The Cocaine Chronicles of Max Osiris: A Bitter Pill for Colonial Amnesia
By Max Osiris
1. The Spark: A Party, a Line, and a Woman Called “Coke Whore”
The night began with steel reserves, tequila, and a woman who demanded cocaine before proceeding further—a transactional dance I refused to participate in. Her label, “coke whore,” dripping with disdain, yet it’s a term that exposes more than individual desperation. It’s a mirror reflecting the global cocaine economy, a system forged in colonial blood and now sanitized by party culture. I walked away, but the encounter lingered, a cipher for unraveling how colonialism’s ghosts still haunt the modern world.
2. The Colonial Roots of Coca: From Sacred Leaf to Blood Commodity
Cocaine’s story begins with the coca plant, chewed for millennia by Indigenous Andean communities as a sacred, sustainable stimulant. Spanish colonizers twisted this tradition, forcing Indigenous laborers to cultivate coca in brutal conditions to fuel their silver mines. The plant became a tool of exploitation, its cultural significance erased by imperial greed.
By the 19th century, European scientists isolated cocaine, transforming it into a “pharmaceutical marvel”. The Dutch established a wartime monopoly, producing 20–30 tons annually, while Japan weaponized its colonial reach in East Asia to traffic the drug. Colonial powers didn’t just sell cocaine—they weaponized it, embedding it in systems of control.
3. Hidden Dimension 1: Drug Wars as Neo-Colonial Theater
The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, pushed by Western powers, criminalized cocaine under the guise of morality. But as Decolonizing Drug Policy reveals, these laws were tools of empire: they criminalized Global South economies while shielding Western profits. Today’s “war on drugs” is its heir—a militarized theater where cartels thrive and Indigenous farmers are sacrificed, all to mask the West’s insatiable demand to escape self-awareness.
…
My casual coke encounter?
It’s a microcosm of this system. The woman demanding the drug isn’t a moral failure; she’s a product of a trade that turned people into commodities centuries ago.
4. Hidden Dimension 2: Racism, Blame, and the Specter of “Moral Panic”
Early 20th-century U.S. drug policy was built on racist myths: Black men “supercharged” by cocaine, Mexican users “corrupting” society. These narratives justified draconian laws while absolving colonial architects of the trade (Hi Rothchild, you evil fuck). Today, the “coke whore” slur echoes this scapegoating—a refusal to confront how systemic violence, not individual vice, fuels addiction.
My frustration masks complicity. My pre-Cinco de Mayo party—her sippy cup of tequila in hand—is a celebration steeped in erasure. The holiday, a victory over French colonialism, is reduced to sombrero kitsch, just as cocaine’s history is buried beneath lines on a bathroom mirror.
5. Hidden Dimension 3: Cartels, Capitalism, and the Neo-Colonial Pipeline
Modern cartels are colonialism’s offspring. Latin American coca farmers, pressured by poverty and cartel violence, feed a trade that funnels profits northward. Venezuela’s cocaine surge, fueled by “dirty money” from the West, mirrors the Dutch and Japanese monopolies of yore. The Global South bleeds; the North parties.
My anecdote isn’t just about a woman—it’s about the coca fields of Colombia, the murdered activists in Bolivia, and the militarized raids that destroy lives to protect Western consumption.
6. Cinco de Mayo and the Art of Cultural Erasure
Max’s critique of Cinco de Mayo as “papering over colonialism” cuts deeper when tied to cocaine. The holiday’s anti-colonial roots—the French invasion of Mexico, U.S. territorial theft—are drowned out by corporate margaritas. Similarly, cocaine’s colonial lineage is scrubbed clean for Instagram stories. The party becomes a ritual of amnesia, where exploitation is masked as revelry.
Max (me!), a self-proclaimed “Digital Shaman” #CAS6, knows this duality well. My cryptoart critiques systems of control, yet his bodybuilding posts—25 miles on a fat tire bike, 168 pushups — hint at a relentless drive that mirrors the grind of coca farmers surviving under cartel rule.
7. The Revelation: Cocaine as a Colonial Ghost
The cocaine trade is not a rogue enterprise. It’s a colonial project repackaged for the 21st century—a cycle of extraction, violence, and erasure. My refusal to engage with the “coke whore” was a rejection of transactional sex, but my critique falters without confronting the deeper transaction: the West’s exploitation of the Global South.
The line on the mirror isn’t just a drug. It’s a ledger entry for centuries of theft, a sacrament of capitalism’s darkest impulses.
8. Conclusion:
Max Osiris and the Mirror of Complicity
I am the artist who challenges viewers to “re-approach the world”, sometime inadvertently holding up a mirror. This X post exposes how even critics of colonialism are ensnared in its systems. The party, the coke, the mockery of Cinco de Mayo—all are acts of complicity in a world built on stolen soil and blood-soaked coca fields.
To truly “paper over colonialism” is to sip tequila at a Cinco de Mayo bash, snort a line, and scroll past headlines about cartel wars. My story is a warning: the past isn’t dead. It’s in the powder, the profits, and the pain.
“Art is dangerous,” I once wrote. So is truth. Both demand you stop looking away. I’m ready to die for my art, exposing the hidden layers of reality. Are you?
Nevermind, it’s a rhetorical question.
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