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28.
Mama Coca.
Aldringham, Suffolk: Practical Paradise Publications, 1978. First edition.
One of 350 copies numbered and SIGNED by the author. 4to. Wrps., 277pp. + 8pp. introduction, 2 maps and 15 unnumbered plates featuring drawings of plants and the places visited and people encountered during the uninomial author’s two month visit to Colombia in 1971 and his time spent living among the Paez Indians of the Cauca area in 1973 and 1974.
“Mama Coca is both a searing indictment of the monopolization of the cocaine traffic by the reactionary security services, and a passionate defence of the habit of chewing coca leaves in their natural, unrefined state. The book first examines the overall cultural and economic history of coca in the Andes, and then concentrates on the way the plant is cultivated, prepared and consumed by one particular group of coca adepts, the Paez Indians of Cauca, Columbia.”
Includes guides to growing, preparing, and chewing the leaf, plus appendices on the Paez land struggle (the back cover reproduces a poster silkscreened by the Indian civil rights movement in the Cauca area) and on yagé, mushrooms, marijuana, and herbal medicine in the Cauca. Bibliography (13pp.).
Further information on Antonil (pseud. Anthony Henman) is elusive, and his book’s imprint, Paul Sieveking's Practical Paradise Publications, alsp published works by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, as well as a Tibetan calendar.
Small production fault to glue binding of the first few leaves at foot of spine; a little glue residue inside upper wrapper; o/w a tight, Near Fine copy.
