ABSTRACT
Transfer of the consumption of coca leaves to Europe has been rare, but there has indeed been transference of discourse on the practice. Actually, drugs and stimulating beverages prepared from coca leaves have made their way to Europe and North America. The first recorded European encounter with coca dates from 1499. There follows a gap of several decades until the following mention of coca in a Spanish chronicle from Peru. Most of the Spanish cronistas de Indias who mention coca leaves date from the period from 1551 to 1653. Coca consumers in the Andean region, on the other hand, were in a quite different situation. There, far from the coca plantations and removed from the coca culture of the Indians, coca-chewing had started to be practiced by ‘white’ criollo people. After 1924, only registered pharmacists and druggists were able to import leaves, which were nearly always from Bolivia and rarely from Peru.
