The Yungas is one of two chief coca-growing regions in Bolivia, along with the Chapare, and the leaves here are considered ...

Locals still use coca today to combat altitude sickness, and to relieve pain and hunger. Some still believe that its leaves can be read to tell the future. Growing more than six feet tall ...

Bolivian President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and former coca grower, has repeatedly defended the use of coca leaves and has lobbied to remove coca from the 1961 convention. The narcotics board ...

The leaf, the argument went ... It is currently legal to grow coca plants in several countries – as long as they are not used to make cocaine. Colombia was responsible for almost two-thirds ...

Within Bolivia, the world's third-biggest producer of the coca leaf, and of cocaine, the ancient leaf has inspired spiritual rituals among Indigenous communities for generations — and more ...

Something is happening in the illegal business of growing coca leaf and selling its paste that takes place in what some call the “invisible Colombia.” These are the lands that extend beyond ...

and that coca is harder to grow and of poorer quality than the crops found in South America. On average, one hectare of coca in Honduras can produce around 2,550 kilograms of dry leaves per year, ...

Coca leaves are mixed in big vats that contain gasoline ... At one point the FARC controlled 70% of Colombia's coca crops. Coca plants grow just two months a year amid the lush greenery of ...

Used not only for cocaine, the coca leaf is also chewed as a stimulant in ... monopolising the plant -- forcing rural communities to grow it for them, and razing forests for its cultivation.