Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug [Paperback]

Paul Gootenberg (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 2, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0807859052 | ISBN-13: 978-0807859056

Illuminating a hidden and fascinating chapter in the history of globalization, Paul Gootenberg chronicles the rise of one of the most spectacular and now illegal Latin American exports: cocaine.

Gootenberg traces cocaine's history from its origins as a medical commodity in the nineteenth century to its repression during the early twentieth century and its dramatic reemergence as an illicit good after World War II. Connecting the story of the drug's transformations is a host of people, products, and processes: Sigmund Freud, Coca-Cola, and Pablo Escobar all make appearances, exemplifying the global influences that have shaped the history of cocaine. But Gootenberg decenters the familiar story to uncover the roles played by hitherto obscure but vital Andean actors as well--for example, the Peruvian pharmacist who developed the techniques for refining cocaine on an industrial scale and the creators of the original drug-smuggling networks that decades later would be taken over by Colombian traffickers.

Andean Cocaine proves indispensable to understanding one of the most vexing social dilemmas of the late twentieth-century Americas: the American cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and, in its wake, the seemingly endless U.S. drug war in the Andes.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A well-written and thoroughly-researched study. . . . The impressive array of sources and new interpretations of the role of cocaine in Peruvian and global histories make this a must-read for scholars in a number of fields, including Latin American history and politics, global and comparative histories, and cultural and economic studies. Gootenberg makes important contributions to the study of drug history in general, and the history of cocaine in particular, by placing the coca plant and cocaine in a global perspective while still maintaining a focus on the local context."
-Journal of World History

"An outstanding book, a superb example of first-rate scholarship written with energy, confidence, respect for facts, and excellent style. In addition it is a readable, fascinating, and important story. . . . It ranks among the very best contributions to several literatures and will be valued by those interested in globalization, development, and economic and business history, as well as anyone simply curious to understand the world."
-American Historical Review

"An outstanding contribution to the history of narcotics and to the new global history….Andean Cocaine expands our knowledge of the commodity chain and global markets….[It] is an essential work for any scholar or student of the histories of narcotics, Latin America, and economics."
-H-Net Reviews

"An important study indispensable to understanding a vexing social dilemma that affects the US and Latin America."
-Abstracts of Public Administration, Development, and Environment

"A great deal of new information . . . that will excite scholars and lay readers alike. . . . An exceptionally strong piece of scholarship. It advances social scientists' understanding of the developmental trajectory [of] cocaine, and by extension, other luxury goods, while underscoring the value of this method of inquiry in understanding the emergence and maturation of commodities in a global political economy."
-Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

"A sophisticated analysis of cocaine commodity chains and public policy based on extensive archival research and a firm grasp of Peruvian history. The book should stand as the standard economic history of Andean cocaine for years to come."
-Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"[An] exceptionally well-researched and sophisticated world history of cocaine. . . . A provocative, wide-ranging, and convincing account."
-The Historian

"Unquestionably the single most important volume on cocaine's international history, richly documented, and conceptually exciting. . . . Deserves a very wide audience, and will hopefully spark similar efforts in the drug and alcohol field."
-Social History of Drugs and Alcohol

"A sterling contribution to the literature of cocaine, and should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand cocaine in context."
-Drug War Chronicle

"This excellent book adds a definitive archive-based history of cocaine. . . . A model of how to examine a particular drug substance in a specific part of the world while placing that examination in the broadest context."
-Comparative Studies in Society & History

"Thorough, eminently readable, and fascinating. . . . This tour de force illustrates how a fresh, insightful focus on a single commodity can illuminate economic development, political and social concerns, shifting ideologies, and cultural change, both locally and globally. Highly recommended."
-Choice

"Puts the discussion into a global perspective. . . . Gootenberg thus joins a distinguished group of scholars. . . . Indispensable reading for graduate seminars on economic, cultural, and social history, and shall appeal not only to experts on Latin America but also to world historians and those interested in comparative history."
-The Americas

"An indispensable point of departure for serious students of [the history of the cocaine trade]."
-The Latin American Review of Books

"The anti-cocainism that arose in the United States transformed cocaine into a global threat in the first part of the 20th century. . . . This huge work untangles the multiple mechanisms of cocaine's social, local, and global construction, which transmuted a medical drug and commodity into a world menace with a war declared against it. Gootenberg has written a history that will make history."
-European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

"Andean Cocaine is an important intellectual achievement. Gootenberg uses a fluent narrative and a new and sophisticated interpretation to discuss the link between local and global events and to explain the roles played by unequal actors and institutions. A first-class book."
-Marcos Cueto, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima, Peru

About the Author

Paul Gootenberg is professor of history at Stony Brook University in New York and author or editor of four other books, including Between Silver and Guano: Commercial Policies and the State in Postindependence Peru.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (January 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807859052
• ISBN-13: 978-0807859056
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #464,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > History > Americas > South America > Peru

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Andean Cocaine review March 19, 2009

By RMC

Format:Paperback

At the beginning of Andean Cocaine, author Paul Gootenberg sheepishly admits that his current field of study has been met with some gentle teasing on behalf of his colleagues. As Gootenberg is an academic whose previous research focused on the economics of Peruvian bat guano, one can imagine how his investigation into the origins of the cocaine trade might be dismissed as a pop curiosity. Dozens of books have been published about the global coke industry; more often than not they focus on the more salacious, sexy or violent elements of the business. Andean Cocaine is the rare book about drugs that acknowledges, but gracefully transcends, cultural and moral interpretations of these medicines and recreational hazards.

The author's experience with economics and historical methodology sets the foundation for a centuries' worth of research. Gootenberg follows cocaine from its birth as a revolutionary surgical tool and cure-all-tonic, to the backlash that inspired an international ban, and ultimately how these factors combined to ignite the gargantuan syndicates of illicit production and distribution. Along the way, the infamous white powder was touched by icons of world history. Sigmund Freud, the Coca-Cola Company, and of course governments and pharmaceutical empires all play roles in the story, even before the arrival of the criminal cartels that provoked (or perhaps, were created because of) a multi-billion dollar world war of prohibition.

Andean Cocaine is exhaustively researched, yet it's written with enough spring to keep the history alive and relevant. The book should be regarded as one of the definitive documents in the genre of drug histories, and it is irreplaceable in telling the particular under-explored history of cocaine. How the stimulant has shaped world history is significant, surprising, and makes for a good read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting December 5, 2010

By R. Albin TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

An interesting account of the development of the modern cocaine trade. The author is a specialist on South American economic history, focuses on events in Peru, and this is very much the story of the up and downs of cocaine as an international commodity. As Gootenberg points out, use of coca leaves was deeply and widely embedded in Andean culture. As he also points out, widespread, commercial cultivation of coca occurred under the Spanish Empire to supply the needs of indigenous miners in the great Peruvian silver mines. In the early 19th century, these traditional uses became enmeshed in the expanding and increasingly scientific European economy. Increasingly sophisticated chemistry allowed the isolation of the key constituents of several natural products, quinine from cinchona bark, morphine from opium, and cocaine from coca. A combination of international interest in coca, exemplified by Vin Mariani in France and Coca Cola in the USA, and the ability to isolate cocaine for medicinal and recreational uses, led to interest in Peru in developing a major, indigenous coca-cocaine industry projected eventually to be the equivalent of coffee or tea. This led to expansion and increased commercialization of coca production in Peru, and the discovery of a simple way to make semi-purified cocaine by the Franco-Peruvian pharmacist Alfredo Bignon. By about 1905, coca and semi-pure cocaine were major Peruvian exports. The nascent Peruvian dream of coca/cocaine production as a major Peruvian industry eroded as the USA became hostile to coca and cocaine, major competing plantation operations were developed in Java and Taiwan, and the native Peruvian industry remained fixed at a low technological level. As the USA pushed for increasingly stringent domestic and international regulation throughout the 20s, 30s, and 40s, the legal Peruvian cocaine industry became extinct.

These events, however, set the stage for the eventual emergence of a South American cocaine industry, this time illicit, whose magnitude would have astonished the 19th century Peruvian advocates of a cocaine industry. While American and international pressures, coupled with the destruction of Javanese and Taiwanese plantations during and after WWII, markedly reduced international coca and cocaine trade, traditional cultivation and the simple purification methods developed by Bignon continued to be used in Peru and the latter clearly spread to the other stronghold of traditional coca cultivation, Bolivia. Illegal cocaine trade trafficking through Chile, Cuba, and Mexico developed throughout the 1950s. Gootenberg argues that this illegal trade was at least partly the ironic result of the suppression of the legal cocaine industry. The relatively modest cocaine trade of the 50s and 60s then set the stage for the subsequent explosive growth of cocaine trafficking which Gootenberg describes well as an example of Schumpeterian innovation. This aspect of the story is shot full of ironic contingencies. Political chaos in Bolivia with the loss of authority of traditional elites who supported coca growing but not cocaine production apparently facilitated the development of an illicit Bolivian cocaine industry. American supported efforts to colonize the Amazonian regions of Bolivia and Peru brought large volumes of peasant cultivators into regions well suited for coca production, and when development schemes faltered, these peasants turned to a traditional cash crop for subsistence. The American backed post-Allende military government of Chile cracked down on cocaine trafficking but this turned out to be a golden opportunity for Colombians who had previously only been minor players.

This is not a comprehensive look at the cocaine trade, which would involve more examination of the demand aspect of the trade. While Gootenberg does fairly well in setting the ups and downs of cocaine trade in its Peruvian context, the larger economic context is not examined well. The 2 big peaks of the cocaine trade, licit before WWI and illicit recently, are associated with periods of major economic globalization. Gootenberg is a clear writer but parts of this book are repetitive.

4.0 out of 5 stars Exhaustive history by an "Apologetic" American February 19, 2013

By aluna

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book provides a fantastic foundation for orienting oneself with the history of coca and cocaine, via its development, demise, and illicitness. The amount of detail and research put into the text is impressive in its unique and comprehensive nature. This text definitely brings new information to the table that most books about cocaine either ignore, confuse, or have a complete ignorance of the topic.

That being said, brace yourself for some repetitiveness. While the Tolken-like details are amazing the first time around, they are repeated again and again in every chapter in which they might apply. Each chapter was written as if it was its own individual essay, which is great if selective chapters are referenced in a classroom setting. However, taken as a whole, the book is circular in nature, causing the reader to sometimes lose track of the purpose behind all the detail.

In addition to the repetitive writing style, the author occasionally makes rather "snarky" comments about anti-drug policy, especially in the case of American drug policy. This lends the voice of the text to be apologetic in nature, as if the author is embarrassed that his country has taken such a stance on drug policy. While this would not be a problem if the author had stated that this was part of his intention in writing the text, he provides no other explanations of his motives than to provide a wealth of information about the subject (supposedly objective in nature). Therefore, these comments appear inappropriate and out of place in a book that is positioned to be an encyclopedia-like reference of coca and cocaine.