Yesterday, the 26th of July, we went out to pick and learn about coca cultivation.  We took a bus/van to the next town over and walked a road, along the side of a mountain, that was practically all coca fields.  The fields were likely owned by many different families, and work by themselves, friends, and other workers if the choose to pay.  Women are the ones who pick coca, and looking out over the valley we could see many women standing out with their white cloth.  Their day generally starts at 5 am to make lunch and take care of the family.  They then show up in the field around 8-9.  From there they store their food, belongings, and possibly small babies in the carpa (a small straw house you can see in the picture below), and then tie on a montel (simply a large cloth) into a little cradle to put the coca in.  The women work in an unshaded field for up to around 10 hours picking coca at incredible speeds!  Surely way faster then we could ever dream of doing it.  I even had to take some video to show how fast they can pick the coca.  The work can really be very rough- it is the winter now, and it was still HOT in the sun.  I could not imagine working in the hot summer sun, drenched in sweat, and bent over all day picking coca.  The plants are only about knee to thigh high so your either kneeling or bending over the entire day.  I can almost feel my back hurting just thinking about it now!  All said and done these women can work for 40 Bs a day ($5.81 at the current exchange rate) or then can work for $3.50 Bs per pound.  Generally they work per pound during the wet season when the plants are producing most, and work by the day in the winter when they are not producing nearly as much (coca an be harvested about 5 times a year).
          The sale and distribution of coca is highly regulated in Bolivia and very respected by the local cooperatives.  To many families producing coca means being able to put food on the table for their kids.  The terrain here is unimaginably steep with large variations climate, which together create all kinds of problems.  Coca can be harvested multiple times a year, is extremely resilient, can be transported easily (we have driven maybe 5 minutes on paved roads in total the entire time here and the roads are generally straight up or down mountains), and there is a good size legal market for coca.  Chewing coca has been popular here in the Yungus for thousands of years for its seemingly endless medicinal values including being their "morning coffee".  Coca keeps you alert, suppresses your hunger (coffee does this too its an adrenal response), gives you energy, relieves head/stomach aches, and is the only thing I have ever found to relieve acute altitude sickness.  When looking at the medicinal qualities I cannot help but think of a study created in the 1960s that United States stands by the study´s idea that chewing coca makes workers lazy; seems like they forgot to include the fact that coca was a key piece in the Bolivian indigenous surviving the hundreds of years of forced labor during the conquests!  Cant see what your not looking for.... After the coca is picked it is brought to houses, streets, the local square, or almost anywhere to be dried that takes about 2-4 hours.  After it is dried it can be brought to one spot in the region where it is sold to a middle man, and the redistributed to legal sellers.  The cultivation and sale of coca is highly regulated.  We will learn more about the legal sale next week but it is government regulated with very high consequences (including loosing your land) for offenses.  Finally coca cooperatives represent a support community for many.  The leader of the local cooperative mentioned projects that included getting 11 chickens for every woman and a meat processing plant in the town.  In conclusion, coca could not be further from cocaine here in the Yungus; it represents a steady income, your morning "coffee," a long heritage, a support structure, along with many many more reasons.

Please enjoy the pictures!  The first is everyone in the coca field picking, and the second is Danielle with her montel and coca!