Among the major coca-growing Andean states, and across Latin America more generally, Bolivia is increasingly recognised for its role in the hemisphere's burgeoning ‘New Left’. Less widely recognised is that Bolivia's Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government has deep roots in coca-growers’ defence of their land and coca crops, a movement that gained much initial momentum through contesting the violent militarisation of the Chapare coca-growing region as part of the ‘war on drugs’. If Bolivian coca growers were able to counter constructions of themselves as criminals, and leverage their collective identity as ‘cocaleros’ (peasant coca producers) towards formal national political ends, why has Peru's cocalero movement achieved only minimal political gains? This is an underlying question in Durand Ochoa's book, which considers how and why cocalero movements in Peru and Bolivia differed, and also how cocaleros leveraged their positions as social actors into roles in formal state politics. The Political Empowerment of the Cocaleros of Bolivia and Peru appears as a timely contribution to contemporary scholarly debates surrounding the insensitivities and unintended consequences of supply-side drug control policies, and also the mutually constitutive relationship between movements and governments in the region.

The book is organised into seven chapters. In Chapter 1 Durand Ochoa emphasises her interest in the role of identity formation in the ‘contentious politics’ of cocalero movements through two phases: the formation of social movements, followed by their transformation. She proposes to explain the political empowerment of cocaleros as a question of contentious politics, and uses an analytical framework primarily developed by political scientists and sociologists (in particular by scholars Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly). Readers will note that this is a central focus of Durand Ochoa's overall project, and sceptics of the framework may object to the author's application of its categories to complex movements that arguably exceed explanation in terms of contention. For example, cocalero mobilisations are seen as expressions of a contentious social movement only when they become ‘legitimate’, in other words, unified and/or institutionalised. But even scholars unfamiliar with or unsympathetic to the approach will find value in Durand Ochoa's evaluation of the two cases, which productively leans on the scholarship of other experts, as well as information gathered through the author's 31 interviews in Peru and Bolivia with prominent figures in government, academia, NGOs, and cocalero movements.

Chapter 2 discusses antecedents for contemporary coca governance practices, reminding readers that coca control efforts date back to at least the Inca Empire. It becomes clear that the distinctive historical geographies of Bolivia and Peru significantly shape contemporary coca control efforts. Coca control regimes shifted during colonialism, and again with the discovery of cocaine and its criminalisation, differing across the region to result in unevenness in coca governance in the contemporary period. For example, Durand Ochoa shows that Bolivia's cocalero-led government's oppositional attitude towards coca control has deep roots, with the state and mainstream society largely defending traditional coca uses before US intervention really took hold in the 1980s. This stands in contrast to Peru, where ethnocentric elites have long associated coca use with indigenous peoples’ supposed inferiority. One of the strengths of this book is the author's ability to bring together elements of such rich pasts into compelling and vital stories.

Chapters 3 and 4 specifically address the ‘first phase’ of interest to Durand Ochoa, the formation of social movements. In Chapter 3, she argues that the 2003 March of Sacrifice in Peru marked the birth of a (weak) cocalero social movement, wherein movement actors consolidated their collective identity as ‘cocaleros’ and worked to reject their purported ‘illegitimacy’. In Chapter 4, on Bolivia, Durand Ochoa argues that the 1988 establishment of a coordinating council of the Six Federations of the Chapare coca-growing region marked the inauguration of a (strong) cocalero social movement which productively channelled political action around the political identities of both ‘cocaleros’ and ‘syndicalists’. Chapters 5 and 6 take each country in turn to investigate the ‘second phase’ of interest in this book, the transformation of social movements. Durand Ochoa argues that, in Peru, transformation involved the division of the cocalero social movement and reification of the ‘illegitimate’ identity, but also the transformation of some cocaleros into political actors as they earned positions in the state. In Bolivia, on the other hand, the cocalero social movement is seen to have successfully marshalled the widely attractive identity of the ‘excluded’ to transition into a political instrument that now dominates institutional politics. The concluding chapter summarises the book's main arguments and ends with some reflections primarily of interest to scholars of contentious politics.

Durand Ochoa successfully demonstrates the value of comparison. While chapters are organised in such a way as to allow readers interested primarily in Bolivia or Peru to focus on one case or the other, valuable insights are generated from the juxtaposition. Despite its virtues, however, the book will leave some readers unsatisfied. ‘Politics’ is treated as if it is basically equivalent to institutional politics, and social movements are only defined as such when they are unified and recognised by the state. Durand Ochoa overwrites more dispersed and contingent agitation through a focus on key figures and leaders more easily intelligible in terms of politics as government. Finally, given the author's obvious knowledge of both contexts and their histories, it is problematic that she labels the Chapare (Bolivia) cocaleros ‘illegal’ when in fact today many are registered with the state and now considered ‘legal’. The problem of determining which categories count and how is under-interrogated.

Notwithstanding some shortcomings, there is much of value here. This book will be of particular interest to students of the relationship between coca movements and the state in Bolivia and Peru, the powerful role of identity formation in the outcomes of contentious action, and the unintended consequences of drug war geopolitics.