A short drive north of Bolivia’s capital La Paz, deep in the lush green valleys of the Yungas, Alicia Calle, a middle-aged Indigenous cocalero (coca farmer), plucked the leaves off the shrubs on her ...

The difference between coca leaves and cocaine, Harvard's Lester Grinspoon once quipped, is the difference between traveling by donkey and jet plane. A clever line, but one that misses an essential ...

Bats are known to chew and spit out leaves, like humans chew and spit out tobacco or coca, but this is the first continuous recording of a bat eating entire leaves Elisabeth King Portrait of a Seba’s ...

TRINIDAD PAMPA, Bolivia — If it were anywhere else in South America, the nondescript house with buckets of coca leaves soaking in liquid could be mistaken for a clandestine cocaine lab. But this is La ...

Suspended from the Timken's ceiling is a massive paper-lantern poporo vessel — used to mash coca leaves — casting shadows on the floor. In artist Marisol Rendón's native Colombia, the coca leaf has a ...

YUNGAS, Bolivia — Tomas Zavala performs a ritual ahead of each workday in his coca field. Deep in the lush green mountains of Bolivia’s Yungas region, the 69-year-old farmer closes his eyes, faces the ...

TRINIDAD PAMPA, Bolivia (AP) — If it were anywhere else in South America, the nondescript house with buckets of coca leaves soaking in liquid could be mistaken for a clandestine cocaine lab. But this ...

YUNGAS, Bolivia (AP) — Tomas Zavala performs a ritual ahead of each workday in his coca field. Deep in the lush green mountains of Bolivia’s Yungas region, the 69-year-old farmer closes his eyes, ...