Ricardo Cortes - A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola

Praise for A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola

"This book is an incredible work of artistic journalism. Armed with color pencils and an eye for detail, Cortes has produced a beautiful and subversive history of how that bottle of Coke ended up in your fridge. Cortes weaves his people's history with meticulously and gorgeously crafted drawingsmany of them recreations of the primary documents he uses to tell his story. The end product is a damning, epic tale of hypocrisy: while the US government leads the charge to criminalize the 10 million people who chew coca, it has simultaneously conspired with a multinational beverage giant to ensure an endless supply of coca to fuel its profits." Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

"Ricardo Cortes has unearthed documentation of the astonishingly cozy historical relationship between Coca-Cola executives and antidrug czars, along with coverage of the expensive and unwinnable war on drugs." Mark Pendergrast, author of For God, Country & Coca-Cola and Uncommon Grounds

"As works of art, Cortes's illustrations are stunning and intricate. As reportage, the book is obsessive in all the right ways, nailing down hidden facts to reveal a truth I never would have expected. It is rare to find serious reportage that reads like a novel; Cortes has pulled off the mind-boggling trick of making it read like a children's book." Tracie McMillan, author of The American Way of Eating

"A nicely illustrated bit of history about three plants and the fascinating story of people's relationships with them." Dr. Andrew Weil, author of From Chocolate to Morphine and The Natural Mind

Authors Note to the e-book edition

For the printed version of this book I illustrated many documents, including handwritten and typed correspondences. These letters provide a contextual background to the story, as well as a framing backdrop to the composition of the original printed pages. They can also be a bit of a challenge to read on many e-reader screens. For this edition, I've included the pages as they appear in the printed version, accompanied by links to transcriptions of the text each document contains.

You can choose to either jump from the main text of the book to the transcribed text as you go (and then return back to where you left off in the story), or you can continue through to the end of the book where you will find all the documents transcribed in order, with accompanying close-up views of the original illustrations.

for Ma and Pa

It is amusing to now look back at some attacks which were hurled against substances that all the world to-day considers as necessities...

How real must be the merit that can withstand such storms of abuse, and spring up, perennially blooming, through such opposition!

W. Golden Mortimer
History of Coca
1901

O ne story about the origin of coffee is that of a goatherd, tending goats on a mountainside in Ethiopia.

The goats, tired and hungry, stopped to chew on some cherries and began to grow very frisky.

The cherry seemed to drive away fatigue. People tried roasting the seeds inside and brewing them to drink. Speculation rose about its healing properties.

From Ethiopia, the cherry traveled to Yemen.

B y the sixteenth century, qahwah was available throughout the Islamic world. Debate began about the salubrity, morality, and legality of the intoxicating plant.

As interest grew, opponents tried to end its use and punish traffickers. In 1511, the beverage was banned in the Arabian city of Meccaa short-lived prohibition, but similar bans emerged in Cairo and elsewhere. Dealers were beaten, inventories burned.

According to accounts of the sixteenth-century historian brahim Peev, when kahveh arrived in Turkey it was met with opposition from sultans who forbade the bean under penalty of death.

By the seventeenth century coffee reached Europe, portrayed alternately as a health remedy (for Head-ach, Cough of the Lungs, and very good to prevent Mis-carryings) and as a cause of maladies like melancholia, mind degeneration, and impotence. Coffeehouses were called sites of vice and sedition.

In 1675, King Charles II issued an edict for their suppression.

Of course, despite the fears it stirred in its nascence, coffee became popular around the world.

B ut it is still questioned from time to time.

I n 1820, caffe-ine was discovered from the seed of a coffee cherry.

Caffeine is the plants bitter alkaloid. When extracted from the seed, it crystallizes into silky threads to form a fleecy, toxic powder. It can cause anxiety, dependency, and, with overdose, even death.

It is the most popular stimulant on earth.

In 1910, a company from Atlanta, Georgia, was sued for its use of caffeine, which had become regarded as a habit-forming drug.

Consider the testimony, taken during the trial, of Dr. Oliver Osborne:

Q. Now, Doctor, do you think that coffee and tea should be barred by law or otherwise?

A. Well, I think it would be very quickly barred if young people could run constantly to a drugstore counter and get coffee and tea