Workers’ Weed: Cannabis, Sugar Beets, and Landscapes of Labor in the American West, 1900–1946

During the first half of the twentieth century in the American West, Mexican and Mexican American farm workers grew and used Cannabis, the marijuana plant, to help navigate the physical, mental, and economic struggles they faced as exploited itinerant laborers. Their stories show that, while the capitalist framework of the agricultural landscape kept workers pinned to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, the landscape itself provided spaces where they could use traditional knowledge of Cannabis to climb that ladder, albeit illegally. The ensuing interactions between workers, plants, and the agricultural landscape gave birth to an illicit trade that remains culturally, economically, and environmentally relevant in the West today