"My Cocaine Museum" and other stories with Michael Taussig

“It is cocaine or, better, its prohibition imposed by the United States, that shapes Colombia today. Not talking about cocaine, not exhibiting it, is like denying slavery," says anthropologist Michael Taussig, author of the books My Cocaine Museum, The Corn Wolf, Freedom and Emancipation on the Colombian Pacific, among others. In this podcast, Taussig talks to Margarita Valencia, editor and translator. Wanting to study agribusiness in Puerto Tejada, Cauca, Taussig came across a traumatic story that had to be told, the story of slavery. But also, getting to know the diveristy of species in the crops of the former enslaved, "light years away from planting soybeans, sugar cane or other crops completely dependent on irrigation and agrochemicals", he verified that "an alternative world to the exploitation of man and nature is possible, and the model is the traditional farm”. Taussig also talks about his book "The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America", about the social history of the devil since the Spanish conquest in relation to capitalism. He tells, for example, the story of the secret pacts that some peasants made with the devil to cut more cane, in exchange for condemning themselves to premature death and obtaining sterile money, just to buy luxury items —fine clothes, liquor, butter and others—and never to form capital. MICHAEL TAUSSIG received his PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics and is a professor at Columbia University and the European Graduate School. He has investigated the commercialization of peasant agriculture, slavery, hunger, the impact of colonialism on shamanism, the fabrication of terror, paramilitary violence, among others. MARGARITA VALENCIA is an editor, translator and literary critic. She has a degree in Philosophy and Letters from the Universidad de los Andes and a master's degree in Political Studies from the Universidad Javeriana. She has been director of the publishing house of the National University of Colombia and of the National Library of Colombia.