Evo Morales launches 'Coca Colla'

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Telegraph

Evo Morales launches 'Coca Colla'
Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president and known for chewing coca leaves at UN meetings, has launched a drink featuring the leaf called "Coca Colla".

Published: 6:37PM GMT 10 Jan 2010

Intended to rival its more famous US cousin the fizzy drink is at the centre of a plan coca growers from Chapare in central Bolivia submitted to the government last week to boost coca production.

Farmers proposed the name Coca Colla in reference to people living in the Andean part of the country.

The project will be launched in four months and could be either run by the state or a joint partnership with coca growers.

Officials said the drink's packaging would feature a black swoosh and red label similar to the famous Coke insignia.

The fate of Coca Colla is of particular concern to La Paz, which wants to expand coca cultivation. Tea, flour, toothpaste and liquor are already being produced using a coca base.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/bolivia/6962746/Evo-Morales-launches-Coca-Colla.html

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

1. that's really very funny

I have chewed coca leaves before (w/ an activator, of course; the natives use charcoal) and it's a damn fine way to spend a morning at work: enervating without being stressful, invigorating without even the harsh sugar crash of Red Bull. I wouldn't chew it on a regular basis but only due to my dislike of the physical sensation of keeping a pack of leaves in my mouth all day.

This shows the people of Boliva to have a fine sense of humor as well as great courage. I think it is terrific.

[salguine]

2. The actual Coca-Cola company will probably have him killed. Multinational

corporations can have people whacked all the time.

[Andronex]

3. This reminds me of hemp...

which has application of all sorts, is easy to cultivate with little need for fertilizer or pesticide but is deliberately being restricted.

[Vidar]

4. Go Evo!

[Warpy]

5. Good for him!

Coca leaves have been used safely for thousands of years in that region to help compensate for the rigors of life at high altitude. There are days I wish I had some and I'm up only about half as far as they are.

It's the refined drug the cartels were selling that's bad news.

That's the case with poppies, too. Poppy head tea, even steeped in wine to draw out more of the alkaloids, has been used for thousands of years to relieve the pain of life. Only the refined drugs are bothersome, starting with the concentrated resin and moving on through to the various opiate drugs.

I just wish there would be an equal breakout of common sense in this country, that the moralists would have to turn tail and run from the rest of us for a change.

[truthisfreedom]

6. Wow. How to drive Coke crazy. What a riot.

Amazing.

[Fearless]

7. There's stooping to their level and then there's stooping to their level.

:eyes:

[liberation]

8. Your point is?

?

[Fearless]

10. My point is that we complain all the time about copyright infringement

by big companies and what not. This is just that the other way around. Why do we boo one thing and laud the other, when it is the same action?

[Judi Lynn]

9. Coca as is widely known has been used throughout the Andes for thousands of years.

Here's a Wikipedia definition of "colla" which anyone sensible would realize could NOT be more appropriate as part of the name of a coca drink grown and produced by Andean citizens:

Colla is used to refer to the descendants Aymara (mostly Indian or Indians) in the departments of La Paz, Oruro, Potosi, Chuquisaca and Cochabamba in Bolivia. Estos departamentos están ubicados en la zona occidental del país. These departments are located in the west of the country. Ocupan mayormente zonas de clima montañoso de los Andes aunque también en áreas tropicales. Mainly occupy areas of mountain climate of the Andes but also in tropical areas. Los rasgos más sobresalientes de un colla son unas mejillas rojizas y secas quemadas por el frío de los andes bolivianos, tienen rasgos asiáticos, la piel algo más oscura que la de los demás grupos étnicos de Bolivia . The most salient features of a "colla" are cheeks burned red by the dry cold of the Bolivian Andes, and Asian features slightly darker skin than other ethnic groups in Bolivia.

Obtenido de " http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colla_(Bolivia) " Retrieved from "http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colla_ (Bolivia)"

[Fearless]

11. And the symbol?

[malaise]

13. +1

Freaking priceless

[Oerdin]

12. Stupid.

It will be unsalable any where but Bolivia because of the obvious trademark infringements and even in Bolivia, if the law was upheld (which it doesn't look like Evo is interested in), then the name & logo would get pegged for trade mark infringement.

[Peace Patriot]

14. "Stupid" is not a word I would apply to people who have peacefully revolutionized Bolivia,

who have kicked Bechtel, the U.S. ambassador, the DEA and the U.S. "war on drugs" out of Bolivia, who elected a 100% indigenous indian, head of the coca leaf farmers union, as president, who wrote a revolutionary constitution and got it passed by a big majority of the country's voters--a constitution that, at long last, establishes equal rights including tribal governance rights for the indigenous, and gives their sacred plant, the coca leaf, constitutional protection--who did all this adhering strictly to Gandhian non-violence in the face of vicious and violent, U.S.-backed opposition; who have furthermore nationalized Bolivia's main resource, gas, and renegotiated contracts with multinational corporations to double Bolivia's revenues (from $1 billion to $2 billion) and are using the revenues for education, health care, pensions and other benefits for the first time to Bolivia's vast poor majority, who have established one of the healthiest economies in the western hemisphere, and possibly in the world, even in the midst of U.S.-induced, worldwide depression; and who have, with all this, asserted the primacy of protecting Mother Earth ("Pachamama") and the essential goals of reversing climate destabilization, ending pollution and restoring biodiversity.

I would say that Bolivians are by far the most intelligent people on earth.

I would put no achievement beyond their capabilities--including bringing Coca-Cola to its knees by reclaiming the name of their most sacred plant, and punning on part two of the phrase 'Coca-Cola,' and laughing all the way to the bank.

Bolivia's president has said, "We want partners, not bosses." He will probably get Coca-Cola to partner it. (Coca-Cola is not stupid.)

He also said, "The time of the people has come." He knew that before anybody.

[Judi Lynn]

15. The gains made by the democratically elected Bolivian government are AMAZING.

The President is respected, admired throughout the world, now, for his achievements for the very people the racist, vicious caucasian ruling class made it illegal to walk on the very sidewalks their own taxes built, and to be able to vote until after a revolution in 1952.

The racism of course persists in an environment people have described as worse than the US South prior to the civil rights struggle, but the tables have turned, and this is driving the delusional racists in Bolivia, and apparently in the US mad.

Thanks for posting an informative, accurate, and rational response.

[Judi Lynn]

16. BOLIVIA: Evo Morales, the Best Ally of the Middle Class

BOLIVIA: Evo Morales, the Best Ally of the Middle Class
Analysis by Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Jan 8 , 2010 (IPS) - Just five years ago, an alliance between an indigenous leader and Bolivia's small but influential middle class seemed virtually impossible.

But left-wing President Evo Morales was re-elected last month with an even more impressive landslide victory than his already unprecedented triumph in 2005, clearly reflecting growing support among the middle class.

In upper middle-class circles in Bolivia, it is fashionable to be vehemently anti-Morales. Nevertheless, the president took 64 percent of the vote in the Dec. 6 elections, compared to just under 54 percent in December 2005 - in a country where leaders are often elected with less than half that level of support.

Nearly three million of a total 4.85 million voters expressed their support at the ballot box for Morales, the leader of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, while 1.9 million distributed their votes among seven different opposition candidates.

In Bolivia, where over 60 percent of the population of 9.7 million are Amerindians, the lighter-skinned middle class, made up of business families, doctors, lawyers, engineers and other professionals, have often played a key political role in the country's history.

That was the case, for example, during the so-called "gas war" of October 2003 - a month of protests against the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada's (1993-1997 and 2002-2003) plans for foreign oil companies to export huge quantities of Bolivia's natural gas to the United States and Mexico.

It was not just the strikes and roadblocks by indigenous and labour groups in El Alto, a vast working-class suburb of La Paz, but the presence of middle-class demonstrators on the streets of upscale neighbourhoods in the capital as well, that finally toppled Sánchez de Lozada - but not until some 60 people had been killed when the army was called out to squelch the protests.

There are no statistics showing the proportion of families that would be considered middle class in Bolivia, but this segment of the population has had a heavy presence in and influence on both dictatorial and democratic governments throughout Bolivian history.

The same holds true today. While Morales' support base is made up of the urban working class and poor coca farmers and other peasants, his cabinet is comprised of a large portion of ministers from the middle class.

In his reelection campaign, the president - whose second term starts on Jan. 22 - focused this time around on wooing middle-class voters, by incorporating personalities like Ana María Romero on his party's list of candidates for Congress.

Romero, a former ombudsperson with a middle-class - as opposed to rural or labour - background, is first senator for La Paz and will possibly become Senate president.

In 2003, Romero headed peaceful demonstrations in residential neighbourhoods against the Sánchez de Lozada administration's bloody repression of protests.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com.nyud.net:8090/2422/4075202209_8a85efeba8_m.jpg http://www.ernestojustiniano.org.nyud.net:8090/videos2/E0909030606.jpg http://img504.imageshack.us.nyud.net:8090/img504/1007/amrd.jpg

http://www.lanacion.cl.nyud.net:8090/noticias/site/artic/20091208/imag/foto_0220091208182420.jpg

Ana María Romero, Vice President Álvaro García Linera, Evo Morales

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49925

[Tesha]

17. You folks do know that Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Use_of_stimulants_in_formula

Use of stimulants in formula

When launched Coca-Cola's two key ingredients were cocaine (benzoylmethyl ecgonine) and caffeine. The cocaine was derived from the coca leaf and the caffeine from kola nut, leading to the name Coca-Cola (the "K" in Kola was replaced with a "C" for marketing purposes).

Coca — cocaine

Pemberton called for five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup, a significant dose; in 1891, Candler claimed his formula (altered extensively from Pemberton's original) contained only a tenth of this amount. Coca-Cola did once contain an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass, but in 1903 it was removed. Coca-Cola still contains coca flavoring.

After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using "spent" leaves — the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with cocaine trace levels left over at a molecular level. To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a cocaine-free coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey.

In the United States, Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant, which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent for Coca-Cola, Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it sells to Mallinckrodt, a St. Louis, Missouri pharmaceutical manufacturer that is the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medicinal use. Stepan Company buys about 100 metric tons of dried Peruvian coca leaves each year, according to Marco Castillo, spokesman for Peru's state-owned National Coca Co.