Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It (3 page)

The cigarette girls exit the area together. The names of upcoming deejays are projected on the walls in futuristic fonts as the place becomes even more packed with people. The odour, a mix of sweat and smoke, fills the air, while clubbers use their fingernails and the corners of credit cards to transport little mounds of white powder to their noses. Håkan’s own baggie of cocaine was bought in a poor neighbourhood he calls ‘the shopping centre’. ‘It’s fucking awesome. It only cost 7000 pesos a gram. Four US dollars.’

AT THE PIT
STOP HOSTEL
it is 7.00 p.m. on a Friday evening, and Greg, Lucy, Brent, and Ana are all sitting around a large table, talking loudly over each other, recounting their travel adventures. ‘Wow! That’s wild,’ says one.

Thongs are slapping against the concrete around the pool, and an askew ping-pong table sits off to the side. Two guys covered in tattoos circle around a pool table, while three blonde girls are busy updating their Facebook status on the public computers in the lobby. Greg, 23, from Canada, takes centre stage: ‘I was just 13 when a girl at my school tricked me into doing acid. Later on, when I went out to look for a restroom, I saw a man on a bicycle with no arms or legs. The pedals were spinning and the bike was riding by itself. He just sat there like a bump on a log as it coasted along. Then, after that, I started to take a leak and suddenly felt that if I continued, I would eventually pee out my entire body. It was like my whole body was coming out of my cock. Even so, I just couldn’t stop. I was completely terrified.’ He laughs.

Luz, a cleaner and the only Colombian present, understands nothing of the story but tries to join in the laughter at all the right places. She asks a guy with a fauxhawk how much he paid for his mobile phone, but no one hears her.

Brent, another guy in his twenties, launches into his story: ‘One time I was absolutely certain that my entire body was made of vomit and that my insides were pouring out of every orifice; it was as if my skin was so thin I would explode at any moment. I did everything I could to hold it in: I squeezed my eyes shut, pinched my butt cheeks together, held my nose. After a while we went out for a walk and I started tripping again, uncontrollably. All of a sudden I was too scared to move my legs, afraid that a blood clot would burst in my ass or in one of my eyes and that everything would go gushing out. I was riveted to the spot and completely paralysed. Ha ha ha.’

Then Lucy, 24, from Ireland, takes her turn: ‘I met a girl in Vancouver who was absolutely determined to go hang-gliding while tripping on acid. She walked out along the crest of the mountain holding the wing, but then suddenly jumped off the cliff before she’d had a chance to make the adjustments to her equipment. She ended up breaking her back in two places, but survived.’

Two hammocks dangle between four trees. Around the corner, a number of people laze about with their eyes shut while Eurosport plays on a large screen. There are around 40 people present, most of whom are backpackers in their twenties. English is the dominant language here, with a host of dialects from around the world represented: Irish, American, Australian, British, and a number of versions of broken English. Though from many different backgrounds, everyone’s topic of conversation is the same: the night’s cocaine party. It’s the same as yesterday. And the day before that. Everyone knows that after 12 straight hours of clubbing, the only excitement to be had after the sun comes up is the endless conversation at the hostel — and telling stories is more fun if they involve absurd and twisted experiences. LSD stories attract more interest than tales of cocaine and are usually more fun and entertaining, since cocaine is not a ‘trip drug’, but a ‘talk drug’.

Most hostels in Medellín today are designed to handle the growing demand for cocaine among travellers. At Pit Stop, the owner has created a concrete bunker that is completely detached from the rooms and dormitories so that the post-clubbing, early morning chatter won’t disturb the guests trying to sleep. Each hostel has a network of dealers who ensure that the patrons’ needs and desires are satisfied. On every door there is a sign stating ‘No Drugs — Please!!!’ to appease the authorities in the event of an unexpected raid.

When the ‘world’s first cocaine bar’ opened in Bolivia in 2009, it was a telling sign of a seemingly inevitable development. At hostels in Medellín today, as elsewhere, backpacking isn’t primarily about seeing something new but about meeting like-minded people with similar interests and stories. Rehashing tales of one’s travel experiences, whether they’re based in reality or hallucination, has become an important component of the modern hostel experience. If backpackers in Latin America in the 1990s were mostly interested in seeing sights and attractions — the untouched beaches of Brazil or the secret paths to Machu Picchu — accounts from the first decade of the 21st century revolved around individual experiences and adventures of a more physical nature, such as hang-gliding in Venezuela, mountain-biking in Bolivia, or white-water rafting in Ecuador. Backpacker stories in the 2010s have reflected yet another change of focus, as the emphasis on cutting-edge experience has shifted from body to mind: it’s now about
yajé
ceremonies with South American Indian tribes, LSD-fuelled snorkelling trips in the Pacific, nights on methamphetamines in clubs in São Paulo, or entire days of snorting coke in the hometown of Pablo Escobar.

From this perspective, it makes sense that cocaine tourism has become a booming commercial aspect of the Andes, and that the white powder has become the playmate of choice in the isolated backpacking culture of Latin America. There is also the fact that as the desire for individualised, unique experiences has increased, it’s become more important to share those experiences. Cocaine is the perfect spice for such narrative rituals. So few destinations are better suited than Medellín to satisfy the increasingly sophisticated consumer preferences of American and European middle-class tourists.

‘Yes, we sure do a lot of talking here.’ Lucy has retired to a chair by a plastic table harbouring the remains of a fast-food meal, along with cigarette butts and trimmed fingernail particles. Locks of red hair cascade down her cheeks like fine copper wires. She says that Colombia was not on her original itinerary, least of all the notorious city of Medellín, but when she landed in southern South America everyone she met told her the most amazing stories about the country. These stories were not just about cocaine, but also about what an incredibly beautiful place it was and how wonderful the people were. ‘Everyone said, “You have to go.” So I went.’

Since her arrival a week ago, though, she hasn’t seen any of the country or gotten to know any of its people. She’s just been clubbing. ‘I haven’t done anything else.’ She laughs. ‘Haven’t seen a thing. Just been partying so far. But I only do coke. You can find everything else here as well, and it’s everywhere. For me it’s just coke though. That’s it. You can get it here at the hostel. Everybody has it. Somebody just buys it and then we all split the cost.’

The combination of low prices and high quality make people go crazy, she says. Especially Australians and New Zealanders, who come from countries far removed from the big markets, where drug prices are sky-high.

Lucy had never done cocaine prior to coming to the Andes. The first time she used it was in Bolivia. Then Peru. Now Colombia. ‘The quality improves and the price goes down the further north you go. Everybody you meet says, “Oh, it’s so cheap!” I think that’s why everybody does it.’

Greg arrives. He has a ruddy complexion and broad shoulders, and he’s wearing white sunglasses. His journey to Medellín was like Lucy’s and almost everyone else’s: he arrived in Latin America with no intention of going to Colombia, but decided to visit after reading glowing blog and Facebook recommendations, which described nightlife in Medellín as among the best in the world. ‘At home you never heard anything good about Colombia. But when you come to South America and start talking to folks, everybody says the complete opposite. People who travel a lot say it’s one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and so far they haven’t been wrong. I’ve had a fantastic experience.’

But as in Lucy’s case, Greg’s experience so far has only consisted of one thing. ‘The first people I met offered me coke. Not selling it to me, you know, but just offering me some. To be friendly. They were Colombian. I’d never experienced anything like it — giving away coke for free! It happened as soon as I crossed over the border. Our passports hadn’t even been stamped.’

THE TALE OF
how cocaine conquered Colombia can be said to have begun at many different points in the last millennium. When Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived in the New World in 1502, the people in the eastern Andes had already been chewing coca leaves for millennia — since at least 3000 BC. The leaf has always been, and still is, an important symbolic and religious object in many indigenous cultures. On its own the coca leaf is harmless, even beneficial, and is to cocaine more or less what the grape is to wine; you can chew as much as you like without getting a stronger buzz than you would from a cup of coffee. The architects and labourers who built Machu Picchu chewed coca, as did the Aymara people, who constructed the Kalasasaya Temple thousands of years ago in what is today Bolivia, and many other Andean indigenous groups.

Coca was among the first plants to be cultivated in the Western Hemisphere, and when the 16th-century Spaniards had to choose between banning or accepting the indigenous custom of chewing it, the colonisers’ material interests steered their decision; because the leaves and their mild psychoactive effect kept the slaves in the silver mines going, they decided to let the local people use it. The few times the Spaniards chose to pay their serfs, they did so in coca. Moreover, when the men running the mines discovered just what effect the leaves had on their workers’ performance, they began to establish a more commercial coca market. Tom Feiling writes in
The Candy Machine: how cocaine took over the world
that by the 1600s the sacred plant of the indigenous people had, ironically, been turned into a tool for exploiting them, and it could thus be said that the Catholic envoy of the Spanish Crown became the first drug dealers of the Americas.

In Europe the plant went unnoticed for hundreds of years, as the few coca shipments that did make it to the Old World were often so poorly packaged that the contents had rotted during the sea journey. It was not until 1860 that German chemist Albert Niemann managed to explain the process of extracting cocaine from the leaves — a simple method known today to every farmer in Bolivia and Peru, not to mention in Colombia. A few decades after Niemann’s death, a Corsican pharmacist obtained a patent for a cocaine-laced Bordeaux wine, Vin Mariani, that by the end of the 19th century was known around the world as a refreshing drink. It quickly became popular with intellectuals and members of the cultural elite; Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Emile Zola, Tsar Alexander III, and Pope Leo XIII were just a few of the many who praised the coca wine for its curative effects.

David T. Courtwright, in
Forces of Habit: drugs and the making of the modern world
, states that Vin Mariani became an unintentional predecessor to one of the world’s most profitable trademarks of all time: Coca-Cola. It was the establishment of The Coca-Cola Company in 1892 that ushered in the first
fin-de-siècle
wave of coca mania on a global scale. The drink, initially but briefly sold as Peruvian Wine Cola, became an immediate hit around the world, and for the next 22 years cocaine extract was a key ingredient in Coca-Cola’s legendary secret recipe. Yet when the US Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act in 1914, Coca-Cola had to eliminate cocaine extract from its formula. Today, the red and white colours of the Peruvian flag are, as Tom Feiling concludes, ‘the only reminder of Coca-Cola’s Andean origins’.

The history of cocaine as a recreational drug is similar. In his legendary 1884 essay ‘Über Coca’, Sigmund Freud enthusiastically systematised the beneficial effects of the drug — at that stage classified as a medicine — praising its ability to counteract indigestion, alcoholism, and impotence. Soon after that, cocaine made its real breakthrough in Europe, as an effective local anaesthetic. Problems in shipment were resolved once large pharmaceutical companies such as Merck began producing raw cocaine in the Andes before the transatlantic journey, rather than after. With industrialisation, and with cocaine being widely distributed among doctors and at hospitals, large quantities of the drug went astray — as would later be the case with so many other drugs. By the early 20th century, the habit of sniffing and injecting the powder had spread to various underground scenes throughout Europe and the United States. The world — or at least the wealthier nations in it — entered into its first cocaine epidemic.

However, as early as the end of World War I this first cocaine boom was on the decline. It was not until the 1970s that any major confiscations of the drug were reported. Yet during the 1960s and 1970s, as the world was about to enter into its second major cocaine epidemic, the colonial roots of the problem became visible, and the seed of what would eventually blossom into the Andean neo-revolutionary ethnopolitics of the new millennium was planted. The United Nations’ desire to prohibit all forms of coca failed to take into account the integral role the plant played in indigenous culture and belief, and this resulted in the decision in 1961 to put the entire coca plant, including the harmless leaves, on the world list of banned drugs. (This then paved the way for the implementation of widespread herbicide spraying, a practice that to this day continues to force Colombian farmers to seek out guerrilla protection.)