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Manuel was a poor but hard-working farmer who lived in the high mountains of the Sierra Madre del Sur, some hundred miles west of Oaxaca. Although the few acres of land he owned just barely yielded enough corn to support him and his wife and their five children, Manuel managed, and because Manuel managed he gained a reputation for being a practical man.
One day a fellow named Juan visited Manuel and said to him:
“Manuel, I hear you are a practical man. If you would let the marijuana plants grow in between your rows of corn, I would pay you for the marijuana crop at harvest time.”
To Manuel this seemed like a crazy idea, for marijuana was just a weed and a nuisance at that. But the pesos this man Juan had promised were very attractive indeed and Manuel was, after all, a practical man.
So Manuel let the weeds grow in between the rows of corn, and all summer long they grew, until they were even taller than the corn.
At harvest time when all the plants were cut and bundled to dry,
Juan came again, but this time he came in a big truck. Manuel watched the man pluck off some of the ragged-edged leaves, roll them up into a cigar and light it. After a few hits, Juan smiled.
“It is a good crop,” he told Manuel.
Twenty kilos were loaded into the truck and Juan paid Manuel a thousand pesos (about $80 in American money), which was much, much more than Manuel had ever received for a harvest of corn.
Now, Manuel was a practical man. As he watched Juan’s truck drive away down the dusty road, he could feel something happening to him deep inside. It was a thought; a thought was coming into his head, and he turned to look at his fields. Then he looked to where Juan’s truck was disappearing in the distance, loaded with weed. Finally he looked down at the bundle of peso notes in his hand, and Manuel had but one thought, and the thought was this: