Post by estebans on Dec 25, 2013 12:14:36 GMT -5
Some of you will recall a digression happening on this topic in the 2004 movie thread, where I related Joseph Milton Nance's mention of Harvey A. Adams saying that some of the Somervell volunteers "became intoxicated with mescal, marihuana, and aguardiente which they had found stored in some of the houses in Laredo" (Attack and Counterattack 516). I misplaced the notes I took from skimming through Isaac Campos' recent book Home Grown: Mexico's War on Drugs after that, just turned them up: Looks like a good book, but disappointing for information on RoT-era marihuana use, because Campos was not able to find much textual evidence from Mexican and Spanish sources before the late 19th century, either. It is mentioned as being in use for divination by Indians in the mid-18th century, and then he couldn't find any published references until the 1840s; one of these is a Mexican Farmacopea, from 1844 IIRC, and the other is a report of an outbreak of military laziness in 1846. However, Campos felt that marihuana use goes oddly unmentioned in first-person accounts from the U. S. intervention, but as I think I said earlier, I would have to wonder whether many in the invasion force could have identified marihuana use in their vicinity, the more so if what Ulysses S. Grant says in his memoirs about incessant and ubiquitous tobacco smoking by the Mexican population is true. One interesting point Campos found is that ready-made tobacco cigarette manufacturing in Mexico dates clear back to the beginning of the 18th century; although the earliest mention he found of Mexicans making "blunts" by hiding marihuana in tobacco cigarettes dated to 1914, the practice might go back much further.
Campos says that non-religious marihuana use seems to emerge on the Pacific coast first, which of course doesn't help with our questions about the Texas borderlands, and when there comes a spate of "reefer madness" articles in late 19th century Mexican newspapers, it centers on use in the military and in prisons. I think I mentioned that reprints of some of those pieces in the Texas press are easy to find if you search "marihuana" at the Portal to Texas History. Campos characterizes this period up through prohibition as a "discourse of degeneration," with the issues of race and class that are familiar from the U. S. press in the same period. One thing Campos seemed to be making a conscientious investigation of was the physiological possibility that the combination of the anxiety/paranoia-inducing effects attributed to the indica strain of cannabis--which makes better rope and thus was the variety spread by the Spanish--might have interacted with some of the other indigenous psychoactive stuff like pulque, etc., to cause genuine psychotic episodes, not just made-up reefer madness, but he didn't seem to arrive at anything conclusive from what he could find in worldwide medical literature. (IIRC it was indica rather than sativa, apologies if I have that the wrong way around.)
And that was about it, far as I noticed: Tantalizing but frustrating, like that one mention from the Somervell expedition. Marihuana seems to have been sold for recreational purposes in Mexico in the nineteenth century, but doesn't figure in official records because it wasn't illegal yet, or taxed like tobacco. Campos seems to have tried reasonably hard to find evidence on the origin of recreational use there, but simply didn't find anecdotal evidence, anymore than there seems to be in Texas. It makes me wonder if the literate segment of the Mexican people at that time viewed the indigenous population much as Anglos viewed Tejanos in Texas--not knowing much about them and not bothering to find out. If not illegal, a recreational adaptation of an indigenous aid to visionary rituals could take a while to make it into the historical record if it could be concealed by tobacco smoking. It would be interesting if there were more than one instance in Texian accounts of the period; just the fact that some members of the Somervell expedition knew what to do with the stashes they found in Laredo suggests that there's more to the story. I didn't get around to looking into what historians say about recreational use around the hemp industry in the early United States, which actually might explain what happened in Laredo--maybe there were some volunteers who were familiar with the stuff from back in the States.
Anyway, folks might watch for any other mentions in contemporary Texian memoirs, or early statehood accounts. Maybe there's a story to be discovered there.
Stephen Schneider
Campos says that non-religious marihuana use seems to emerge on the Pacific coast first, which of course doesn't help with our questions about the Texas borderlands, and when there comes a spate of "reefer madness" articles in late 19th century Mexican newspapers, it centers on use in the military and in prisons. I think I mentioned that reprints of some of those pieces in the Texas press are easy to find if you search "marihuana" at the Portal to Texas History. Campos characterizes this period up through prohibition as a "discourse of degeneration," with the issues of race and class that are familiar from the U. S. press in the same period. One thing Campos seemed to be making a conscientious investigation of was the physiological possibility that the combination of the anxiety/paranoia-inducing effects attributed to the indica strain of cannabis--which makes better rope and thus was the variety spread by the Spanish--might have interacted with some of the other indigenous psychoactive stuff like pulque, etc., to cause genuine psychotic episodes, not just made-up reefer madness, but he didn't seem to arrive at anything conclusive from what he could find in worldwide medical literature. (IIRC it was indica rather than sativa, apologies if I have that the wrong way around.)
And that was about it, far as I noticed: Tantalizing but frustrating, like that one mention from the Somervell expedition. Marihuana seems to have been sold for recreational purposes in Mexico in the nineteenth century, but doesn't figure in official records because it wasn't illegal yet, or taxed like tobacco. Campos seems to have tried reasonably hard to find evidence on the origin of recreational use there, but simply didn't find anecdotal evidence, anymore than there seems to be in Texas. It makes me wonder if the literate segment of the Mexican people at that time viewed the indigenous population much as Anglos viewed Tejanos in Texas--not knowing much about them and not bothering to find out. If not illegal, a recreational adaptation of an indigenous aid to visionary rituals could take a while to make it into the historical record if it could be concealed by tobacco smoking. It would be interesting if there were more than one instance in Texian accounts of the period; just the fact that some members of the Somervell expedition knew what to do with the stashes they found in Laredo suggests that there's more to the story. I didn't get around to looking into what historians say about recreational use around the hemp industry in the early United States, which actually might explain what happened in Laredo--maybe there were some volunteers who were familiar with the stuff from back in the States.
Anyway, folks might watch for any other mentions in contemporary Texian memoirs, or early statehood accounts. Maybe there's a story to be discovered there.
Stephen Schneider