The Coca Leaf Entanglement

Beyond Coca’s Dichotomies

Today, Coca’s imagery or “archive” is dominated by negative narratives that tie it to cocaine, addiction, and violence, taking away the plant’s agency and its material and spiritual potential. These stories have seeped into the collective imagination, distorting how the plant is perceived and erasing the possibility of engaging with its cultural and material richness. Out of this distortion has emerged a troubling dichotomy in discourse, where Coca is reduced either to narco-aesthetics or to an exoticized view of Indigenous aesthetics. Yet the plant’s meanings and uses extend far beyond this binary, opening new ways of thinking about the war on drugs and reflecting on the broader cultural, social, and political entanglements it embodies. Through her research, Maria Daniela Palomá seeks to move beyond this dichotomy to focus instead on the plant’s alternative uses, its creative potential, and the collective values rooted in its meaning.

Rooting Coca’s Futures

This piece seeks to give agency to Coca by presenting the research as a metaphorical rhizomatic root system. It proposes a non-linear, interconnected way of understanding what lies beneath the surface: alternative uses, underlying beliefs, health benefits, and the people who interact symbiotically with the plant. Mapping this alternative system reveals the complexity of its existence and traces its interwoven relationships. This work represents only the first step in the process of materialization, with the hope that future collaborations—especially with those encountered along this journey—will continue to expand and enrich the Coca-root map.