Arce spoke on Thursday at the First International Symposium: Inter Scientific Dialogues on the Coca Leaf, at the Casa Grande del Pueblo (Government’s headquarters).

“The sacred coca leaf is life in balance, it is resistance and just as we have resisted centuries of colonization, currently we resist colonialism disguised as international regulations that seek to continue snatching our identity (…),” the president granted.

The head of State added that the peoples of the world condemn this imperialist point of view, since it is not only a violent exercise of hegemony, but also a clear attempt to annul the identities of peoples who aspire to a multipolar world.

This forum aims to promote the reassessment of the coca leaf within the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, as well as to demand the elimination of historical stigmas and the mismanagement of science that for decades has translated into criminalizing the leaf’s traditional and cultural use.

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