by Elaine Carey
In the 1920s, American druggists maintained patients in violation of the law by selling items such as Dover’s Powder (which contained opium) in places like Elmira, New York, and Mobile, Alabama. They sold Godfrey’s Cordial (which also contained opium) over the counter to addicts, although its use had originally been for colicky babies.34 Some infants died from opium poisoning due to such remedies. In 1927, legally supplied addicts could be found in cities across the United States, much to the chagrin of social workers and narcotics officers. Treatment remained a viable option for these addicts, rather than criminalization. Congressman Stephen G. Porter, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the American delegation to the Geneva Opium Convention of 1925, criticized the new drug laws by arguing that
they contain no measure calculated to relieve those unfortunates who, through their own weakness of otherwise, have become victims of drug addiction, and to place them in a position where they may once again assume the responsible duties of citizenship. The treatment of those given to drug addiction, important as it is from a humanitarian standpoint, is equally, if not more, important in its relation to the clandestine and illicit traffic of narcotics.35
These types of complaints led to the development of “narcotics farms” for men and women to treat their addictions while prohibiting ambulatory care for addicts.36 Narcotics farms in the United States treated addicts in a residential setting. Of course, the farms also served as laboratories for scientists to study narcotics addiction and use.
Because international borders facilitated addicts’ ability to access drugs, reformers focused on more effective means of policing. In Tacoma, Washington, the Bureau of Social Hygiene reported that addicts traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, where they allegedly purchased as much heroin and morphine as they wanted.37 Despite Canada’s own early drug war and the imposition of control that began prior to similar action in the United States, Canada, like Mexico, captured the imagination of U.S. reformers as a source of supply and transshipment beginning in the 1920s. That idea continues to the present, with fears of Colombian drug lords exchanging cocaine for crystal meth in the 1980s or American psychologist Timothy Leary potentially convincing Canadian youth to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.”38
Coastal cities and those along the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders were key ports for transshipment. Borders also served as sites where the United States’ constructs of deviance grew more rigid, particularly with regard to the southern border in the wake of Prohibition (1920–1933). Along the borders, zones of tolerance welcomed U.S. business travelers and tourists to border towns where Americans could freely drink and engage in sex tourism. Cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and even Windsor, Ontario, became associated with vice. Parents’ organizations and women’s groups challenged the zones of tolerance that flourished on both borders.
In the 1920s, U.S. public health professionals wondered whether Mexican drug addiction and deviance was more a myth than a reality. Charles Edward Terry, who worked for the Bureau of Social Hygiene and conducted its 1927 study on narcotics use, claimed that in El Paso, few Mexicans consulted medical doctors and few used narcotics. Instead, he wrote,
The poverty of the patient and the disinclination of Mexican physicians to prescribe narcotics make for a very low Mexican legal per capita use. It is noticeable that prescriptions including narcotics issued to Mexicans, were in the large majority of cases, written by American physicians. It was also noted that the number of prescriptions was considerably less in the Mexican drug stores in proportion to their other trade than in the American drug stores, and that ratio of narcotic prescriptions to the general file of prescriptions in the Mexican drug stores was about one-half that obtaining in the American drug stores, although both Americans and Mexicans patronized Mexican drug stores. This feature was so outstanding that it is believed the legal use of narcotics for Mexicans was practically negligible.39
Terry appeared to blame American medical doctors for encouraging legalized addiction among Mexicans even though U.S. public health officials and narcotics policing agents ignored their historically low rates of drug use. Their nation’s low numbers of addicts compared to the United States was not lost on Mexican officials. Terry argued that Mexicans in El Paso turned to traditional methods to treat illnesses rather than seek out opiates. Even the U.S. Internal Revenue Service noted that the lowest levels of drug use in the 1920s occurred in those southwestern American states that directly bordered Mexico. The two coasts harbored the largest number of addicts: California and Washington in the West and Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia in the East. States along the Mississippi River also had more addicts than those states that bordered Mexico.40
Along with signing the conventions in the 1920s, Mexican officials also recognized that its trade policies regarding alcohol and drugs had to shift due to events that took place in the north. With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment inaugurating Prohibition, the United States purportedly went dry, and the U.S. temperance movement did not go unnoticed in Mexico.41 In Mexico, alcohol and distilleries remained legal, but the flow of its legal commodities across the U.S.-Mexico border, always a moderately lucrative trade, now generated greater profits. Prohibition created new organized crime networks in the United States that spread to cities and other locations where there had earlier been little evidence of organized crime. The growth of organized crime also triggered an increase in policing within the Department of the Treasury. That period of history continues to feed the popular imagination with films, television series, and books. The prohibition of alcohol in the United States triggered arrangements among various parties with regard to the trafficking of alcohol, but it also facilitated the rise of transnational criminal networks that later adapted to other revenue streams once alcohol was made legal again in 1933.
Upon attaining an agreement with Canada for greater control over the smuggling of booze, the United States sent a document to the Mexican president as well as a cover letter suggesting a similar agreement with Mexico.42 Mexico agreed to work closely with the U.S. Treasury Department in 1925 to prevent the illegal exportation of alcoholic products into the United States. Perhaps sensing business opportunities and revenues, government officials also allowed former U.S. distilleries and brewers to reincorporate in Mexico. For its part, the Canadian government refused to provide assurances to the U.S. government that it would prevent ships loaded with legally produced goods that were illegal in the United States to leave Canadian ports.43 Mexican and U.S officials met and established an agreement that regulated a variety of items including alcohol, narcotics, food products, and people. The two governments planned to cooperate with one another through customs to control narcotics.
As a signatory to the opium conventions, the Mexican government received reports about international seizures of opium and drugs from the League of Nations. Many of these took place in China and Europe, particularly in Germany.44 Although it is difficult to ascertain whether these reports played any role in the crackdown on foreigners in Mexico, by 1925 President Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–1928) had ordered the police department to arrest all narcotics users and dealers. He also demanded the immediate deportation of all foreigners in Mexico who were involved in trafficking and consumption.45 Calles also responded to U.S. ambassador James Rockwell Sheffield’s request to limit the importation and movement of Asian opium through Mexico and into the United States by smugglers, whether Chinese, American, or Mexican.46 In turn, on April 10, 1926, Diario Official, the official publication of Mexico’s executive branch, announced cooperation with the United States to control the importation of illegal items, including narcotics, and illegal immigration. Moreover, Diario Official reported:
It is the obligation of the U.S. and Mexico to prevent the smuggling of prohibited goods and to authorize that strict levees in accordance with the agreements of both parties be included in the prohibition of narcotics that can not be imported into Mexico, but under condi
tions that preserve our Health Act.47
Mexico participated in international conferences in which officials described the country’s legislative and punitive changes. At the 1926 First World Conference on Narcotic Education in Philadelphia, Consul Don Basilio Bulnes reported to the delegates that the importation of narcotics into Mexico was illegal except with special permission and only for medicinal purposes. Those who sought to import had to apply to the Department of Health for permission and maintain strict records. Drugs could only be imported through six ports: Progreso and Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico; La Paz and Mazatlán on the Pacific coast; and through the land ports of Nogales and Nuevo Laredo.48 He clarified that any products not collected from the customhouse went to auction, but only those with permission from the Department of Health could bid and purchase.
With regard to drug use, Bulnes reported that Cannabis indica, or “Indian hay,” was used only by “the lowest and worst type of people, and for that reason, perhaps, is the cause of many crimes.”49 Participants at the conference asked about the poppy that flowed north. Bulnes stated that he had heard of poppy cultivation in Sonora within the “big colony of Chinamen,” but that the government prohibited its cultivation and had stopped all opium production within the country.50 Perhaps to tweak the noses of those who blamed Mexico for the proliferation of opium, marijuana, and cocaine, Bulnes stated that he had heard that there had been attempts to cultivate poppy in New York’s Central Park. He stated: “So, in a place favored with such marvelous police protection as you have in New York, is it to be wondered that down in Mexico, in the desolation of our state there, that men can succeed in growing things against the law, and that the opium poppy can be cultivated there in defiance of the law? It is really unlawful in Mexico to cultivate, import, export, or manufacture opium.”51
Although Mexico had begun to control the flows of alcohol and drugs into and out of the country, the policies that it implemented in the 1920s continued to draw criticism from the United States. U.S. officials complained that prominent government officials had been involved in growing and producing drugs since the 1910s. U.S. customs agents reported that the governor of Baja California, General Esteban Cantú (1914–1920), had granted leases to opium producers and smugglers. He and his brother José, who worked for Mexican customs, as well as his father-in-law all financially benefited from revenues generated by opium traffickers.52 Cantú’s financial wealth from drug trafficking ensured that U.S. customs and treasury inspectors and officials routinely questioned the involvement of those in power with the drug trade.
To stem the introduction of narcotics and perhaps to dispute the public image of corruption, the Mexican government reported to international monitoring organizations that drugs on import licenses not claimed within the proper time were to be sold at public auction by the Importation Customhouse in Mexico City. Confiscated drugs illegally imported were also sold in the same manner.53 Mexican officials reported that fines from 25 to 5,000 pesos were imposed. At that time, the government did not require jail time, as opposed to the Harrison Act in the United States, which imposed a fine of $2,000 ($25,900 in 2012 dollars) and imposed a five-year prison term.54 The lack of an eradication policy for legal and illegal narcotics in Mexico as well as a lack stringent penalties for distribution of narcotics continued to be a source of ire for U.S. officials.
Mexican officials and scientists struggled against a host of problems that hindered nation building including syphilis, alcoholism, prostitution, and drugs. Politicians and social welfare activists continued to seek ways to lower rates of addiction and avoid producing more addicts. In universities and among medical professionals, nationalism infused the scientific community in its search for answers and treatments. On December 21, 1927, Dr. Demetrio López submitted a report to the Department of Health titled “Manifesto on Narcotic Substances That Are Not Habit Forming and Do Not Contribute to the Degeneration of the People” in which he outlined analogous pharmaceutical drugs that could be used in place of cocaine or opiates in medical settings to avoid addiction.55 Using the language that circulated in the rhetoric of the executive government and the Department of Health about the degeneration of the races, López’s research sought to improve the nation by using substances to treat illnesses that avoided provoking addiction among the people. The doctor recognized the need for narcotics to treat a host of ailments, but he, like most public health officials, saw addiction as contributing to a feeble nation. Like social workers and public health officials, people such as López sought to treat the ill to improve the collective social hygiene of the nation. Of course, attempts to seek analogous drugs often simply swapped one addiction for another, such as using heroin as a step down from morphine addiction.
Mexican authorities addressed the continued flow of drugs from a public health stance and to improve Mexico’s diplomatic standing in the world by modernizing the nation’s narcotics laws. But nation building and narcotics enforcement took on a potentially dangerous tone when race was injected into the public discourse. Public health officers studied the laws, policies, and changing criminological studies that were being promulgated worldwide. Criminologists, medical and public health professionals, and politicians debated revisions to Mexican policies in the pages of such publications as Eugénica: Boletín de la Sociedad Eugénica Mexicana para el Mejoramiento de la Raza, Eugenesia: Higiene y Cultura Física para el Mejoramiento de la Raza, and Criminologia.56 These academic publications connected narcotics use, race, and public health in the popular imagination of the educated and the elite.
Eugenics and drug use reinforced one another in North America. Experts argued that weaker races were far more prone to drug use, which thus endangered the health of the nation. The United States, in particular, informed much of this debate. The U.S. Treasury and later the Bureau of Narcotics placed greater pressure on the Mexican government to clean up its country, pushing notions of degenerate drug users. The concept of “degenerate” in Mexico mimicked the definitions used north of the border, infusing racialized social hierarchies.
FOREIGN MENACE
Tightening the laws regulating the production and distribution of narcotics did not stem the possibilities for economic advancement by some Mexican citizens willing to take risks. On both sides of the border, many could not resist the potential profits to be derived from illegal alcohol and drugs. By the 1920s, traffickers had found that, due to the upheaval of Mexico’s revolution and the lack of oversight at central ports, Asian opium easily entered Mexico and then could be moved north to supply the growing demand in the United States. In all three places, race, drug use, and trafficking easily reinforced one another.57
In the United States and Canada, drug use and criminal behavior reinforced concepts of “nation,” leading to a tightening of immigration laws during the 1920s. Ideas and theories about racial degeneration provoked by Chinese immigration and their alleged ability to intoxicate native-born Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans encouraged anti-Chinese sentiment as well as the equation of drug use with deviance. These tropes flowed across borders and informed policy and public health campaigns. In turn, all three countries began to associate drug use with the “otherness” of certain foreign immigrants, who, it was believed, brought their vices to North America and undermined nation building.
As in the United States and Canada, Mexicans were not immune to these racialized ideas that portrayed certain people as not part of their nation or its goals. Beginning in the 1920s, Mexican nativists associated Jews, Middle Easterners, and Chinese with deviance, drugs, and prostitution. These tropes infused scholarly and political debates. As the elite and ruling classes circulated racist and xenophobic narratives of deviance in their diplomatic and public health meetings, citizens’ groups embraced these discourses and developed their own campaigns against “the other.” Significantly, Mexican women appeared as both the victims of foreign degenerates and collaborators with them in the tainting of the nation when they married and bore children with f
oreign men who injected the nation with crime and vice.
As an example of these shared narconarratives of deviance, consider the following. In the United States, the passage of the Harrison Act in 1914 led to a crackdown on drug trafficking and traffickers. Some of these busts demonstrated that women were heavily involved in drug trafficking. In 1917, the Los Angeles Times reported that police had dismantled the largest transnational drug smuggling ring operating in the United States for violation of the Harrison Act.58 Police had earlier arrested Oscar Kirshon and Max Singer, two smugglers in New York City, who turned state informants by offering evidence. Their testimony led to the dismantling of what was claimed to be one of the most lucrative dope rings on the east and west coasts.59 That million-dollar-a-year (2012: $18,072,000) bicoastal enterprise moved heroin and opium from Canada and Mexico into California. With cooperation from the New York smugglers turned informants, authorities in California reported that they had taken into custody Charles Cohn, Louis Bernzaft, Max Steiner, Joseph Smith, Sam Levy, Alexander Gladstone, Max Silverstein, and Mrs. Eva Silverstein. During a raid of the Silversteins’ apartment, police discovered $60,000 (2012: $1,084,000) worth of morphine and heroin. The police reported that the drugs originated in both Canada and Mexico. The arrest of Eva Silverstein—the lone woman—garnered major media attention, and she was labeled the “queen” of the ring.60 The Los Angeles Times reproduced only her image, and not those of her colleagues. Using a portrait probably found during the raid, the newspaper showed Silverstein dressed in a shirt coat while resting her head to the left on her index finger, with her hair in tidy buns on either side of her head. She appeared more a union leader or a working-class suffragette than an international drug smuggler. Speculation about Silverstein’s role in narcotics trafficking led to the supposition that her husband was an addict, or perhaps she herself was.61
