Field Notes: April 2025

The coming global legalization of coca, Olvera's mole madre in Bogotá & Panama's Mercado de Mariscos.

A regular round-up of culinary news and notes from around the Americas, and beyond. If you have any tips, drop me a line thenewworlder@gmail.com.

Assortment of coca leaves. Aleksandr Vorobev/Getty Images.

The Coming Legalization of Coca?

I have a wad of mambé in mouth as I write this from the Colombian Amazon. Mambé is a green powder made from coca leaves mixed with ash from the plant yarumo (Cecropia spp.), which turns into something of a paste as you chew it and hold it in your mouth as it gradually dissolves in your mouth. It has an earthy flavor and there isn’t a cocaine-like buzz to it. It’s a mild stimulant, contains high levels of calcium, acts as a digestive and gives me a clear head. There are countless positive effects to consuming coca, as Andean and Amazonian people have known for several thousand years.

While consuming coca leaves is legal here, as well as in Peru and Bolivia, it is treated like a narcotic nearly everywhere else. Since 1961, the United Nations has called for a complete eradication of he plant because of its relationship to cocaine.

“In Peru, programs to eliminate the traditional fields, supported by the United States, began 50 years before a black-market trade in the drug even existed,” anthropologist Wade Davis writes in Rolling Stone. “The real issue was not cocaine but, rather, the cultural identity and survival of those who traditionally revered coca. The call for eradication came from officials and physicians, Peruvian and American, whose concern for those who used coca was matched in its intensity only by their ignorance of Andean life and contempt for the very people they set out to save.”

Coca’s legal status around the world may soon change, however. With cartels already easily shipping cocaine into the US or Europe, shipping coca leaves in bulk to make cocaine makes little sense. Study after study have shown how consumption of the leaf has no negative effects and many positive ones, so its medicinal properties and cultural value are being looked at differently. This October in Geneva, a final report about the health effects of coca will be delivered and to the WHO and members will debate what to do with the plant, Davis explains in the story:

“They could elect to do nothing, leaving coca still scheduled among the world’s most dangerous drugs. Alternatively, they might move coca to Schedule 2, as it is classified by American law. This category is restricted to medically useful substances that nevertheless can be harmful. As such, the leaves would remain subject to most of the restrictive provisions of the treaty, though it would permit physicians to prescribe the leaves. The third and preferred option for advocates is to have coca descheduled, removed altogether from the shackles of the treaty, making coca freely available to all.”