Hello all and welcome to a new postcards' episode :)
I must admit I've been a bit lazy this past week, but hopefully I will get through today's update which will open with a card from Bolivia.
I received this one as part of some lottery, that from this perspective I remember nothing about (well it was like 6 years ago so no wonder).
From what I could understand, on the card you can see people removing coca leaves - yeah, coca not cocoa as I had misread.
Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. The plant is grown as a cash crop in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, even in areas where its cultivation is unlawful and it is well known throughout the world for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The UN Office of Drug Control estimated that 30,900 hectares of coca were planted in Bolivia in 2009, making Bolivia the third largest producer of coca after Colombia and Peru.
It is estimated that 35,148 of 54,608 metric tons produced in Bolivia is sold in unauthorized markets dominated by the cocaine trade, most of it from coca production in the Chapare (a rural province in Central Bolivia).
I wonder now if this card is legal in the first place :D
I love these huge cancellations, even though they sometimes give me the trouble having to delete the address and all without actually ruining the cancellation itself. As for the stamp, it is from a set of four stamps issued in 2008 for the 30th Anniversary of the Japan International Cooperation Agency in Bolivia.
Thanks a lot to Marisol for this card and I am really sorry I do not remember the exact lottery occasion for it.
I must admit I've been a bit lazy this past week, but hopefully I will get through today's update which will open with a card from Bolivia.
I received this one as part of some lottery, that from this perspective I remember nothing about (well it was like 6 years ago so no wonder).
From what I could understand, on the card you can see people removing coca leaves - yeah, coca not cocoa as I had misread.
Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. The plant is grown as a cash crop in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, even in areas where its cultivation is unlawful and it is well known throughout the world for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The UN Office of Drug Control estimated that 30,900 hectares of coca were planted in Bolivia in 2009, making Bolivia the third largest producer of coca after Colombia and Peru.
It is estimated that 35,148 of 54,608 metric tons produced in Bolivia is sold in unauthorized markets dominated by the cocaine trade, most of it from coca production in the Chapare (a rural province in Central Bolivia).
I wonder now if this card is legal in the first place :D
I love these huge cancellations, even though they sometimes give me the trouble having to delete the address and all without actually ruining the cancellation itself. As for the stamp, it is from a set of four stamps issued in 2008 for the 30th Anniversary of the Japan International Cooperation Agency in Bolivia.
Thanks a lot to Marisol for this card and I am really sorry I do not remember the exact lottery occasion for it.
1 comment:
Interesting! Bolivian stamps are nice, if sometimes overly political. Where I used to work, we had relations with many telecoms from abroad, but only the Bolivian one sent envelopes using stamps... and I got to keep them :)
Coca leaves are widely used in the Andean region as they are, not necesarily as cocaine. They are supposed to give you energy and prevent altitude sickness.
Regards from Chile!
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