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| Tell Your True Tale
The Cook on a Marijuana Plantation
I met him at a restaurant in the city of Culiacan, Sinaloa, the sweltering Pacific state that gave birth to drug running in Mexico.
He was an old man by then, in his 60s I suppose, thick and rugged, with calloused hands and dark skin.
I never asked his name and he never gave it. But we sat alone in a room of a seafood restaurant, eating shrimp and drinking Pacifico beer for several hours one afternoon in 1997, as he told me and my tape recorder the story of how he came to be a cook on a marijuana plantation for six months in the late 1980s.
That was a time when the notorious Sinaloan drug lord, Rafael Caro Quintero, now imprisoned for the 1985 murder of DEA Agent Kiki Camarena, organized enormous plantations of marijuana. One, known as The Buffalo, was xxxx. So while I have no way of confirming what this man told me, it rings true enough. ... SQ
I worked with people associated with Rafael Caro Quintero, in a marijuana harvest near Guadalajara, close to Atotonilco, on the way to the state of Guanajuato.
But the first I ever smuggled dope was in 1959. I took it to Tijuana in a bus in suitcases. There were no dogs, roadblocks –- none of that then. I had about 40 kilos in two suitcases.
I went three times in two months. With the money, I bought my own taxi and permit. From that I could work for myself, with my own taxi. I was earning at least 10 times more with my own taxi than what I was earning working for someone else. Working legally I would never have been able to afford a cab of my own.
I didn't return to working with weed until 1972, to 1974. I married in 1968. My children were growing up and they didn't have a house. There wasn't any other way to buy a house.
I worked for a boss, a guy I'd known from school. He put up the money and I put up the expertise. We went to a nearby town and bought the dope, packed it up, and took it in a bus. In three years, I earned about 2 million dollars, divided between me and my partner. We blew it all on drugs, cocaine, and on women, drinking, cars. We'd never had anything. Everything we brought in, we spent to have fun.
Then the money went and so did my friends. The guys I knew, they started smuggling dope in from elsewhere, from Juarez, with other organizations. I didn't want to do it. Toward the end, the federales grabbed me and only let me go when my friend paid $30,000. The only thing I have is my house.
Then in the late 1980s, a friend from Culiacan who lived in Guadalajara invited me to work on the plantation. It was about 160 acres – harvesting about a ton per acre. About 50 people lived there for six months. They said it all belonged to a partner of Rafa. We never saw the owner.
I cooked -- chicken soup, stews, machaca, eggs, chorizos. I had assistants. I had to make food for 50 people. One guy's job was to go to town to buy food.
We'd sleep at dusk. At 5 a.m., everyone would go to work. One guy was the foreman. Another was in charge of caring for the plants, preventing pests. Another guy was in charge of the guards – about 15 of them, who went around with AK-47s and R-15s. All the others were field workers.
I was also their nurse. I had studied nursing. I’d treat them for scorpion bites, snake bites, colds, flu, problems with the fumigants. We'd put them in a clinic for a few days, then back to work.
You have to do marijuana during the summer. There's a variety that takes two months to grow. Agronomists developed it, I guess. But normal weed takes five months to grow.
vWe had tractors -- machinery with all the best. It was all arranged with the government. There was an agronomist with a university degree. There was good water, good land, good fertilizers -- the best from the U.S. The weed came out really nice, thick and large.
They never skimped on food. If you said you needed something, it was brought. I'd give them a list and they'd bring everything. Same with medicine. Clothes, blankets, work implements, shovels, gasoline.
Other guys fought the ants so they wouldn't eat the plants. Ants could destroy an entire plant in one night. They love marijuana. They're weed's worst enemy. Guys would follow the line of ants all the way back to the anthill, then spray them. Plus there were birds -- pigeons -- who loved to eat the marijuana seeds.
There were three bunkhouses. We slept there. The 50 of us who were there the whole time they called us "partners."
In six months, they'd permit you to leave once to visit your family -- for three days. They'd allow you to go once a month to Guadalajara. They'd take us to a hotel and leave us there. We'd have a chance to hire a prostitute for one night. They had two pistoleros out in front of the hotel. No one could leave. They'd bring the women to us. They were afraid that we'd run and tell somebody. The next day they'd come for us and we had to be ready to go back.
The work was hard. You'd be asleep and they'd jab you with their guns. `Wake up.’ You'd work from six in the morning until nightfall, every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. It was like a concentration camp. Every night they'd have a checklist to make sure everyone was still there.
They wouldn’t let you go home in the middle of the harvest. If you'd leave, they'd grab you and put a chain on your legs, tie you to a stake and leave you there until the harvest was done. This happened to two brothers from Michoacan. The foreman said no one leaves here until the work is done. That night they tried to leave. But there were armed guards who grabbed them. They chained them to a stake under a lean-to and left them there for three months until the harvest was done. They'd be given food right there. They'd urinate, sleep, eat, right there for three months. They didn't get paid.
They’d given us money ahead of time in case the army came. You'd get to a town, grab a taxi and leave. We were all to go to the hotel in Guadalajara. If you didn't, they'd go to your family’s house.
The army came once about 10 a.m. There were three entrances to the plantation. At each entrance were guards with radios. One of them saw the army commandos coming. He yelled the warning over the radio. I was manning the camp radio. I told another guy, who had a horse ready. He rode to tell the other workers. We all ran off.
I got to a town about 12 miles from where we were working. We fled at about 11 a.m. and arrived at about 5 p.m.
From there, we got a truck to take us to Guadalajara. There were 10 of us. When we arrived, about 20 guys had already gotten there. The bosses had sent guards to the hotel so we wouldn't leave. They sent money so we could hire women. We spent about six days there. We couldn't leave. The hotel belonged to the plantation owners. They gave us a room, women and food. It was a lot of women and we were all drunk and happy. I don't know how they worked it all out but later we were sent back to the plantation.
The second time, we ran off at night. We had guards 24 hours a day. One guy worked all night and slept during the day. He saw the army coming. We had to walk through the mountains. Eighteen miles through the mountains. Finally we got to a village and figured out where we were. We went back to the hotel in Guadalajara. We stayed about two days, then went back.
The pickers came for the last month, the harvest. We ended up with about 300 people.
You pick marijuana by hand, with knives or scissors. You cut off what they call the mat, the part of the plant where the bud is. You prune off some of the leaves. They put up some twine and you hang it so that the chemical drips down into the bud and the weed is more powerful. You dry it for about four days. Then the pickers go through it and take out just the bud. They throw out the leaves and stalks. It's very laborious. Like 100 people picked through it. Others supply them, so they don't have to get up. They paid them by the bag. You'd sit there working and talking, hitting off a joint. There'd be large stacks of tortillas, and after a while there'd be none left because smoking dope makes you hungry.
When we'd finished, when the last truck had left, we stayed behind. We burned everything, all the stalks and everything, threw gasoline on it and burned it.
They didn't pay us what they'd promised. They paid us anything they wanted. I was hoping for about five million old pesos ($5000). They paid me one million old pesos ($1000). Others they paid less. The only guy who would pay well was Caro Quintero. He'd pay everyone well. Even from inside the prison, he paid everyone. He was a very good boss. I worked for others. But I should have worked for him because he was better. The others were thieves.
I decided not to do it again. In six months I had no word from my family. They sent money to my family, enough to live for three months. After that, every two weeks they'd send more. They'd show me the wire receipt so I knew that the money had arrived. But you don't sleep well. There are guys who you don't know, knifings. The foreman even shot one of the guys in the leg for fighting too much. I had to treat him.
My family knows what I did. Now they don't need me like they did before so I don't know if I'll return to it. But they know I worked in all that and fortunately I'm still here. Now I don't have any money. The kids help with the family expenses. Plus, the government's made things more difficult. There are searches, roadblocks.
All the big bosses are under arrest. Before one boss would direct 500 people. Now those 500 guys have no work. So they take to robbing, killing, kidnapping, and small bands go around selling 50 kilos, 100 kilos, on their own.
So maybe I'll just avoid the problems.
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