October 13, 2006

The Cultivation of a Culture

By BURTON BOLLAG

Time and again, Alison L. Spedding set out early in the morning with one or another small group of women and children here in this semitropical region on the eastern slopes of the Andes, where most of the country's coca crop is grown. The British anthropologist, who has lived in Bolivia for two decades, followed the groups up steep footpaths, for as long as an hour, to reach the family plots. There they spent the day harvesting the leaves of the bushlike coca plants.

On each rural