenberg thus joins a distinguished group of scholars, including Fernando Ortíz...