DIRECTOR'S KEYS AND NOTES

Botany in the Central Market:
Coca: High Tea

by Luis Diego Gómez

Obviously, this central market we are visiting in this issue of Amigos is not located in Costa Rica but in Cusco, Peru, at close to 11.400 feet above sea level. Breathing in the dry and thin air is a bit difficult. Were it not for the attractive and haphazard arrays of fruits, vegetables, textiles, ceramics, and the multicolored dresses of the high Andean Indigenous populations that converge in the center of trade, walking a block feels like jogging a mile! So, one must stop at one of the stalls and buy a comforting and steamy glass of coca tea.

Coca leaves
Coca leaves for sale, Cusco, Peru

While sipping the brew, filtering the leaves with your front teeth, one can discreetly observe the chattering crowd selling, bartering and trading. Every now and then, one of the merchants digs into a woven bag or into his thick clothing and takes a few seconds to carefully align, one on top of the other, two or three sun-dried coca leaves. This gesture, called in Quechua "k'intu", is the first sign of the great respect with which these people treat a gift of their gods. The next step is to place the leaves, held between thumb and index fingers, in front of the mouth and blow on them, a puff as gentle as a sigh, while thinking or actually whispering a prayer to his or her particular deity. This dedication is known as a "pukuy". The leaves are then placed in the mouth and chewed into a quid or crushed in the hand and blown away into the "aito" (air), a further offering to benign gods for a good business. This simple ritual has the purpose of directing the Quechua in their religious, social and economic affairs, in a broad cultural context of time and space.

The leaves in my tea and those in their quids come from one of two cultivated species of coca: Erythroxylon coca Lamarck, or E. novogranatense (Morris.) Hieron. The genus belongs in the family Erythroxylaceae and contains some 200 species, most of which are found in the New World with a few scattered in Africa, India, Madagascar, Oceania and tropical Asia. The leaves being used for the tea or the quid are openly sold in the stalls, fresh or sun-dried, or may be purchased powdered and in regular tea bags, under a variety of brands. For the people of the Andean countries (from their Amazonia lowlands to the peaks of the former Inca Empire) of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, coca is not a drug, but a religious and medicinal panacea and stimulant. In the past generation we have been exposed to innumerable news stories about cocaine and its deleterious effect on societies when the alkaloid is used as a recreational, mind altering and mood modifying drug. We read about coca plantations, which, though illegal, produce an important source of hard currency for the peasants who raise the plants. They have been, it must be recognized, a modeling factor in world-wide geopolitics. Coca yields, of course, that scourge of the modern culture, cocaine.

My tea and their quid contains minute amounts of cocaine and cinnamoylcocaine, the most important of some 15 different alkaloids that could be extracted from coca leaves. The concentration of these two cocaines varies with the origin of the cultivar, the lowest contents having been detected in the lowland E. coca variety ipadu, while the highest (1.2%) has been obtained from E. novogranatensis var. truxillense.Together with the alkaloids there are varying amounts of methyl salycilate (wintergreen oil) and other essential oils that confer each cultivar or strain with their peculiar aromas and taste, as well as a number of interesting flavonoids, such as the rare ombuin-3-O-rutinoside peculiar to the Colombian coca. Quercetin and kaempferol and derivatives, rather trivial compounds of general occurrence in plants, are also found in the cuticles of coca leaves. Most of the flavonoids are not known to have any pharmacological action but quercetin is known to inhibit the P450 liver enzyme CYP1A2 system and could negatively interact with medicines containing nifedipine, terfenadine, alprazolam and similar drugs prescribed for a variety of ailments. Thus the warning issued by travel agents and hotel managers when welcoming visitors to Cusco: "Do not chew leaves or drink coca tea IF you are using (such and such for this or that)." In any case, when chewing some 30 grams of "good" coca leaves, it is estimated that about 80-90% of the alkaloids are absorbed. That is, on average, about 110 milligrams of cocaine!

But that is all modern verbiage. Let us pause for a second or two and imagine how these properties of coca were initially discovered in the dawn of pre-Columbian America. It has been suggested that the discovery of Erythroxylon spp. and their restorative, stimulating and other medicinal properties happened as a result of a famine diet that forced nomadic hunter-gatherers to explore for foods in the eastern slopes of the Andes. That theory is plausible and quite possible, not unlike, say, discovering that avocados are not only great to taste, but nourishing as well. The big question arises when we realize that those ritualistic quids of coca leaves also have additives to increase and speed the release of the alkaloids, which express themselves better in alkaline media. The Amerindians mix their quid with lime obtained from burnt seashells, parts of plants or limestone. How did that knowledge come about if we know that at the turn of the 19th century, the biggest chemical minds were having great problems to obtain cocaine in their fancy European labs? Furthermore, how is it that in places far apart throughout the world, the use of admixtures occurred. For example, lime with betel nut in India and SE Asia; wood ashes with pituri in Australia or with tobacco throughout the Americas.

Coca is rarely or never chewed alone. The lime, "mambe" or "ishku" is carried in elaborately carved gourds (in Quechua, "ishkupuru"), and dispensed with a wooden or bone spatula. Chewers are careful not to place the lime next to their mouth lining, but inside the quid, as lime would cause severe skin burns. Some mestizo or whites into the practice of coca chewing will use even bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, as the alkali. When ashes from quinua, or any other of the chenopods or even other plant groups, like Cecropia, are used for alkaline substrate, the ashes are moistened and rolled into small balls, or sticks called "llipta" or "tocra" and can be bought for a few cents together with a bag of about 1.5 ounces (about 40 grams) of coca leaves for the equivalent of $1 US.

coca

How ancient is the use of coca? For an answer we go to the archaeological record. Apparently, the earliest recorded use of coca is found in the Valdivia culture of the Santa Elena Peninsula of Ecuador where small ceramic lime containers, dated to 2100 B.C. have been unearthed. In the same archaeological sites, more recent depictions of "coqueros" (users or chewers of coca), with their typical inflated cheeks suggesting quids, date to about 1600 B.C., and these statuettes often show the lime gourds or ishkupurus. My good friend Doris Stone described some such "coquero" figurines from sites in SW Costa Rica, where in the collections of the National Museum there are fine ceramic, gourd-like lime containers. Together with the figurines are found containers with ashes or lime, as well as bundles of coca leaves, such as those from the Taruga Valley, in Ica, Peru.

What is coca used for other than religion and social gatherings? The medicinal value of coca is diverse. For severe gastrointestinal disorders and painful diarrheas, it is a great antidysentery medicine, anticonvulsant, and suppressant of motion sickness. Because of coca's narcotic properties, it is the #1 house remedy for toothaches and other painful conditions. The Amerindians use it mostly as a stimulant that helps in the harsh environment of the Amazonian lowlands or Andean highlands. It is a thirst and hunger suppressant to the point that the Inca messengers who ran from the coastal deserts to Cusco or Machu Picchu, from southern Colombia and northern Chile or from the confines of Bolivia to deliver information to their Emperor, had nothing but coca to sustain them. This was the prototype of Federal Express, only they delivered night or day, and even on Saturdays, at no charge!

coca

This appetite suppression property could turn coca leaves into a terrific aid in the control of eating disorders leading to obesity, and it has been suggested that coca could be very useful in rehabilitation of cocaine addicts, caffeine dependency and similar conditions. Coca leaves are exported to the US for the flavoring of Coca Cola (where did you think the Coca part of the Cola came from!?) although the beverage company claims that their drink does not contain any of the cocaines since 1904. At the turn of the 19th century, an enterprising Corsican wine merchant in France produced and bottled a restorative drink under the brand name Vin Mariani. This early picker-upper was the rage of Europe, and later America, with endorsements from celebrities in all walks in life, from Sarah Bernhard to Pope Leo XIII and even the President of the United States, William McKinley. Two glasses of Mariani were equivalent to a "line" of snorted cocaine, but it had the added advantage that inhaling was not at all required.

AMIGOS READERS: The Wilson Botanical
Garden is planning a two-week long workshop
on "Ethnobotany in Costa Rica" in July, 2000. We would like to know if you would be interested in participating. Open to all parties wishing to learn about medicinal and useful plants. Travel to the markets and countryside! Write to me for early registration and information. ldgomez@hortus.ots.ac.cr.

Also, from 14-18 September, 1999, the International Symposium on Ethnobotany and Ethnobiology will be held in San Jose, Costa Rica. For more information, feel free to contact me.