Speaker 1: School of humans. What is this is your year's supplant?
Speaker 1: Is what you grew? This is what I grew in
Speaker 1: the yard, And I'm embarking on another three plants right now.
Speaker 1: While producing this organized crime, I stayed with various people
Speaker 1: in northern California, and I recorded this while staying with
Speaker 1: Bob and Joanna Banana, friends of my parents and parents
Speaker 1: of one of my best friends. As join a banana
Speaker 1: made tea, Bob Giddley showed me the first pot he's
Speaker 1: ever grown and harvested, uncapping glass jars of the fluffy
Speaker 1: herb before me to admire, and trotting us into the
Speaker 1: garden for a peek at his new baby plants. Well,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. What's your favorite flavor? Well, the red dots,
Speaker 1: the forbidden fruit. I mean I smoked that the most
Speaker 1: because the other ones I'm not sure if it's any good.
Speaker 1: In fact, today I probably should tried this blueberry muffet
Speaker 1: and see if business stony stuff or not. Now, the
Speaker 1: Adult Use of Marijuana Act in California was passed in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, allowing every adult to grow up to six plants.
Speaker 1: So let me describe what I'm seeing right now. Bob,
Speaker 1: my best friend's dad just pulled out a bong. By
Speaker 1: the way, he's a seventy year old first generation Chinese American,
Speaker 1: just pulled out a bong. Well, you didn't even like
Speaker 1: pull it out, it was just on the table. There
Speaker 1: he goes, he's just lit up the bong. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen a seven year old smoking out of a bong.
Speaker 1: And ever. Bob and Joanna Banana were never in the
Speaker 1: illegal pot smuggling world like my dad, but they both
Speaker 1: had interesting patributions to share. Side note, I'm a hobby neologist,
Speaker 1: one who makes up words like pttribution definition, a marijuana
Speaker 1: related contribution like this podcast, or a CBD gummy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the Bananas. As Bob proudly tended his garden bounty,
Speaker 1: Joanna Banana told me a fascinating story of an ill
Speaker 1: fated trip to Portavarta in her youth inspiring space for me.
Speaker 1: Lead the lead away, all right, let's go lead away
Speaker 1: and you will hear some bird singing. Now we'll get
Speaker 1: to that story in just a second. I'm Rainbow Valentine
Speaker 1: and this is disorganized crime smuggler's daughter, um free and
Speaker 1: groovy making it up. We roll along far Country, making
Speaker 1: it up as This story takes place in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: when Joanna had recently moved from the East Coast to
Speaker 1: San Francisco and her boyfriend was a guy named Jeffrey. Well,
Speaker 1: we're living in there. We are in the Hate, living
Speaker 1: across the street from the Hell's Angels. You know, we
Speaker 1: were hippies that to go to work, to get a job,
Speaker 1: you had to you had to pass as straight. So
Speaker 1: I had my hair, you know, up under a wig.
Speaker 1: I bought a wig, a blonde wig and Macy's, Oh
Speaker 1: my god. And I got this job at the holiday.
Speaker 1: Is that anyway? Jeffrey and I saved our money because
Speaker 1: we wanted to get out of town and go to Mexico.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey buys a surplus US Post Office white carryall van
Speaker 1: with windows all around on the engine in the front,
Speaker 1: perfect vehicle. I think we paid five hundred dollars for it.
Speaker 1: And I sew curtains to go on all the windows,
Speaker 1: and we put a bed in there. And we have
Speaker 1: all our cooking utensils and our money, a couple of
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. And we were leaving and we hit the
Speaker 1: road and we drive south, so Joanna and Jeffrey save
Speaker 1: their money and embark on what today social media calls
Speaker 1: hashtag van life. Mexico has always been a popular destination
Speaker 1: for hippies. It's cheap, it's warm, it's beautiful, it's easy
Speaker 1: to get to and anything goes in Mexico for the
Speaker 1: most part. And we are warned as we go into
Speaker 1: Mexico by other itinerant hippies to watch out for the
Speaker 1: federales because they are picking off hippies for drug charges
Speaker 1: because they feel that President Nixon has announced the war
Speaker 1: on drugs, and so rather than having to worry about
Speaker 1: Americans being arrested and molested and having their vehicles impounded,
Speaker 1: they know the US government is saying green light, go ahead,
Speaker 1: you know, bust these people per drugs. So we do
Speaker 1: not have a speck of marijuana in our truck. We
Speaker 1: are totally clean. We are on vacation. After a month
Speaker 1: of van life, they arrive in Port of Iyarta. Port
Speaker 1: of Iyarta, also known as Pev, a tropical beach haven
Speaker 1: on the West coast, is a popular tourism hotspot. Now.
Speaker 1: Several factors in the sixties and seventies transformed Pev from
Speaker 1: a village to a destination for travelers and expats. The
Speaker 1: most interesting factor being that John Houston's nineteen sixty four
Speaker 1: film Night of the Iguana, starring Elizabeth Taylor's soon to
Speaker 1: be husband, Richard Burton, was filmed nearby, and Elizabeth's on
Speaker 1: set presence garnered abundant American publicity, putting Port of Iyarta
Speaker 1: on the map for US tourists. I call my parents
Speaker 1: to talk about Port of Iyarta. I wanted to hear
Speaker 1: about their experiences. We've been a few times as a family,
Speaker 1: the most significant being the time I was bit by
Speaker 1: a scorpion on the hippie peninsula of Yallapa. So after
Speaker 1: Night of the Iguana came out, which was filmed at
Speaker 1: Mesveloia Beach, all the hippies would go down and hang
Speaker 1: out there. No only the semico ones, like there was
Speaker 1: like you know the pecking order of hippisk Yeah, the
Speaker 1: haydash Berry was the low end of the of the scene.
Speaker 1: The high end of the scene was the rockers and
Speaker 1: the smugglers and the they're entourage and their people and
Speaker 1: the pranksters and you know the committee, the all the
Speaker 1: entertainers from the right, so that strugglers from the Clowns.
Speaker 1: Back to Joanna Banana and her unfortunate Mexican adventure. We
Speaker 1: get to Portavaarta. We drive into town and it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful ocean front, little kind of paved road. It's completely
Speaker 1: quiet street because it's yes to time. Everything is closed
Speaker 1: and shut. And we look and we come to a
Speaker 1: corner and there is an open gate into a beautiful
Speaker 1: garden which is a restaurant, and we look and it's
Speaker 1: open and we see five or six men sitting together Americans,
Speaker 1: drinking beer. And we go in and we join them
Speaker 1: and we're having a lovely time. We order some food.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, how's this quiet? We hear this
Speaker 1: shrieking of brakes and a jeep post would stop in
Speaker 1: front of the gate that we had entered into the restaurant.
Speaker 1: Comes police, two policemen, and they say in Spanish, you
Speaker 1: know who owns that white truck around two blocks from here?
Speaker 1: And we kind of Jeffrey and I look at each
Speaker 1: other and we're like we do and they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: come with us. So she and Jeffrey are following the
Speaker 1: Federals to their van, and so we're standing there and
Speaker 1: they say, okay, unloaded. So we're like, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: so not me though, only Jeffrey. They only address everything
Speaker 1: to Jeffrey. Unload it, take everything out, and so we
Speaker 1: knew we had no drugs, nothing. So we're unloading. Jeffrey's
Speaker 1: unloading and the police keep telling him to go faster,
Speaker 1: hurry up, And each time he passes one of them
Speaker 1: to put something down, the guy knocks on his shoulder
Speaker 1: gives him a shove, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.
Speaker 1: And I'm standing going this is not going to go well.
Speaker 1: And Jeffrey had quite a temper when roused, and each
Speaker 1: time they shoved his shoulder, I was like, this is
Speaker 1: this is not going well. Sure enough, the third time
Speaker 1: the guy shoves him, Jeffrey hauls back and punches the
Speaker 1: policeman in the face. They pick him up bodily, throw
Speaker 1: him in the back of the jeep and drive away.
Speaker 1: And I'm standing in the middle of a beautiful bugin
Speaker 1: via lined alley, all my Bloggington Street, going what the
Speaker 1: fuck just happened? So I lock up the car, I
Speaker 1: walk back the two blocks. Our new friends are still
Speaker 1: drinking their beers and they're like, what happened? What happened?
Speaker 1: Where is he? What happened? So I was like, recounted
Speaker 1: what happened, and they start shaking their heads. He is
Speaker 1: in big shit trouble. You cannot punch a policeman in Mexico.
Speaker 1: This is, you know, worse than a drug best. So
Speaker 1: they said, you have to call Guadalajara to the consulate
Speaker 1: and let them know that he's been arrested, and you know,
Speaker 1: see if they can do something to get him out.
Speaker 1: Joanna rushes to find a telephone. It's nineteen seventy and
Speaker 1: there are only two telephones in the whole town, at
Speaker 1: city hall and the travel agency. And I talked to
Speaker 1: the travel agent. They got the consulate on the phone,
Speaker 1: and I talked to the officer there, recounted what had happened,
Speaker 1: and he was like, this is really bad. This is
Speaker 1: twenty years in the Painal in Guadalajara. He is you
Speaker 1: cannot let him get convicted of this because he will
Speaker 1: die in the Painal because Americans die there, they commit suicide.
Speaker 1: He will not last there. So Joanna has no idea
Speaker 1: how long Jeffrey will be in jail for, and if
Speaker 1: he's convicted, a likely outcome is his early death. There's
Speaker 1: no higher stakes. I'm Rainbow Valentine. This is disorganized crime.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, Okay, backing up, Here's a brief
Speaker 1: summary of cannabis history and law in Mexico. So Cannabis
Speaker 1: in the form of hemp was brought to Mexico by
Speaker 1: the Spanish in the sixteenth century and used to produce
Speaker 1: rope and textiles. By eighteen ninety eight, cannabis use was
Speaker 1: widespread in Mexico and used for recreation and as a
Speaker 1: pain remedy. Now eventually, Mexican elites devoted to Catholicism began
Speaker 1: to associate cannabis with the lower class peasants and criminals,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen twenty Mexico banned the production, sale, and
Speaker 1: recreational use of cannabis. Seven years later, they banned the
Speaker 1: export of cannabis triviatid bit. In the late nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the US government sponsored a program spraying paraquat, an herbicide
Speaker 1: toxic to humans and animals, on cannabis fields in Mexico.
Speaker 1: Pot poisoned with paraquat began to show up in US
Speaker 1: markets shortly after Good Times. Now to clarify Mexico run
Speaker 1: by upper class Catholics disliked anyone who questioned the church,
Speaker 1: which certainly includes hippies who tend to smoke pot and philosophize,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen seventy pot was totally illegal. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, Mexico decriminalized small amounts of cannabis, and
Speaker 1: in two seventeen, medical use of cannabis became legal. In
Speaker 1: two eighteen, the Mexican Supreme Court mandated that cannabis become
Speaker 1: legal within ninety days of that ruling, and today Mexico's
Speaker 1: recent cannabis legalization is limited, mostly because the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: is totally against medical and recreational pot. That's just my opinion.
Speaker 1: So Joanna goes to the jail, worried about what she
Speaker 1: might see. So we get let in, and what do
Speaker 1: we see. Sure enough, there's Jeffrey looking mollified in the
Speaker 1: little pail, and he said, I found out what happened.
Speaker 1: So we sit down and he tells me that there
Speaker 1: are two other Americans in the jail. He points the
Speaker 1: other guy. One is a tall, blonde surfer guy and
Speaker 1: he is laughing and having a great time with some
Speaker 1: friends joke. Another is a American who didn't pay his
Speaker 1: hotel bill for like six months, and he is a
Speaker 1: loco because he's a little out of it. So the
Speaker 1: three Americans, why did they come and make us unload
Speaker 1: the truck? Well, American number one, the surfer, had ridden
Speaker 1: into town in the identical truck, the white Dodge carryall
Speaker 1: same year, it's probably nineteen sixty five, and parked on
Speaker 1: the same road that we parked on along the water,
Speaker 1: not in the alley, and they curiously decided to bust
Speaker 1: him and look into what he had in his truck,
Speaker 1: and it was loaded with kilos of marijuana. It was
Speaker 1: the biggest drug bust in Porto Vallarta's history. Apparently, hashtag
Speaker 1: van life and hippies were all too common in Mexico
Speaker 1: in the seventies, leading to a classic case of mistaken identity.
Speaker 1: Joanna and Jeffrey's van, so thoughtfully decorated with hand zone curtains,
Speaker 1: was identical to another hippies who, unfortunately for Joanna and Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: was a huge pot smuggler, and the federales of Portavarta
Speaker 1: assumed that all hippies with matching vans were part of
Speaker 1: that same pot smuggling ring. Now, the local jail was
Speaker 1: a surprisingly pleasant place, but hanging over Joanna's head was
Speaker 1: the prospect of a conviction that would send her boyfriend
Speaker 1: to prison in Guadalajara, a hell hole in which Jeffrey
Speaker 1: would probably die, according to almost everyone. She calls the
Speaker 1: consulate official and he's like, Okay, the arrayment is going
Speaker 1: to be probably next week, and you're going to be
Speaker 1: in a courtroom and that's going to be a judge,
Speaker 1: and you have to come up with a good story
Speaker 1: why Jeffrey punched a policeman. This is what you should tell.
Speaker 1: You tell him that Jeffrey is the son of a
Speaker 1: senator and he has he's mentally ill, and he was
Speaker 1: causing a lot of trouble in the States, and the
Speaker 1: family asked you to take him out of the country
Speaker 1: to Mexico. And that's why he acted this way. He's
Speaker 1: mentally ill, and he you know, he would never know,
Speaker 1: no one, no one in their right mind, would ever
Speaker 1: punch a Mexican policeman. Please allow us to leave and
Speaker 1: I will take him out of port of Yata. And
Speaker 1: we are so sorry that we, you know, insulted the
Speaker 1: police by this action. And how much money do you have,
Speaker 1: by the way, so I said, a couple of thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: He said, well, he said, I think about a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: We'll do it. So he said, after you tell the
Speaker 1: judge this, you take the envelope with the money, and
Speaker 1: you push it towards the judge on the table discreetly,
Speaker 1: and you say, please, we are so sorry we caused
Speaker 1: all this trouble, and we hope that this will compensate
Speaker 1: for all this tuffle that we've caused. The town with
Speaker 1: a Spanish English dictionary, Joanna writes a monologue. Now luckily
Speaker 1: she's an actress and she knows this will be her
Speaker 1: most important role ever. The day comes and they bring
Speaker 1: in Jeffrey, who is now looking very thin and very sad.
Speaker 1: And you know, he knows he's facing twenty years in
Speaker 1: the payinal. This is not good. And so I, you know,
Speaker 1: his case is called, and I stand up in front
Speaker 1: of the big desk in front of the and I
Speaker 1: deliver my speech, you know, in Spanish. Please forgive him.
Speaker 1: He didn't know what he was doing. He's not in
Speaker 1: his right mind. He you know, he's had this problem before.
Speaker 1: He has hit other people, not you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I even surprise myself I am clasping my hands, I'm
Speaker 1: raising them in supplication to the judge. I am pointing
Speaker 1: to Jeffrey, which we had planned before, and I was like,
Speaker 1: when I get to the party, please forgive him and
Speaker 1: let him go. I'm going to point to you, and
Speaker 1: you are going to get down on your knees on
Speaker 1: the floor and you are going to beg like this,
Speaker 1: please let me go. So I'm crying. I literally have
Speaker 1: thrown myself into this performance. Tears are streaming to my face.
Speaker 1: He's crying. This drama's going on. The judge is looking
Speaker 1: very stirring, and I was like, okay, enough enough enough,
Speaker 1: I will reconsider. I will reconsider. And this is a
Speaker 1: very serious defense. And I could give him twenty years
Speaker 1: in the pain now, but because of the special circumstances,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, you know, and I have slipped him
Speaker 1: the money as well with the pleading, and I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: it's done. I paid the money, I gave you you apology.
Speaker 1: Instead of giving him twenty years in the pain now,
Speaker 1: I will only give him five. Well, then I really
Speaker 1: started crying because I knew, according to the all you know,
Speaker 1: the console like, he's not going to survive a year
Speaker 1: in the pain all So they're like, live, no, don't know,
Speaker 1: he'll never last. There was a ter this was real,
Speaker 1: this was not in act. So we're all, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, I will change I will change
Speaker 1: the sentence. I will allow you to be on a
Speaker 1: probation and you must take him out of Porta Vallarta
Speaker 1: by sunset and you may never return to Porta Vallarta again.
Speaker 1: So we're like we really it was like a reprieve.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you. We walk out of
Speaker 1: this court room, we go back to those tell we
Speaker 1: pack my few things. We drive out of town. We're
Speaker 1: still shaking. We park about ten twenty miles north of
Speaker 1: Porta Vayarta. We're out of town by sunset, we're not
Speaker 1: in Portavota city limits. And we realized that he just escaped,
Speaker 1: probably dying in a prison in Mexico. Fifty years after
Speaker 1: this tobacco, Joanna told me about a phone call she
Speaker 1: had with her daughter, my best friend, who was in
Speaker 1: Port Varta on vacation, telling Joanna about how nice it was.
Speaker 1: Joanna said it sounded like a good time, but she
Speaker 1: can never ever return there, even after half a century.
Speaker 1: She and Bob vacation in Cape cod Joanna's story is cautionary,
Speaker 1: reminding one to stay sober while traveling in countries with
Speaker 1: strict rug laws and attempt to maintain a moderately tidy
Speaker 1: not total hippie appearance while abroad, because many humans do
Speaker 1: judge a book by its cover. And finally we learn
Speaker 1: once again that in Mexico, it's a good idea to
Speaker 1: keep money on hand for police bribes. As far out
Speaker 1: story also illustrated hippies, also known as freethinkers or outside
Speaker 1: the box existers, were under attack from the corporate traditionalists
Speaker 1: at the top, trying to maintain order, their theoretical fingers bloody,
Speaker 1: trying to retain control amidst the uncontrollable chaos of the universe.
Speaker 1: Sound familiar, Yeah, It's a reoccurring pattern in human history
Speaker 1: and reminds me once again that I am a fucking hippie.
Speaker 1: I'm Rainbow Valentine, and this is Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter.
Speaker 1: Stay safe out there and be kind to each other.
Speaker 1: Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is written and recorded by me,
Speaker 1: Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are Gabby Watts and Taylor Church.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley and
Speaker 1: Me at School of Humans, and Connel Burn and Charles
Speaker 1: Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music is by Gabby Lala and
Speaker 1: Claire Campbell with original theme by Mark Karen and Me.
Speaker 1: You can follow us online at Disorganized Crime podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Story do It as Me, Stepend, Princess, The Handshake, Wrapt,
Speaker 1: Seal Meal, Load Up. These are bads rolling, Dooby, Young,
Speaker 1: rich and groovy, making it up. We roll along, Rolling
Speaker 1: along Far Country, Roll, Rolling along Far Country, Roll, Rolling
Speaker 1: along Far Country Roll