My first trips to Santa Cruz, when I visited the city that at that time was all sand and the beautiful towns of the provinces, together with the orange sunsets and the mornings saturated with oxygen, feeling the enriched air and literally breathing the jungle through the pores, They were nests of peace and tranquility; I used to talk to the locals who went out of their way to brighten our lives by giving us pieces of empanizao and giving my parents achachairú drink (what a delight!). The locals, relative, had a healthy life, no one coke! I was still a child and I remember telling my dad “let’s stay here and live here”… But that’s another story.
I remember, however, having seen in the west of the country, chewing coca (later I learned it was called “acullicar”) those who at that time were called “Indians”, without ambiguity. Or to those who belonged to the stratum that is now called “popular” (not all). It was not, nor is it now, a generalized custom or extended to all social strata in the cities of La Paz, Oruro, Potosí or even Sucre and Cochabamba. Tarija had, however, a slightly different reality.
Now that I live in Santa Cruz I see, with no little concern. that “acullico” or “bolo” is very widespread in this blessed city, so much so that it is difficult to realize its magnitude. The Latin American Center for Scientific Research, better known as CELIN, had found, in 2000, that 10% of the Santa Cruz population chewed coca. Today, as there are no studies on the matter, we do not know the magnitude of such bad practice that apparently spread through all social strata. The national census would have been a good opportunity to really know how many “acullicadores” there are, but it is probably not in the interest of the MAS to know that information, just like the issue of racial identification. Anyway.
The “bolo” or “acullico”, with certainty, did not grow in the west of the country; Rather, it tends to decrease: the children of the “acullcadores” no longer “acullicadores” and thus it gradually decreases. The same does not happen in Santa Cruz and proving it is only a matter of walking the streets…
Much of this bad habit is due to the MAS coca farmers who, through politics, have managed to implant in the collective imagination that “acullico” is a “good habit”, without any scientific basis. What we do know is that it not only destroys tooth enamel (CELIN – 2000), which causes sores in the oral mucosa (Ibid) and according to some local studies it is also a probable cause of oral cancer, as well as halitosis (bad breath) and Not to mention the appearance that the face of someone who finds the “bolus” in their mouth takes on, that is, without taking into account the probable damage to health in general caused by the cocaine content of the coca leaf (0.85%). in Yungueña coca and 0.72% in Chapareña coca according to “Operation Breakthrough” of the DEA).
Now there is coca for all tastes. There is “special” coca, “social” coca, “machacada” and not “machacada”, with a taste of bubble gum, pineapple, passion fruit, with cinnamon, without cinnamon… Did you see the “advertising” for the “bolo” on the networks? social? On Tik Tok there are more than one…
But why did the “bolus” expand in such a way? The answers given by those who have the (bad) habit say that it appeases hunger, that it “gives energy” and that it “takes away sleep” (especially drivers who drive without falling asleep). Not coincidentally, those are effects that cocaine produces. Then one wonders: Would the coca leaf, without cocaine, produce the same effects? Categorically not, of course, and so, chewing coca, decocainized, would be like chewing grass, and who chews grass?
And you know what? Field animals do not eat coca. They have, in their biological defense mechanism, something that was transmitted through generations and they learned that the coca leaf is harmful, so they do not consume it. Nature in the countryside… defends itself.
