Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs

Introduction

1 Introduction This story begins with a little-known Spaniard who, in the sixteenth century, introduced a plant called cannabis to the Americas. It ends with Mexico’s prohibition of that plant, by then called “marihuana,” in 1920.There is a lot of ground to cover in between. Thus, I would like to begin, by way of introduction , with a brief outline of the plot. Around the year 1530, a conquistador named Pedro Quadrado left his small village near Seville and traveled to the New World. After actively participating in the ongoing conquest of Mexico, Quadrado received a coveted encomienda , or royal tribute and labor grant, to undertake the cultivation of cannabis there. He thus became the first person to cultivate this species in the Americas.1 That, anyway, is what he himself claimed, and probably with justification , for it was not until June 1545 that the Spanish Crown first ordered its subjects to sow cannabis in the New World.2 For the Spanish, cannabis was first and foremost a fiber plant. They called it cáñamo. Tall, green, and gangly, of round seeds and “abominable smell,” this was an extraordinarily common cultivar whose strong fibers, or hemp, made clothing, rope, and the broad and sturdy sails that powered the greatest sea-borne empire the world had ever known.3 Thus began the long journey of cannabis through Mexican history, one that would eventually see its meaning and identity radically transformed. The first signs of that transformation appeared in the 1770s. By then, cannabis had found its way into local medical-religious practice, and its seeds and leaves were sold by herb dealers under the name pipiltzintzintlis, or “the most noble princes.” Though still cherished by Spanish officials as an industrial fiber, there were growing rumors that, for Indians, it also facilitated visions, communion with the devil, and sometimes madness. Prohibitionist edicts briefly raised the profile of these noble princes, but the name pipiltzintzintlis would soon fade into obscurity, as would (temporarily) the drug use of cannabis in Mexico. A new generation of nationalist botanists would rediscover cannabis drugs during the 1850s. These men become interested in cataloging Mexico’s “indigenous ” natural wonders, and in the process they noted that “certain Mexicans ” had begun smoking the stuff. The word pipiltzintzintlis was no longer in use, but two other local designations, both of which helped to reinforce the plant’s apparent indigeneity, had emerged: rosa maría and mariguana. Introduction 2 The former would also soon disappear, leaving the word mariguana, or marihuana —or as it is now spelled in English, “marijuana”—to conquer the lexica of most of the Western Hemisphere. Though these nationalist botanists saw potential value in this “local” drug plant, their writings would soon be overwhelmed by the view that this was a quintessentially indigenous “narcotic” causing madness, violence, and mayhem . In 1886, for example, a Mexican medical student delivered a thesis in the field of legal medicine on marijuana and the insanity defense, concluding that “the criminal responsibility of an individual in a state of acute marijuana intoxication should be exactly the same as that of the maniac,” namely none. By 1898, Mexico City’s leading daily could claim that “for years the press has described horrifying crimes, criminal eccentricities and suicides, which place before the court of public opinion individuals whose type oscillates between furious madmen and criminals worthyof being placed before the firing squad, FIGURE I.1. Illustration of cannabis from the Vienna Dioscurides. (Wikipedia Commons) Introduction 3 and one after another case demonstrates that the murderer, the rapist, the insubordinate , the presumed suicide, and the scandalous acted under the influence of marihuana.”4 During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hundreds of newspaper stories described marijuana’s effects in similar fashion. The following report was typical: A MARIHUANO ATTACKS FIVE GENDARMES Yesterday on Chapultepec Avenue, around six in the afternoon, there occurred a major scandal. The cause of the disorder was a cocky tough-guy [valentón] who was stoned [grifo] thanks to the influence of marihuana and who insulted all the passersby. Two gendarmes attempted to reduce him to order and he attacked them with his knife, causing them significant injuries. The injured gendarmes were backed up by a pair of mounted police and another on foot. The scandal then took on colossal proportions, for it became very difficult to disarm the marihuano. When they finally reduced him to...