{"id":36295,"date":"2013-05-26T08:19:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-26T07:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/reefer-madness-started-in-mexico\/36295\/"},"modified":"2013-05-26T08:19:44","modified_gmt":"2013-05-26T07:19:44","slug":"reefer-madness-started-in-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/reefer-madness-started-in-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Reefer Madness Started in Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Credit: University of North Carolina Press<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

May 23, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
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The following excerpt from\u00a0<\/em>Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs<\/a>, by Isaac Campos. It is\u00a0a summary the author’s thesis at the University of Cincinnati, first printed as the introduction to <\/em>Home Grown .\u00a0(<\/em>University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2012). <\/p>\n

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The Conventional Wisdom is that marijuana prohibition was first imposed early in the 20th century by sheriffs in southwestern states seeking to increase their power over Mexican immigrants who had brought the herb from south of the border, where smoking it was part of the culture, no big deal. Then, the Conventional Wisdom continues, Hearst newspapers and Harry Anslinger\u2019s Federal Bureau of Narcotics concocted and publicized stories of marijuana use causing violence and insanity, which led to Congress imposing a federal ban in 1937.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

For the Spanish, cannabis was first and foremost a fiber plant. They called it c\u00c3\u00a1\u00c3\u00b1amo. <\/em>Tall, green, and gangly, of round seeds and \u201cabominable smell,\u201d 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. Thus began the long journey of cannabis through Mexican history, one that would eventually see its meaning and identity radically transformed. <\/p>\n

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<\/em>, or \u201cthe most noble princes.\u201d <\/p>\n

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<\/em> would soon fade into obscurity, as would (temporarily) the drug use of cannabis in Mexico. <\/p>\n

A new generation of nationalist botanists would rediscover cannabis drugs during the 1850s. These men become interested in cataloging Mexico\u2019s \u201cindigenous\u201d natural wonders, and in the process they noted that \u201ccertain Mexicans\u201d had begun smoking the stuff. The word pipiltzintzintlis<\/em> was no longer in use, but two other local designations, both of which helped to reinforce the plant\u2019s apparent indigeneity, had emerged: rosa mar\u00c3\u00ada<\/em> and mariguana.<\/em><\/p>\n

The former would also soon disappear, leaving the word mariguana<\/em>, o r marihuana<\/em>\u2013or as it is now spelled in English, \u201cmarijuana\u201d\u2013to conquer the lexica of most of the Western Hemisphere. <\/p>\n

Though these nationalist botanists saw potential value in this \u201clocal\u201d drug plant, their writings would soon be overwhelmed by the view that this was a quintessentially indigenous \u201cnarcotic\u201d 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 \u201cthe criminal responsibility of an individual in a state of acute marijuana intoxication should be exactly the same as that of the maniac,\u201d namely none. <\/p>\n

By 1898, Mexico City\u2019s leading daily could claim that \u201cfor 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 worthy of being placed before the firing squad, 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo Credit: University of North Carolina Press May 23, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The following excerpt from\u00a0Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs, by Isaac Campos. It is\u00a0a summary the author’s thesis at the University of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}