Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the way in which the participation in the coca economy represents a resistance to the societal system of Bolivia. I argue that coca peasants invoke specific meanings of the coca economy through a locally defined ethic of accumulation, which fosters their sense of citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

The coca peasants of the Bolivian Yungas - the so-called "traditional coca growing region" - live almost entirely on a cash crop economy. They sell their coca leaves to a relatively high price compared to other agricultural products in a legal, free market regulated by supply and demand, and linked in diverse ways to a shadow economy. They are relatively well-off, and while they generally self-identify as peasants, some increasingly feel to have comparable economic powers of middle classes. However, within the national imaginaries, they clearly pertain to the rural peasantry and as such, to a category generally perceived to be socially and economically inferior to urban middle and upper classes. This raises the question in which ways the wealth generating activities associated with the coca economy represent a resistance to such a societal system. I suggest that coca growers challenge these discourses and categorizations by invoking specific meanings of the coca economy. They do so by creating an ethic of capital accumulation which encourages people to accumulate wealth and allows them to fully participate within the capitalist system. This in turn fosters their sense of citizenship as being the "economic backbone" of the nation. Thus, they challenge the complicated relationship between ethnic/racial and economic categorizations in Latin American societies through the accumulation of wealth within the coca economy, resulting in a feeling of being middle-class: they are therefore an example of how ethnicity/race and economic accumulation become related in novel ways which break to a certain extend with the region's history.