June 3, 2020 • 24 mins
Friend of the Lemur’s, Joanna Banana, divulges a stressful story of marijuana & mistaken identity in Mexico.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of humans. What is this is your year's supplant?
Is what you grew? This is what I grew in
the yard, And I'm embarking on another three plants right now.
(00:29):
While producing this organized crime, I stayed with various people
in northern California, and I recorded this while staying with
Bob and Joanna Banana, friends of my parents and parents
of one of my best friends. As join a banana
made tea, Bob Giddley showed me the first pot he's
ever grown and harvested, uncapping glass jars of the fluffy
(00:50):
herb before me to admire, and trotting us into the
garden for a peek at his new baby plants. Well,
this is awesome. What's your favorite flavor? Well, the red dots,
the forbidden fruit. I mean I smoked that the most
because the other ones I'm not sure if it's any good.
In fact, today I probably should tried this blueberry muffet
(01:10):
and see if business stony stuff or not. Now, the
Adult Use of Marijuana Act in California was passed in
twenty sixteen, allowing every adult to grow up to six plants.
So let me describe what I'm seeing right now. Bob,
my best friend's dad just pulled out a bong. By
(01:30):
the way, he's a seventy year old first generation Chinese American,
just pulled out a bong. Well, you didn't even like
pull it out, it was just on the table. There
he goes, he's just lit up the bong. I haven't
seen a seven year old smoking out of a bong.
And ever. Bob and Joanna Banana were never in the
(01:51):
illegal pot smuggling world like my dad, but they both
had interesting patributions to share. Side note, I'm a hobby neologist,
one who makes up words like pttribution definition, a marijuana
related contribution like this podcast, or a CBD gummy. Anyway,
(02:11):
back to the Bananas. As Bob proudly tended his garden bounty,
Joanna Banana told me a fascinating story of an ill
fated trip to Portavarta in her youth inspiring space for me.
Lead the lead away, all right, let's go lead away
and you will hear some bird singing. Now we'll get
(02:36):
to that story in just a second. I'm Rainbow Valentine
and this is disorganized crime smuggler's daughter, um free and
groovy making it up. We roll along far Country, making
(03:16):
it up as This story takes place in nineteen seventy,
when Joanna had recently moved from the East Coast to
(03:38):
San Francisco and her boyfriend was a guy named Jeffrey. Well,
we're living in there. We are in the Hate, living
across the street from the Hell's Angels. You know, we
were hippies that to go to work, to get a job,
you had to you had to pass as straight. So
I had my hair, you know, up under a wig.
I bought a wig, a blonde wig and Macy's, Oh
(04:01):
my god. And I got this job at the holiday.
Is that anyway? Jeffrey and I saved our money because
we wanted to get out of town and go to Mexico.
Jeffrey buys a surplus US Post Office white carryall van
(04:24):
with windows all around on the engine in the front,
perfect vehicle. I think we paid five hundred dollars for it.
And I sew curtains to go on all the windows,
and we put a bed in there. And we have
all our cooking utensils and our money, a couple of
thousand dollars. And we were leaving and we hit the
(04:47):
road and we drive south, so Joanna and Jeffrey save
their money and embark on what today social media calls
hashtag van life. Mexico has always been a popular destination
for hippies. It's cheap, it's warm, it's beautiful, it's easy
(05:08):
to get to and anything goes in Mexico for the
most part. And we are warned as we go into
Mexico by other itinerant hippies to watch out for the
federales because they are picking off hippies for drug charges
because they feel that President Nixon has announced the war
(05:31):
on drugs, and so rather than having to worry about
Americans being arrested and molested and having their vehicles impounded,
they know the US government is saying green light, go ahead,
you know, bust these people per drugs. So we do
not have a speck of marijuana in our truck. We
(05:52):
are totally clean. We are on vacation. After a month
of van life, they arrive in Port of Iyarta. Port
of Iyarta, also known as Pev, a tropical beach haven
on the West coast, is a popular tourism hotspot. Now.
Several factors in the sixties and seventies transformed Pev from
(06:15):
a village to a destination for travelers and expats. The
most interesting factor being that John Houston's nineteen sixty four
film Night of the Iguana, starring Elizabeth Taylor's soon to
be husband, Richard Burton, was filmed nearby, and Elizabeth's on
set presence garnered abundant American publicity, putting Port of Iyarta
(06:37):
on the map for US tourists. I call my parents
to talk about Port of Iyarta. I wanted to hear
about their experiences. We've been a few times as a family,
the most significant being the time I was bit by
a scorpion on the hippie peninsula of Yallapa. So after
Night of the Iguana came out, which was filmed at
Mesveloia Beach, all the hippies would go down and hang
out there. No only the semico ones, like there was
(07:01):
like you know the pecking order of hippisk Yeah, the
haydash Berry was the low end of the of the scene.
The high end of the scene was the rockers and
the smugglers and the they're entourage and their people and
the pranksters and you know the committee, the all the
(07:24):
entertainers from the right, so that strugglers from the Clowns.
Back to Joanna Banana and her unfortunate Mexican adventure. We
get to Portavaarta. We drive into town and it's a
beautiful ocean front, little kind of paved road. It's completely
(07:50):
quiet street because it's yes to time. Everything is closed
and shut. And we look and we come to a
corner and there is an open gate into a beautiful
garden which is a restaurant, and we look and it's
open and we see five or six men sitting together Americans,
(08:11):
drinking beer. And we go in and we join them
and we're having a lovely time. We order some food.
All of a sudden, how's this quiet? We hear this
shrieking of brakes and a jeep post would stop in
(08:34):
front of the gate that we had entered into the restaurant.
Comes police, two policemen, and they say in Spanish, you
know who owns that white truck around two blocks from here?
And we kind of Jeffrey and I look at each
other and we're like we do and they're like, okay,
(08:56):
come with us. So she and Jeffrey are following the
Federals to their van, and so we're standing there and
they say, okay, unloaded. So we're like, okay, you know,
so not me though, only Jeffrey. They only address everything
to Jeffrey. Unload it, take everything out, and so we
(09:18):
knew we had no drugs, nothing. So we're unloading. Jeffrey's
unloading and the police keep telling him to go faster,
hurry up, And each time he passes one of them
to put something down, the guy knocks on his shoulder
gives him a shove, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.
(09:39):
And I'm standing going this is not going to go well.
And Jeffrey had quite a temper when roused, and each
time they shoved his shoulder, I was like, this is
this is not going well. Sure enough, the third time
the guy shoves him, Jeffrey hauls back and punches the
(10:01):
policeman in the face. They pick him up bodily, throw
him in the back of the jeep and drive away.
And I'm standing in the middle of a beautiful bugin
via lined alley, all my Bloggington Street, going what the
(10:22):
fuck just happened? So I lock up the car, I
walk back the two blocks. Our new friends are still
drinking their beers and they're like, what happened? What happened?
Where is he? What happened? So I was like, recounted
what happened, and they start shaking their heads. He is
(10:44):
in big shit trouble. You cannot punch a policeman in Mexico.
This is, you know, worse than a drug best. So
they said, you have to call Guadalajara to the consulate
and let them know that he's been arrested, and you know,
see if they can do something to get him out.
Joanna rushes to find a telephone. It's nineteen seventy and
(11:07):
there are only two telephones in the whole town, at
city hall and the travel agency. And I talked to
the travel agent. They got the consulate on the phone,
and I talked to the officer there, recounted what had happened,
and he was like, this is really bad. This is
twenty years in the Painal in Guadalajara. He is you
(11:31):
cannot let him get convicted of this because he will
die in the Painal because Americans die there, they commit suicide.
He will not last there. So Joanna has no idea
how long Jeffrey will be in jail for, and if
he's convicted, a likely outcome is his early death. There's
(11:54):
no higher stakes. I'm Rainbow Valentine. This is disorganized crime.
We'll be right back, Okay, backing up, Here's a brief
(12:20):
summary of cannabis history and law in Mexico. So Cannabis
in the form of hemp was brought to Mexico by
the Spanish in the sixteenth century and used to produce
rope and textiles. By eighteen ninety eight, cannabis use was
widespread in Mexico and used for recreation and as a
pain remedy. Now eventually, Mexican elites devoted to Catholicism began
(12:46):
to associate cannabis with the lower class peasants and criminals,
and in nineteen twenty Mexico banned the production, sale, and
recreational use of cannabis. Seven years later, they banned the
export of cannabis triviatid bit. In the late nineteen seventies,
(13:06):
the US government sponsored a program spraying paraquat, an herbicide
toxic to humans and animals, on cannabis fields in Mexico.
Pot poisoned with paraquat began to show up in US
markets shortly after Good Times. Now to clarify Mexico run
by upper class Catholics disliked anyone who questioned the church,
(13:29):
which certainly includes hippies who tend to smoke pot and philosophize,
and in nineteen seventy pot was totally illegal. In two
thousand and nine, Mexico decriminalized small amounts of cannabis, and
in two seventeen, medical use of cannabis became legal. In
two eighteen, the Mexican Supreme Court mandated that cannabis become
(13:51):
legal within ninety days of that ruling, and today Mexico's
recent cannabis legalization is limited, mostly because the Catholic Church
is totally against medical and recreational pot. That's just my opinion.
(14:14):
So Joanna goes to the jail, worried about what she
might see. So we get let in, and what do
we see. Sure enough, there's Jeffrey looking mollified in the
little pail, and he said, I found out what happened.
So we sit down and he tells me that there
(14:38):
are two other Americans in the jail. He points the
other guy. One is a tall, blonde surfer guy and
he is laughing and having a great time with some
friends joke. Another is a American who didn't pay his
hotel bill for like six months, and he is a
loco because he's a little out of it. So the
(15:01):
three Americans, why did they come and make us unload
the truck? Well, American number one, the surfer, had ridden
into town in the identical truck, the white Dodge carryall
same year, it's probably nineteen sixty five, and parked on
(15:23):
the same road that we parked on along the water,
not in the alley, and they curiously decided to bust
him and look into what he had in his truck,
and it was loaded with kilos of marijuana. It was
the biggest drug bust in Porto Vallarta's history. Apparently, hashtag
(15:45):
van life and hippies were all too common in Mexico
in the seventies, leading to a classic case of mistaken identity.
Joanna and Jeffrey's van, so thoughtfully decorated with hand zone curtains,
was identical to another hippies who, unfortunately for Joanna and Jeffrey,
was a huge pot smuggler, and the federales of Portavarta
(16:08):
assumed that all hippies with matching vans were part of
that same pot smuggling ring. Now, the local jail was
a surprisingly pleasant place, but hanging over Joanna's head was
the prospect of a conviction that would send her boyfriend
to prison in Guadalajara, a hell hole in which Jeffrey
(16:28):
would probably die, according to almost everyone. She calls the
consulate official and he's like, Okay, the arrayment is going
to be probably next week, and you're going to be
in a courtroom and that's going to be a judge,
and you have to come up with a good story
(16:50):
why Jeffrey punched a policeman. This is what you should tell.
You tell him that Jeffrey is the son of a
senator and he has he's mentally ill, and he was
causing a lot of trouble in the States, and the
family asked you to take him out of the country
(17:11):
to Mexico. And that's why he acted this way. He's
mentally ill, and he you know, he would never know,
no one, no one in their right mind, would ever
punch a Mexican policeman. Please allow us to leave and
I will take him out of port of Yata. And
(17:34):
we are so sorry that we, you know, insulted the
police by this action. And how much money do you have,
by the way, so I said, a couple of thousand dollars.
He said, well, he said, I think about a thousand dollars.
We'll do it. So he said, after you tell the
judge this, you take the envelope with the money, and
(17:56):
you push it towards the judge on the table discreetly,
and you say, please, we are so sorry we caused
all this trouble, and we hope that this will compensate
for all this tuffle that we've caused. The town with
a Spanish English dictionary, Joanna writes a monologue. Now luckily
(18:20):
she's an actress and she knows this will be her
most important role ever. The day comes and they bring
in Jeffrey, who is now looking very thin and very sad.
(18:41):
And you know, he knows he's facing twenty years in
the payinal. This is not good. And so I, you know,
his case is called, and I stand up in front
of the big desk in front of the and I
deliver my speech, you know, in Spanish. Please forgive him.
He didn't know what he was doing. He's not in
(19:02):
his right mind. He you know, he's had this problem before.
He has hit other people, not you know, you know,
I even surprise myself I am clasping my hands, I'm
raising them in supplication to the judge. I am pointing
to Jeffrey, which we had planned before, and I was like,
when I get to the party, please forgive him and
(19:23):
let him go. I'm going to point to you, and
you are going to get down on your knees on
the floor and you are going to beg like this,
please let me go. So I'm crying. I literally have
thrown myself into this performance. Tears are streaming to my face.
He's crying. This drama's going on. The judge is looking
very stirring, and I was like, okay, enough enough enough,
(19:49):
I will reconsider. I will reconsider. And this is a
very serious defense. And I could give him twenty years
in the pain now, but because of the special circumstances,
and I'm thinking, you know, and I have slipped him
the money as well with the pleading, and I'm thinking, okay,
it's done. I paid the money, I gave you you apology.
(20:12):
Instead of giving him twenty years in the pain now,
I will only give him five. Well, then I really
started crying because I knew, according to the all you know,
the console like, he's not going to survive a year
in the pain all So they're like, live, no, don't know,
he'll never last. There was a ter this was real,
this was not in act. So we're all, okay, okay,
(20:35):
all right, all right, I will change I will change
the sentence. I will allow you to be on a
probation and you must take him out of Porta Vallarta
by sunset and you may never return to Porta Vallarta again.
(20:57):
So we're like we really it was like a reprieve.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. We walk out of
this court room, we go back to those tell we
pack my few things. We drive out of town. We're
still shaking. We park about ten twenty miles north of
Porta Vayarta. We're out of town by sunset, we're not
(21:18):
in Portavota city limits. And we realized that he just escaped,
probably dying in a prison in Mexico. Fifty years after
this tobacco, Joanna told me about a phone call she
(21:39):
had with her daughter, my best friend, who was in
Port Varta on vacation, telling Joanna about how nice it was.
Joanna said it sounded like a good time, but she
can never ever return there, even after half a century.
She and Bob vacation in Cape cod Joanna's story is cautionary,
(22:01):
reminding one to stay sober while traveling in countries with
strict rug laws and attempt to maintain a moderately tidy
not total hippie appearance while abroad, because many humans do
judge a book by its cover. And finally we learn
once again that in Mexico, it's a good idea to
(22:23):
keep money on hand for police bribes. As far out
story also illustrated hippies, also known as freethinkers or outside
the box existers, were under attack from the corporate traditionalists
at the top, trying to maintain order, their theoretical fingers bloody,
(22:44):
trying to retain control amidst the uncontrollable chaos of the universe.
Sound familiar, Yeah, It's a reoccurring pattern in human history
and reminds me once again that I am a fucking hippie.
I'm Rainbow Valentine, and this is Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter.
(23:05):
Stay safe out there and be kind to each other.
Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is written and recorded by me,
Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are Gabby Watts and Taylor Church.
Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley and
(23:25):
Me at School of Humans, and Connel Burn and Charles
Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music is by Gabby Lala and
Claire Campbell with original theme by Mark Karen and Me.
You can follow us online at Disorganized Crime podcast dot com.
(23:47):
Story do It as Me, Stepend, Princess, The Handshake, Wrapt,
Seal Meal, Load Up. These are bads rolling, Dooby, Young,
(24:13):
rich and groovy, making it up. We roll along, Rolling
along Far Country, Roll, Rolling along Far Country, Roll, Rolling
(24:33):
along Far Country Roll
School of humans. What is this is your year's supplant?
Is what you grew? This is what I grew in
the yard, And I'm embarking on another three plants right now.
(00:29):
While producing this organized crime, I stayed with various people
in northern California, and I recorded this while staying with
Bob and Joanna Banana, friends of my parents and parents
of one of my best friends. As join a banana
made tea, Bob Giddley showed me the first pot he's
ever grown and harvested, uncapping glass jars of the fluffy
(00:50):
herb before me to admire, and trotting us into the
garden for a peek at his new baby plants. Well,
this is awesome. What's your favorite flavor? Well, the red dots,
the forbidden fruit. I mean I smoked that the most
because the other ones I'm not sure if it's any good.
In fact, today I probably should tried this blueberry muffet
(01:10):
and see if business stony stuff or not. Now, the
Adult Use of Marijuana Act in California was passed in
twenty sixteen, allowing every adult to grow up to six plants.
So let me describe what I'm seeing right now. Bob,
my best friend's dad just pulled out a bong. By
(01:30):
the way, he's a seventy year old first generation Chinese American,
just pulled out a bong. Well, you didn't even like
pull it out, it was just on the table. There
he goes, he's just lit up the bong. I haven't
seen a seven year old smoking out of a bong.
And ever. Bob and Joanna Banana were never in the
(01:51):
illegal pot smuggling world like my dad, but they both
had interesting patributions to share. Side note, I'm a hobby neologist,
one who makes up words like pttribution definition, a marijuana
related contribution like this podcast, or a CBD gummy. Anyway,
(02:11):
back to the Bananas. As Bob proudly tended his garden bounty,
Joanna Banana told me a fascinating story of an ill
fated trip to Portavarta in her youth inspiring space for me.
Lead the lead away, all right, let's go lead away
and you will hear some bird singing. Now we'll get
(02:36):
to that story in just a second. I'm Rainbow Valentine
and this is disorganized crime smuggler's daughter, um free and
groovy making it up. We roll along far Country, making
(03:16):
it up as This story takes place in nineteen seventy,
when Joanna had recently moved from the East Coast to
(03:38):
San Francisco and her boyfriend was a guy named Jeffrey. Well,
we're living in there. We are in the Hate, living
across the street from the Hell's Angels. You know, we
were hippies that to go to work, to get a job,
you had to you had to pass as straight. So
I had my hair, you know, up under a wig.
I bought a wig, a blonde wig and Macy's, Oh
(04:01):
my god. And I got this job at the holiday.
Is that anyway? Jeffrey and I saved our money because
we wanted to get out of town and go to Mexico.
Jeffrey buys a surplus US Post Office white carryall van
(04:24):
with windows all around on the engine in the front,
perfect vehicle. I think we paid five hundred dollars for it.
And I sew curtains to go on all the windows,
and we put a bed in there. And we have
all our cooking utensils and our money, a couple of
thousand dollars. And we were leaving and we hit the
(04:47):
road and we drive south, so Joanna and Jeffrey save
their money and embark on what today social media calls
hashtag van life. Mexico has always been a popular destination
for hippies. It's cheap, it's warm, it's beautiful, it's easy
(05:08):
to get to and anything goes in Mexico for the
most part. And we are warned as we go into
Mexico by other itinerant hippies to watch out for the
federales because they are picking off hippies for drug charges
because they feel that President Nixon has announced the war
(05:31):
on drugs, and so rather than having to worry about
Americans being arrested and molested and having their vehicles impounded,
they know the US government is saying green light, go ahead,
you know, bust these people per drugs. So we do
not have a speck of marijuana in our truck. We
(05:52):
are totally clean. We are on vacation. After a month
of van life, they arrive in Port of Iyarta. Port
of Iyarta, also known as Pev, a tropical beach haven
on the West coast, is a popular tourism hotspot. Now.
Several factors in the sixties and seventies transformed Pev from
(06:15):
a village to a destination for travelers and expats. The
most interesting factor being that John Houston's nineteen sixty four
film Night of the Iguana, starring Elizabeth Taylor's soon to
be husband, Richard Burton, was filmed nearby, and Elizabeth's on
set presence garnered abundant American publicity, putting Port of Iyarta
(06:37):
on the map for US tourists. I call my parents
to talk about Port of Iyarta. I wanted to hear
about their experiences. We've been a few times as a family,
the most significant being the time I was bit by
a scorpion on the hippie peninsula of Yallapa. So after
Night of the Iguana came out, which was filmed at
Mesveloia Beach, all the hippies would go down and hang
out there. No only the semico ones, like there was
(07:01):
like you know the pecking order of hippisk Yeah, the
haydash Berry was the low end of the of the scene.
The high end of the scene was the rockers and
the smugglers and the they're entourage and their people and
the pranksters and you know the committee, the all the
(07:24):
entertainers from the right, so that strugglers from the Clowns.
Back to Joanna Banana and her unfortunate Mexican adventure. We
get to Portavaarta. We drive into town and it's a
beautiful ocean front, little kind of paved road. It's completely
(07:50):
quiet street because it's yes to time. Everything is closed
and shut. And we look and we come to a
corner and there is an open gate into a beautiful
garden which is a restaurant, and we look and it's
open and we see five or six men sitting together Americans,
(08:11):
drinking beer. And we go in and we join them
and we're having a lovely time. We order some food.
All of a sudden, how's this quiet? We hear this
shrieking of brakes and a jeep post would stop in
(08:34):
front of the gate that we had entered into the restaurant.
Comes police, two policemen, and they say in Spanish, you
know who owns that white truck around two blocks from here?
And we kind of Jeffrey and I look at each
other and we're like we do and they're like, okay,
(08:56):
come with us. So she and Jeffrey are following the
Federals to their van, and so we're standing there and
they say, okay, unloaded. So we're like, okay, you know,
so not me though, only Jeffrey. They only address everything
to Jeffrey. Unload it, take everything out, and so we
(09:18):
knew we had no drugs, nothing. So we're unloading. Jeffrey's
unloading and the police keep telling him to go faster,
hurry up, And each time he passes one of them
to put something down, the guy knocks on his shoulder
gives him a shove, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.
(09:39):
And I'm standing going this is not going to go well.
And Jeffrey had quite a temper when roused, and each
time they shoved his shoulder, I was like, this is
this is not going well. Sure enough, the third time
the guy shoves him, Jeffrey hauls back and punches the
(10:01):
policeman in the face. They pick him up bodily, throw
him in the back of the jeep and drive away.
And I'm standing in the middle of a beautiful bugin
via lined alley, all my Bloggington Street, going what the
(10:22):
fuck just happened? So I lock up the car, I
walk back the two blocks. Our new friends are still
drinking their beers and they're like, what happened? What happened?
Where is he? What happened? So I was like, recounted
what happened, and they start shaking their heads. He is
(10:44):
in big shit trouble. You cannot punch a policeman in Mexico.
This is, you know, worse than a drug best. So
they said, you have to call Guadalajara to the consulate
and let them know that he's been arrested, and you know,
see if they can do something to get him out.
Joanna rushes to find a telephone. It's nineteen seventy and
(11:07):
there are only two telephones in the whole town, at
city hall and the travel agency. And I talked to
the travel agent. They got the consulate on the phone,
and I talked to the officer there, recounted what had happened,
and he was like, this is really bad. This is
twenty years in the Painal in Guadalajara. He is you
(11:31):
cannot let him get convicted of this because he will
die in the Painal because Americans die there, they commit suicide.
He will not last there. So Joanna has no idea
how long Jeffrey will be in jail for, and if
he's convicted, a likely outcome is his early death. There's
(11:54):
no higher stakes. I'm Rainbow Valentine. This is disorganized crime.
We'll be right back, Okay, backing up, Here's a brief
(12:20):
summary of cannabis history and law in Mexico. So Cannabis
in the form of hemp was brought to Mexico by
the Spanish in the sixteenth century and used to produce
rope and textiles. By eighteen ninety eight, cannabis use was
widespread in Mexico and used for recreation and as a
pain remedy. Now eventually, Mexican elites devoted to Catholicism began
(12:46):
to associate cannabis with the lower class peasants and criminals,
and in nineteen twenty Mexico banned the production, sale, and
recreational use of cannabis. Seven years later, they banned the
export of cannabis triviatid bit. In the late nineteen seventies,
(13:06):
the US government sponsored a program spraying paraquat, an herbicide
toxic to humans and animals, on cannabis fields in Mexico.
Pot poisoned with paraquat began to show up in US
markets shortly after Good Times. Now to clarify Mexico run
by upper class Catholics disliked anyone who questioned the church,
(13:29):
which certainly includes hippies who tend to smoke pot and philosophize,
and in nineteen seventy pot was totally illegal. In two
thousand and nine, Mexico decriminalized small amounts of cannabis, and
in two seventeen, medical use of cannabis became legal. In
two eighteen, the Mexican Supreme Court mandated that cannabis become
(13:51):
legal within ninety days of that ruling, and today Mexico's
recent cannabis legalization is limited, mostly because the Catholic Church
is totally against medical and recreational pot. That's just my opinion.
(14:14):
So Joanna goes to the jail, worried about what she
might see. So we get let in, and what do
we see. Sure enough, there's Jeffrey looking mollified in the
little pail, and he said, I found out what happened.
So we sit down and he tells me that there
(14:38):
are two other Americans in the jail. He points the
other guy. One is a tall, blonde surfer guy and
he is laughing and having a great time with some
friends joke. Another is a American who didn't pay his
hotel bill for like six months, and he is a
loco because he's a little out of it. So the
(15:01):
three Americans, why did they come and make us unload
the truck? Well, American number one, the surfer, had ridden
into town in the identical truck, the white Dodge carryall
same year, it's probably nineteen sixty five, and parked on
(15:23):
the same road that we parked on along the water,
not in the alley, and they curiously decided to bust
him and look into what he had in his truck,
and it was loaded with kilos of marijuana. It was
the biggest drug bust in Porto Vallarta's history. Apparently, hashtag
(15:45):
van life and hippies were all too common in Mexico
in the seventies, leading to a classic case of mistaken identity.
Joanna and Jeffrey's van, so thoughtfully decorated with hand zone curtains,
was identical to another hippies who, unfortunately for Joanna and Jeffrey,
was a huge pot smuggler, and the federales of Portavarta
(16:08):
assumed that all hippies with matching vans were part of
that same pot smuggling ring. Now, the local jail was
a surprisingly pleasant place, but hanging over Joanna's head was
the prospect of a conviction that would send her boyfriend
to prison in Guadalajara, a hell hole in which Jeffrey
(16:28):
would probably die, according to almost everyone. She calls the
consulate official and he's like, Okay, the arrayment is going
to be probably next week, and you're going to be
in a courtroom and that's going to be a judge,
and you have to come up with a good story
(16:50):
why Jeffrey punched a policeman. This is what you should tell.
You tell him that Jeffrey is the son of a
senator and he has he's mentally ill, and he was
causing a lot of trouble in the States, and the
family asked you to take him out of the country
(17:11):
to Mexico. And that's why he acted this way. He's
mentally ill, and he you know, he would never know,
no one, no one in their right mind, would ever
punch a Mexican policeman. Please allow us to leave and
I will take him out of port of Yata. And
(17:34):
we are so sorry that we, you know, insulted the
police by this action. And how much money do you have,
by the way, so I said, a couple of thousand dollars.
He said, well, he said, I think about a thousand dollars.
We'll do it. So he said, after you tell the
judge this, you take the envelope with the money, and
(17:56):
you push it towards the judge on the table discreetly,
and you say, please, we are so sorry we caused
all this trouble, and we hope that this will compensate
for all this tuffle that we've caused. The town with
a Spanish English dictionary, Joanna writes a monologue. Now luckily
(18:20):
she's an actress and she knows this will be her
most important role ever. The day comes and they bring
in Jeffrey, who is now looking very thin and very sad.
(18:41):
And you know, he knows he's facing twenty years in
the payinal. This is not good. And so I, you know,
his case is called, and I stand up in front
of the big desk in front of the and I
deliver my speech, you know, in Spanish. Please forgive him.
He didn't know what he was doing. He's not in
(19:02):
his right mind. He you know, he's had this problem before.
He has hit other people, not you know, you know,
I even surprise myself I am clasping my hands, I'm
raising them in supplication to the judge. I am pointing
to Jeffrey, which we had planned before, and I was like,
when I get to the party, please forgive him and
(19:23):
let him go. I'm going to point to you, and
you are going to get down on your knees on
the floor and you are going to beg like this,
please let me go. So I'm crying. I literally have
thrown myself into this performance. Tears are streaming to my face.
He's crying. This drama's going on. The judge is looking
very stirring, and I was like, okay, enough enough enough,
(19:49):
I will reconsider. I will reconsider. And this is a
very serious defense. And I could give him twenty years
in the pain now, but because of the special circumstances,
and I'm thinking, you know, and I have slipped him
the money as well with the pleading, and I'm thinking, okay,
it's done. I paid the money, I gave you you apology.
(20:12):
Instead of giving him twenty years in the pain now,
I will only give him five. Well, then I really
started crying because I knew, according to the all you know,
the console like, he's not going to survive a year
in the pain all So they're like, live, no, don't know,
he'll never last. There was a ter this was real,
this was not in act. So we're all, okay, okay,
(20:35):
all right, all right, I will change I will change
the sentence. I will allow you to be on a
probation and you must take him out of Porta Vallarta
by sunset and you may never return to Porta Vallarta again.
(20:57):
So we're like we really it was like a reprieve.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. We walk out of
this court room, we go back to those tell we
pack my few things. We drive out of town. We're
still shaking. We park about ten twenty miles north of
Porta Vayarta. We're out of town by sunset, we're not
(21:18):
in Portavota city limits. And we realized that he just escaped,
probably dying in a prison in Mexico. Fifty years after
this tobacco, Joanna told me about a phone call she
(21:39):
had with her daughter, my best friend, who was in
Port Varta on vacation, telling Joanna about how nice it was.
Joanna said it sounded like a good time, but she
can never ever return there, even after half a century.
She and Bob vacation in Cape cod Joanna's story is cautionary,
(22:01):
reminding one to stay sober while traveling in countries with
strict rug laws and attempt to maintain a moderately tidy
not total hippie appearance while abroad, because many humans do
judge a book by its cover. And finally we learn
once again that in Mexico, it's a good idea to
(22:23):
keep money on hand for police bribes. As far out
story also illustrated hippies, also known as freethinkers or outside
the box existers, were under attack from the corporate traditionalists
at the top, trying to maintain order, their theoretical fingers bloody,
(22:44):
trying to retain control amidst the uncontrollable chaos of the universe.
Sound familiar, Yeah, It's a reoccurring pattern in human history
and reminds me once again that I am a fucking hippie.
I'm Rainbow Valentine, and this is Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter.
(23:05):
Stay safe out there and be kind to each other.
Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is written and recorded by me,
Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are Gabby Watts and Taylor Church.
Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley and
(23:25):
Me at School of Humans, and Connel Burn and Charles
Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music is by Gabby Lala and
Claire Campbell with original theme by Mark Karen and Me.
You can follow us online at Disorganized Crime podcast dot com.
(23:47):
Story do It as Me, Stepend, Princess, The Handshake, Wrapt,
Seal Meal, Load Up. These are bads rolling, Dooby, Young,
(24:13):
rich and groovy, making it up. We roll along, Rolling
along Far Country, Roll, Rolling along Far Country, Roll, Rolling
(24:33):
along Far Country Roll
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.