Cultiver l'ambivalence : Ethnographie des tensions morales et des dépendances agrochimiques en zone de production de coca. El Chapare, Bolivie.

Details

Supervisors

Hermesse, Julie ; Gutierrez Lopez, Jhesenia

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en anthropologie, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

enThis thesis examines the moral, political, and health-related ambivalences running through agriculture in a municipality of the Chapare, a tropical region of Bolivia dominated by coca leaf cultivation. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between September and December 2025 among farmers and the pesticide vendors who supply them. In the Chapare, coca's legal status is partial, yet its leaves are mostly destined for narcotrafficking circuits. Social and political life there is largely structured by peasant unions historically mobilized around an ancestral right to grow coca, whose production they are supposed to regulate. The findings suggest that recent political changes in Bolivia are weakening this union-based self-regulation in the Chapare. At the same time, they show how a rhetoric of ethnicity intertwines with entrepreneurial agricultural attitudes that shape spraying practices. These practices are marked by strong dependencies among cultivators on chemical inputs and their vendors. The health and environmental consequences of these dependencies are a source of tensions brought to light by ethnographic observation: cultivators spray leaves they themselves refuse to consume. This work thus shows how a crop that is both vital and morally ambiguous ties local practices to the licit and illicit circuits of globalization.