# Speedy Gonzales & Drug Abuse **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 13, 2000, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145 "2000-02-13T01:33:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/1 "2000-02-13T01:33:00Z")
I saw an old “Speedy Gonzales” cartoon the other day, and one of the mice was singing, to the familiar tune of “La Cucaracha.” It went something like this: "La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha! [Unintelligible Spanish] Porque no tiene, Porque no tiene, Marijuana para fumar." The translation of the last two lines is: “Because he doesn’t have marijuana to smoke.” Clearly, some snide animators pulled a fast one on not only the Warner Brothers sensors, but also the company that now syndicates the old cartoons. The question is this: Is “La Cucaracha” actually about marijuana? Does somebody have a full translation? If it’s not about mowie-wowie, then what’s it about? ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/2 "2000-02-13T01:40:00Z")
It’s about cockroaches, boiling in a pot. Peace, mangeorge * * * I only know two things; I know what I need to know And I know what I want to know Mangeorge, 2000 ---
**Author:** ![Commander\_Fortune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Commander\_Fortune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Commander_Fortune)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/3 "2000-02-13T01:43:00Z")
The lyrics to “La Cucaracha” tranlated from altavista Babelfish: > [@](#): > > The cockroach the cockroach, the cockroach No longer wants to walk because the lack (2x) marijuana that to smoke murio the cockroach Already the i weighs to bury Between four buzzards and a mouse of sacristan ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/4 "2000-02-13T01:45:00Z")
It’s about cockroaches, boiling in a pot. Here’s da woids; [http://www.nexus.hu/kolumbusz/lacucaracha.html](http://www.nexus.hu/kolumbusz/lacucaracha.html) Peace, mangeorge * * * I only know two things; I know what I need to know And I know what I want to know Mangeorge, 2000 ---
**Author:** ![Commander\_Fortune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Commander\_Fortune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Commander_Fortune)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/5 "2000-02-13T02:24:00Z")
That’s kind of curious. mangeorge: The lyrics you linked to are not the lyrics I found on a search that took me here [http://www.danmansmusic.com/childrens/la\_cucaracha.txt](http://www.danmansmusic.com/childrens/la_cucaracha.txt) which are translated above. The lyrics on the site you linked to translates (At Babelfish) as: > [@](#): > > The cockroach, the cockroach, no longer wants to walk, because it does not have, because him lack money to spend. A pinto cockroach! It said to him to a red one: vámonos for my tierre, to spend the season. All the girls have in the eyes two stars, but the mejicanitas of insurance are more beautiful! The cockroach, the cockroach, no longer wants to walk, because it does not have, because him lack money to spend. Neither seem to have anything to do with roaches boiling in a pot. What an odd little song. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/6 "2000-02-13T02:38:00Z")
IIRC, “cockroach” is also slang for “prostitute”. * * * “Age is mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” -Leroy “Satchel” Paige ---
**Author:** ![Commander\_Fortune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Commander\_Fortune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Commander_Fortune)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/7 "2000-02-13T02:45:00Z")
Then it makes a little more sense why “La Cucaracha” wouldn’t walk with him who lacks money to spend. I guess. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/8 "2000-02-13T02:48:00Z")
## “Neither seem to have anything to do with roaches boiling in a pot.” —Commander Fortune Heh heh. Yeah you’re right. Sorry, I kinda dropped an inside joke here. When I was a teenager growing up in Bakersfield, a friend liked to make up his own words to songs. He was actually pretty good at it. Anyway, his song started like this: La cucaracha, la cucaracha See them boiling in the pot La cucaracha, la cucaracha Be sure to eat them while they’re hot And on, and on… By the way, cockroaches used to run Bakersfield. Had their own mayor and everything. Peace, mangeorge ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/9 "2000-02-13T04:56:00Z")
**La Cucaracha** is a folk song with quite a few variants. Finding “the” correct version of the song is pretty nearly impossible at this point. I looked over the various links, here, (and did a couple of searches, myself) and noticed something interesting: whenever a translation is provided, the translation deliberately obscures the actual text. (The link **mangeorge** found appears to be an attempt to clean it up in Spanish. No other site provides those lyrics.) The following couplet _porque no tiene, porque le falta marijuana que fumar._ means because he does not have, because he lacks marijuana to smoke. Any other translation is a bowdlerization. Period. (some versions list the first line as _porque no tiene, porque no tiene_ while others supply _porque le falta, porque le falta_ but in either case, the meaning does not change, only the expression. This link matches my memory of the history, but it has an obvious bias: [http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/first12000/11.htm](http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/first12000/11.htm) One untranslated version: [http://www.elmariachi.com/songs/la\_cucaracha.asp](http://www.elmariachi.com/songs/la_cucaracha.asp) One translated version that modifies the text to euphemistically refer to the “roach.” [http://ingeb.org/songs/lacucara.html](http://ingeb.org/songs/lacucara.html) At any rate, no one sabotaged the Warner Brothers film. The lyrics presented were the correct ones, either in ignorance of or despite the knowledge of the meaning of those lyrics. * * * Tom~ ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/10 "2000-02-13T15:49:00Z")
Hijacking my own thread??? I can understand how this would have gotten past the Warner Brothers censors in the 60’s, but nowadays Spanish is taught in many American elementary schools. Not to mention the fact that there are so many Hispanic immigrants in this country. I guess what I’m asking is, why does the syndicate continue to distribute this? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/11 "2000-02-13T16:45:00Z")
SWAGs: The song is sufficiently well known that bowdlerizing the voiceover would actually call more attention to it than just letting it go; W-B doesn’t re-review the tapes on a regular basis and Wildmon and his lackeys haven’t noticed it, yet; Wildmon (or his lackeys) either don’t know Spanish or don’t bother to review tapes from the period before the early 1970’s (when in their opinion, the godless secular humanists set out to corrupt America). * * * Tom~ ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/12 "2000-02-13T17:05:00Z")
The story at the “druglibrary” link pretty much fits my recollections. My own first experiences with pot (called “boo” by the beatnics), were with aging beatnics and mexicans. Boy, the stuff was really lousy back then. Peace, mangeorge ---
**Author:** ![occ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8c91f0/32.png) [@occ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/occ)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/13 "2000-02-13T17:29:00Z")
Also, even in the 30’s (when these cartoons would have first been made), wasn’t “marijuana” already commonly known? The only other term I can think of that people would have used to refer to it back then was “reefer”. Hmm. Anyway, my point: in the 1930’s, anti-marijuana hysteria was at its peak, and it seems very unlikely that an animator would sneak the word in as a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_Bowe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2000, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/14 "2000-02-14T06:08:00Z")
The song was very popular in the early days of the Mexican Revolution and became identified with Pancho Villa. I wonder if a Mexican peasant whistling “La Cucaracha” was as irritating to the invading U.S. soldiers under John Pershing as an Irish peasant was whistling “By The Rising of the Moon” around British soldiers. Long story short when the revolution started to really get hot a lot of folks fled the country and settled on the U.S. side of the border(El Paso doubled population between 1910 and 1920 as one result). Those settlers brought that song with them. I remember it from growing up in South Texas. Mangeorge remembers a friend making a satire of it in Bakersfield. The familarity of the song is probably the reason it showed up in a cartoon produced in LOS ANGELES. ---
**Author:** ![Sweet\_Basil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4bbf92/32.png) [@Sweet\_Basil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sweet_Basil)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/15 "2000-02-13T19:45:00Z")
I think Speedy Gonzales was introduced in the 1950’s. He was not extant in the 1930’s. Sweet Basil ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/16 "2000-02-13T22:13:00Z")
But my otherwise puritanical Spanish teacher enjoyed teaching us the original lyrics in the 1960’s. * * * Tom~ ---
**Author:** ![melanietarrant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/898d66/32.png) [@melanietarrant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/melanietarrant)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2000, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speedy-gonzales-drug-abuse/7145/17 "2000-02-14T00:09:00Z")
i feel so foolish! i was taught completly different lyrics to that song when i was in second grade. i learned(what translates into) the cockroach, the cockroach doesn’t want to travel because he doesn’t have because he lacks lemonade to drink ## i feel so deceived. I’m pink therefore I’m Spam