Friday 28 December 2012

Why is the piece of cardboard you put in the end of a joint called a roach?


In 1836 Texas was an independant country, and was at war with Mexico. Mexico then owned much of what today is part of the USA, California for example. This is the reason why so many places in that part of America have Spanish names: Los Angeles, San Fransisco, etc.

The 1836 war is famous for the Battle of the Alamo where a handful of Texan patriots, including the likes of Dave Crockett and Daniel Boone, were besieged in a small mission station by a vastly superior Mexican force, and eventually slaughtered to the last man. This led to the USA joining the war against Mexico, Texas becoming part of the US, and Mexico losing a good deal of its territory to the States.

The Battle of the Alamo is much more famous in the States than over here; and arouses the sort of emotion that historical events like the Black Hole of Calcutta* used to arouse in this country before, for rather obvious reasons, we had to stop talking about that all sort of thing.

The Mexican General at the Alamo was called Santana, and it's a very commonly said that "at the Alamo Santana's men were all high on marijuana". It's a way of explaining the reckless courage and ferocity displayed at the final assault by the otherwise notably unenthusiastic Mexican soldiers.

To be fair, marijuana use in the Mexican army at the Alamo was probably no greater than in the Mexican army at any other point in the nineteenth century. That is to say pretty near universal, in the lower ranks at least. Life in any army of that period was likely to be nasty, brutish and short. But the one concession allowed the enlisted (or conscripted) soldier was a liberal supply of whatever cheap and socially acceptable intoxicant was around. In Europe, it was alcohol; in Mexico, cannabis.

A favourite Mexican army marching song from the time of the Alamo contains the following verse:-

                                 La Cucaracha, la Cucaracha
                                 Se no puede caminar;
                                 Perque no tiene, perque no tiene
                                 Maria-Juana por fumar.

(Lit: The cockroach, the cockroach he can't walk around; because he hasn't got, because he hasn't got marijuana to smoke).

The Texans picked up on this song (it's quite catchy, it's to the 'Speedy Gonzales'-type tune that everyone thinks of when they think of Mexican music) and by association cannabis cigarettes became known as 'roaches'.

The Yanks roll joints a bit different to us (or at least they used to): they roll neat grass in single skins, adding neither baccy nor a rolled up bit of cardboard at the gob end. Instead they used to use miniature tong type things called 'roach clips' so that you could smoke the very last bit of your Acapulco Gold or whatever without burning your fingers.

I'm speculating here, but it seems logical that at some point, prob in the 1960's, a Brit and a Yank sat down to smoke a bit of dope and the elegant metal clip holding the American's tiny neat weed single-skinner was seen to be performing the same function as the rolled up bit of Rizla packet jammed in to one end of the Brit's tarry Rothman-and-three-skins contraption. As the bit of Rizla obviously isn't a clip, and the 'roach clip' obviously is; by a process of elision the bit of cardboard became known as 'the roach', in this country at least.

Incidentally the Mexican term 'Gringo' as a perjorative epithet for Americans comes from the same period. A favourite American marching song was "Green Grow The Rushes-oh!", from which the Mexicans took the word immortalised in a thousand crap westerns: "Hey, Greengo! We come to keeeell you!"

* Never heard of it, have you? Shame on you!

No comments:

Post a Comment