The Use of Coca in Miners

The present study seeks to identify some sociocultural factors in the ritual named “coca leaf pijcheo” by Bolivian miners in the Cerro de San José in the city of Oruro, Bolivia. This ethnographic work was carried out in a mining cooperative in this city. The pijchu is a ritual act where a part of one’s energy is offered to the pre-colonial mining deity Tío (Uncle). The ritual is limited to the Andean logic of urku (masculine) and uma (feminine) in the ingestion of alcohol and coca. It also allows for strengthening the ties between the miners and this Andean deity, in addition to psychologically preparing the miner for his work. During the working day, the pijchu becomes a symbolic banquet where the worker becomes transubstantiated and manages to obtain resistance at work, becoming immune to fatigue and hunger since he absorbs the energies that give him powers from chewing the coca leaf. When the effect of the coca leaves has been totally assimilated, the rest of the pijchu is spat out in the same mine. There it assumes a new value like the eyelashes offered to the sea, the Mama Cocha. The already consumed pijchu is offered symbolically since this ritual meal has all the strength and the essence for the worker miner that flows from it. This is later consumed by the Pachamama-mine. The mine in this way is consolidating these minor banquets reciprocally, in the day-to-day mining work.