Bolivia’s Female Coca Farmers Are Fighting To Change Their Communities

This article originally appeared on VICE en Español.

It took the family eight years to raise the necessary funds. In 2001, when she was 38, Ramos Apaza finally graduated in agronomy from the Universidad Católica Boliviana. Since then, she has taken over her family’s coca farm and begun a political career in local government and in the coca growers union.

Ramos Apaza’s mission is to fight against widespread cases of violence against women in rural Bolivian communities. According to a 2018 report by the World Bank, 69 percent of women in Bolivia have experienced some form of violence at the hands of a partner during their lifetime. The vast majority of survivors do not seek institutional help. This is particularly the case for indigenous women, many of whom live in isolated areas where they have small farms.

Just like Ramos Apaza, indigenous women in these areas often cultivate coca because it is the most lucrative crop. This leafy shrub is native to the medium-altitude reaches of the Andes, including the Yungas region where La Asunta is located, and has been used for centuries by indigenous communities as a remedy for altitude sickness and fatigue and as part of rituals. In 2018, La Asunta was the municipality with the highest level of coca production in Bolivia according to a UN report.

Coca is, of course, also the base ingredient for cocaine, which is why coca farmers were targeted by the Bolivian government as part of the US-led global war on drugs up until the early 2000s. As the repression grew, the up-and-coming class of Bolivian cocaleros (or coca farmers) began to organise, engaging in political opposition as well as in sporadic clashes with the nation’s armed forces.

Today, Bolivia is the third-largest producer of coca in the world, after Colombia and Mexico. It is the only country where growing the plant is legal, at least in certain designated regions (including the Yungas). The coca grown in Bolivia is destined for the local market, though experts believe a large chunk of it also ends up in the international drug trade. The system is not perfect, but it’s been praised for reducing violence in the country, especially when compared to Colombia and Mexico.

Since being elected to the local council in La Asunta, Ramos Apaza has obtained funding to run a series of workshops to train women to become leaders in their communities and fight for social change. In March of last year, while Bolivia was enduring a national Covid-19 lockdown, the death of a local coca grower, Myriam Choque, shook the women in the community.

According to the official investigation, Choque ended her life by drinking the pesticide she used to fumigate the coca plants on her farm. But before she died, she had reported being assaulted by her partner on two previous occasions, yet nothing was done to protect her.

“Bruises on her body. Blows to the chest, back and thorax. Difficulty moving and breathing. Post-traumatic stress: high.” That’s how her physical and psychological state was described in a medical evaluation conducted after she filed her last police report. David Chacaque, the lawyer who handled her case, recommended an arrest warrant was issued for Choque’s husband, writing in capital letters on her file: "TO AVOID POSSIBLE CASE OF FEMICIDE."

But days went by and no arrest was made. Choque’s husband later claimed his right to silence and her death was ruled a suicide. It didn’t even make the local news.

Cases like these are precisely why Ramos Apaza is working hard to empower her fellow female coca growers. Before she was elected, the mayor’s office only offered courses in baking and sewing to local women. "I, on the other hand, would like to promote what we have up here," Ramos Apaza said, pointing to her head. 

Her first workshop in November attracted more than 300 participants. From there Ramos Apaza travelled across the remote areas of the region for ten days, meeting a number of potential community leaders of the future. Many of them came to her latest workshop in December of 2020, where we first met.

"We are guests in our own land," lamented Ramos Apaza at the workshop, frustrated by the last-minute decision of the mayor’s office not to provide her with the space they’d promised for the event. This is the latest in a series of blows to her projects: Ramos Apaza claims the local government also spent the budget allocated to gender policies on other programmes without consulting anyone. "Sisters, we can't allow them to take away what little they give us," she added.

At the workshop, a number of the participants pointed out they wanted to be more involved within the cocalero union, but struggled to have their voices heard at meetings – assuming they were invited at all. “The leaders often interrupt us, whistling and undermining our comments," said Emma Sonco, a local farmer active within the union. “I’ve always thought it’s pretty awful that 80 percent of the leaders in the assemblies are men.”

Another participant, Najhely Bustamante, just 13-years-old, surprised those assembled with her confident analysis of the issues the women face. Together with her mother, Viviana Delgado, she came to demand the local government build a secondary school in their community of San Martín.  Delgado watched her daughter’s speech, engrossed and full of pride.

Just like many kids in rural Bolivia, Bustamante will have to move to another town and live there by herself if she wants to continue studying after elementary school. Her mum is seriously considering leaving everything behind and going with her. "In each union group there are outstanding girls we ought to support,” Ramos Apaza later said, citing the example of Bustamante, during a program on a local radio station. “Because leaders are not only born, they are also trained."

A few days after the workshop, we went to visit one of the leaders of the cocalero unions at her home in Calisaya in the Chapare region, in the foothills of the Andes. Faustina Carreño, a short and slender woman in her 70s from the Aymara indigenous group, did most of the interview on her feet, talking while feeding her chickens, listening to the radio, cooking and drying her coca leaves in the morning sun. 

When Carreño was 18, her stepfather gave her away to a man 22 years her senior. "They sold me. I wanted to escape and they locked me inside my house,” she said while taking a short break to chew on some leaves.

One day, she got on a bus with her eight children and left her home, coffee crops and husband in the neighbouring municipality of Irupana behind. She never looked back. Little by little, she bought land in the Calisaya community, cultivated coca, built her home and put all of her kids through school, something that had not been possible for her as a child. 

In 1996, she joined the women protesting the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Unidad Móvil Policial para Áreas Rurales (UOMPAR), the anti-narcotics division of the Bolivian police force. These forces, which were founded, funded and trained by the United States, have been accused of beatings, torture, rape and mass killings. Carreño has been politically active ever since those protests.

Érika Apaza Aguilar, 25, lives in a pink house in the settlement of Chamaca and is one of the women who will be trained to become a community builder as part of Ramos Apaza’s programme. "It was very inspirational for me to hear women sharing their experiences," she said. Just like many others at the workshop, Érika felt controlled by her former partner, who wouldn’t let her go out, play football or see friends and family.

"After living with him for three years, I decided I had to get away. It was not easy,” she said. Apaza Aguilar, her sister and her mother have all experienced domestic violence and have now been reunited under the same roof. Today, they all sleep together in the same room, alongside her second sister and two nephews. On the wall, there’s a poster that reads, "I am a woman and I love football."

Apaza Aguilar’s mother, Verónica, inherited a plot of land on the Yungas mountains from her father. “I have worked my way up, I had nothing,” she said. The coca crops require a lot of care, which Apaza Aguilar’s family alone cannot provide while also taking care of the kids and the house. They cannot pay day labourers, because their plot is too small to be profitable enough to do so.

That’s why the family participates in ayni (“mutuality” in the Quechua and Aymara languages), a model of economic exchange based on reciprocity of actions practised among indigenous groups of the Andes. A few days a week, Apaza Aguilar’s family works on other families' land, and when it is their turn, the people they helped work on their fields. This way, everyone produces enough coca to sell it on the market.

One day, Apaza Aguilar dreams of continuing her studies and pursuing a literature degree. She recently got a scholarship to the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés de La Paz, but couldn’t go ahead with it due to bureaucratic issues and the high costs of acquiring all the required materials. "I’d like to write books and poems,” she said. “Some day, I would like to write the history of this place and of the coca plantations.”

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This report was made possible thanks to the Fund for Research and New Narratives on Drugs granted by the Gabo and the Open Society Foundations.