Nothing of the sort is seen regarding the potato or corn, although both plants were extensively used by the ancestral cultures. That is because coca is unique in the Andean herbarium. As nutritious as it is medicinal, coca stimulates blood circulation and good digestion, while it sharpens the mind. Consequently, coca promotes sociability and, in soulful, exalted moments, it enhances spirituality. Within birth, wedding, and funeral ceremonies, the coca leaf is never to be missed. In the cordillera, where life goes on along the traditional path, you always find an altar for an offer of leaves to the sacred earth, the Pachamama.

In Bolivia the archaeological evidence for coca dates from the Wari and Tiwanaku empires (1500 bC - 500 aD). Sixteenth century chroniclers and visitors wrote about coca fields kept by the Titicaca Aymaras in Larecaja, Chicaloma and other Yungas from La Paz, from long before their conquest by the Incas. Some of these peoples kept their autonomous coca fields, separate from the state monopoly under Inca rule.

During the period of Inca empire (1200 d C - 1500 d C) testimonies abound about the particular importance of coca, controlled by the state as were silver and gold. Coca use was a royal privilege. But a privilege widely bestowed upon diverse groups, such as chasquis (coca chewing runners for express delivery service) , mitimaes (forced laborers), visitors, and warriors. In times of famine, the hungry also had the right to have coca.

During the Spanish period, colonists allied to the clergy deemed that cultivation and consumption of the diabolic weed had to be banned, considering its use in religious ceremonies they were eager to abolish, as their extirpation of idolatries doctrine demanded.

The aversion subsided when the ruling elite confirmed that coca could be used as a substitute for food, due to its high nutritional content, and could thus be given to the mine and farm laborers. The Spanish, lusting for wealth, saw that coca growing and commercialization could become another formidable source of riches.
 
Since the closing of the XVIth century, many Spaniards had coca encomiendas (royal deeds of large tracts of land) in the Yungas region from La Paz and, by the XVIIth century, numerous coca estates flourished in that zone. In spite of it all, many ayllus (indigenous comunes) continued to keep their own cocales, or coca fields, and prominent families related to the indigenous chiefs, such as the Guarachi, also held large estates dedicated to its cultivation. While the mines were in operation, particularly the silver mines at Potosí, the demand for coca was high and the trade boomed.

At the beginning of the XVIIIth century, next to those areas that had been the domain of traditional coca growing, huge plantations appeared in the Apolobamba missions, as well as in the Cliza valley (Cochabamba) and, a little later, in the Yungas of Espiritu Santo, at the entrance of Cochabamba’s Chapare.

As the XIXth century closed, Bolivia exported relatively large quantities of coca leaves, and smaller quantities of cocaine, to Germany and the USA. After the 1914 Harrison Act, which banned USA imports, the coca trade diminished noticeably. 

The renewed use of cocaine in Europe and the USA, the development of the coca and cocaine market in Bolivia during the dictatorship of García Meza, the massive migration to the Tropics of Cochabamba after the closing of the tin mines and  drought in the Altiplano, were all factors that added up to consolidate the coca boom in the 80’s.

Since then, and under pressure from the U.S., every new government has attempted to eradicate the surplus leaves, those that according to estimates would not be used for traditional mastication. The brutal repression and persecution by the armed forces, particularly in the Tropics of Cochabamba, had a reverse effect, igniting the resistance, peaceful but firm, from the growers. The cocalero movement was born, in defense of the coca leaf and the indigenous cultures that revere it.