It had the lowest ratio of rowdiness to size that I'd seen in a march, but what it lacked in signs and noise it made up for in smiles. It was the Marcha Mundial de la Marihuana -- division Buenos Aires.
Saturday afternoon the smell of joints and the muffled sound of a march lured me out to the balcony. As we ran downstairs to join the action, we passed the doorman, who broke from his conversation with a cop momentarily, "Ah, vas a..." "a fumar un porro!" we answered laughing. What's one pig gonna do up against eight thousand potheads, right?
Everything felt different. Instead of flyers, they passed joints. Instead of high-rising clouds of fireworks, there were low-rising clouds of pot smoke. Instead of jumping up and down and keeping pace with the drum beats, they walked slow and looked around a lot. Instead of loud banging drums and amplified yells attacking your conscience, muffled and discordant chants could be found. The revolutionary newspapers and magazines were replaced by stands of hemp patches and pipes, and one burned-out lady selling cotton candy. Everyone had their sunglasses, and the skaters had their skateboards. In an instant, a dude walking his bike in front of the a row of marchers holding a bandera got distracted, and suddenly the bandera and the bike were one. Everyone stopped and laughed. Normally such a disruption may have detracted from the march, but today it only added to it. I think the most movement I saw all day was when an ambulance passed through a nearby intersection and everyone jolted to a halt to locate the source of the sirens, stashing their cigs in their pockets.
It was like no demonstration I'd been to. If you weren't already high, the altered state of the march was enough to make you feel high. Or maybe it was the contact smoke. I'm not going to go into why marijuana should be decriminalized, legalized, and utilized, because I don't want to insult the intelligence of my audience. Here are the pics.
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