MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Coca leaves made me president” Morales tells UN

“The fight for coca leaves took me to the presidency”, said Bolivian president Evo Morales in a passionate address Wednesday to the United Nations General Assembly in defense of the centuries old coca culture of the Andean highlands peoples.

"Coca leaves gave birth to the Movement towards Socialism", insisted Morales in direct reference to the political movement of coca farmers that enabled him to be democratically elected by a landslide president of Bolivia.

"Coca leaves are not cocaine", he underlined from the UN podium. "Coca leaves are green and cocaine is white" and surprised his audience of world leaders by taking out of his pocket a leaf of coca.

"Here in the United States when people meet they share coffee; at home in the Andes highlands is coca tea", he said.

Coca which grows extensively in Bolivia and Peru is deeply ingrained in indigenous culture and is used to mitigate hunger, to counterbalance effects of altitude, as medicine and in ritual burials.

President Morales said he would be meeting the United Nations anti drugs top officials to show them that "coca leaves are not harmful", hoping that they are de-listed from the UN dangerous drugs nomenclature.

"They've preached all over the world that coca is cocaine, and it's not. They've satanized a Basic ingredient of our culture", emphasised Morales.

The Bolivian president recalled that the "higher priests of the Catholic Church use to celebrate mass with Mariani wine and now "Coca Cola has surpassed Mariani wine".

The wine elaborated by Italian chemist Angelo Mariani was an "energizing alcoholic drink made out of wine and macerated coca leaves".

The indigenous peoples of the Andes do not profess the culture of drugs, but "we want to combat drugs with the social movements", said Morales, who went on to say that he did not support the anti drugs strategy in Colombia with United States support.

"They've spent millions in eradication and fumigation, and what have they achieved? Nothing".

The Bolivian president also criticised the US certifying system which supposedly stimulates countries to help fight the drugs business.

"This certification system is humiliating. If there's to be a certification, it should be done by the United Nations and not United States", Morales argued, because "sometimes certification is tied to politics. Certification must not become a re-colonization instrument of our peoples".

"Nowadays the talk is about "preventive wars" and in Bolivia the "drugs war", but it's just a pretext to control our governments and our peoples", concluded President Morales.