Good Riddance to 'La Mata que Mata!'

The plant that kills?

La mata que mata was an annoying and distorting radio and TV spot made by the National Directorate on Narcotics  in which a child's pathetic voice implores the audience not to plant 'la mata que mata' (drug crops), which turned rivers into rivers of blood and caused untold other evils. (The message plays on Colombian Spanish, in which the word mata (to kill) is also slang for a 'plant'.)

Thankfully, the Supreme Court just ruled in favor of a lawsuit against the commercial's airing, filed by the head of Coca Nasa, an indigenous company which produces tea, cookies, wine, soft drinks and even medicines out of coca leaves.

Good riddance to La Mata que Mata. In the future, let's hope that those anti-drug campaigns campaign against drugs, not plants.

And I won't have to twist around that radio dial so often.

Let's celebrate with a coca tea.

A coca leaf cookie package ridicules the ad, by celebrating 'The plant that kills...hunger, ignorance and misery.' 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours