The historic Highway 101, the so-called “drug highway,” connects California’s Emerald Triangle. There, seasonal marijuana laborers or “trimmers” look for work on farms along a 250-mile stretch along a route that has served as a clandestine artery for drug trafficking into Mexico since the 1970s. The financial media outlet Business Insider estimates that some 150,000 people travel each season to these mountains, where 60% of the cannabis consumed in the United States is grown. Waiters, lawyers, teachers, street vendors… Young and old, with or without higher education, grab scissors to cut marijuana for three months, using the money they earn to pay for rent, medical treatment, or master’s degrees.

Isabel, 26, had already donated three eggs to pay for her driver’s license and buy a car when she was 21. She was tired of smiling for eight hours for tips as a waitress in a bar in San Sebastián, Spain. She couldn’t make many plans for the future. On one of her days off, which she usually spent drinking coffee and chatting with friends, one of them suggested: “Let’s go to California. In three months we’ll make $10,000 harvesting marijuana, and then we’ll come back.”

Five years later, she explains by phone that she has just concluded her journey to the United States. Requesting anonymity like the rest of the interviewees, she is one of that small, invisible army of Spaniards who decide to cross the pond to work on illegal cannabis farms located in Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino counties in northern California. “I have a friend who saw a guy killed right in front of him in Covelo [Mendocino] because they thought he had stolen weed. And an Italian friend who was shot in the chest and stabbed because he entered the wrong farm at night high. He survived because he was taken to the hospital by helicopter,” she says.

Nature overflows into the scattered towns of the Emerald Triangle and protects the marijuana havens. The hippie communities of the 1970s, many of which have now become a kind of cannabis cooperative, saw in this fertile land and in the invisibility afforded by the enormous sequoia trees a perfect alternative to urban life. Thus began this unstoppable industry for California sheriffs. Although the “white spots” — greenhouses where the trimmers work — are recognizable among the valleys as one enters the mountains, the Marijuana Enforcement Team Operation (MET), the special Humboldt unit dedicated to dismantling illegally operating plantations, is unable to burst the bubble. Only when they deploy helicopters can they dismantle some of the farms, uproot the plants, and burn them.

According to data from the Unified Cannabis Enforcement Taskforce (UCETF) website — a department created in 2022 to eradicate the illegal marijuana trade in California — nearly $600 million worth of unauthorized cannabis was seized in 2024, 583,000 plants were eradicated, and 167 firearms were confiscated in 380 operations. Since 2016, marijuana use has been legal in California for those aged over 21. The law does, however, limit the amount that can be carried (one ounce, or about 28 grams) and the amount that can be grown: six plants and only for personal use.

The legalization of recreational marijuana has nearly wiped out small farmers and sown the seeds for score-settling and disappearances. Sett, on his family farm in Eureka, recalls: “My grandfather used to pay seasonal workers a lot more. They screwed me over because I have to compete with legal companies and traffickers. If I want to legalize my production, I have to give 30% of my profits to the state, and another 15% goes to the trimmers’ salaries. It’s impossible; it’s not profitable for me.”

Around 20 day laborers work on his farm each season to harvest an investment of about $500,000 in marijuana. That’s why many join cooperatives to increase profits in the legal market. Although some continue to sell on the black market.

According to the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), an organization founded in 1995 that promotes cannabis legalization, the United States has raised more than $20 billion from the legal cannabis industry in the last 10 years. These figures are supported by Reuters reports. According to the agricultural consulting firm Era Economics, 1.4 million pounds (635,000 kilograms) of legal cannabis were produced in California in 2024, while total consumption in the state was 3.8 million pounds (1.7 million kilograms).

The peak period for labor is between September and January. During these months, U.S. cooperatives and small producers, along with networks from Mexico, Russia, Albania, Bulgaria, and China, harvest their crops on land that is often rented. They require a significant amount of labor for two types of tasks: harvesting, where the plant is cared for and cut, earning around $100 a day; and trimming, the final step before marijuana enters the legal or illegal market. Here, the buds are trimmed, cleaned of branches and leaves, and packaged in 453-gram (one-pound) bags.

Between 2000 and 2021, when the Hmong communities — the Chinese ethnic group who are the fastest in the trade with a pair of scissors — had not yet taken root, nor had Eastern European mafias or Mexican cartels burst into these mountains, trimming was remunerated at more than $300 per bag.

Five years ago, on the best farms, the price was barely $150. Despite this, a young Spaniard earned more than the minimum monthly wage in Spain in four days. Now, cannabis taxes and the impact of the black market have set the range between $30 and $80 per pound. A novice trimmer can make two bags in five hours, depending on their skill with school-sized scissors whose curved tips shape the bud.

Isabel had everything planned: which airports to avoid, which visa to obtain, and where to open a bank account. “My parents weren’t happy about it, but for me it was an opportunity. It has its risks, and there are a lot of sons of bitches who don’t pay you,” she says now. She borrowed money and landed in California. “Sleeping in a sleeping bag in those freezing temperatures, depending on someone who has a car, constantly trimming… It was a huge change. Not everyone is cut out for this,” she explains. In her first four seasons, she made $4,000 in three months. Far from the $10,000 she had imagined. “What they don’t tell you is that many of the farms don’t have hot water or a place to cook or sleep. But the weed is usually awesome and it’s worth it,” she recalls.

Redondo, 32, also heard from a friend that the solution to the family’s ruin lay in California. He first came from Toledo, in central Spain, to the Emerald Triangle when he was 26. Before cutting marijuana for Russians, Americans, and Mexicans, he worked as a waiter and kitchen assistant in London, sold contracts for energy company Iberdrola door-to-door for €15 ($17) an hour in Castilla-La Mancha, and was a lifeguard in Mallorca, where he also worked at a catering company. All this to pay for a €2,000 ($2,276) bartending course that never led him anywhere. In less than three months, the time limit set on the tourist visa (ESTA) for Spaniards on U.S. soil, he returned with $5,000. But it wasn’t enough. He returned twice more.

Garberville was his first stop. Psychedelic murals decorate the facades of local buildings and businesses, serving as a trading point for the belongings of trimmers returning home. It’s also common to find posters of those who have gone missing in the mountains. EL PAÍS tried unsuccessfully to contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department to find out the number of marijuana-related disappearances. The regional newspaper North Coast Journal reported in 2018 that between 2000 and 2016, there was an average of 717 missing persons per year, many of them related to the illegal cannabis industry.

On one side of Garberville’s main road, which bisects the town, Ray’s Food Place emerges, the supermarket’s parking lot serving as an employment office. Groups of “trimmigrants,” easily recognizable by their baggy pants, worn sweatshirts, old t-shirts, and muddy boots, await their next job. Days, even weeks, in which they kill time between American Spirit cigarettes, joints, and conversations recounting their experiences on the farms, giving rise to new WhatsApp groups. Nights where they learn to sleep on the asphalt accompanied by tweakers or vagrants who have lost their minds to methamphetamine. The routine is always the same: breakfast in the parking lot and waiting for a farmer (owner) to roll down the window of his dusty pickup truck and ask, “Do you want to work?”

During this initial meeting, conditions are agreed upon, such as access to a bathroom, food, or where to pitch the tent. “The first year, you agree to anything. You don’t ask how much the weed weighs, how many trimmers there are, or how long you’ll be there. You grab your sleeping bag and go. You’re so desperate that all you think about is making money. They brought us trays of methamphetamines to keep us working,” Redondo recalls.

Isabel agrees that desperation can play tricks on you in the mountains, where there’s hardly any cell phone coverage. “If I saw I could be in danger, I’d leave,” she emphasizes, recalling how a Mexican boss grabbed a female companion by the neck when she tried to trick him with a pound weight: “I couldn’t do anything. The first thought is to throw myself at them, but then you see the weapons and think it’s better to do nothing. Just scream.”

Redondo also felt a cold sweat break out all over his body several times: “We were trimming in Eureka. Suddenly, the farmer came in high on drugs, saying we had stolen a submachine gun to get his marijuana. He took us all outside and emptied our cars and suitcases. He made two Argentinians kneel. He held a shotgun to their heads. They were crying and begging him not to kill them. When I tried to mediate, he made me walk and pointed it at my back. That’s when I thought: it’s over. But another trimmer found the gun inside the house, and it all came to nothing.”

Marijuana farms follow a clear hierarchy. At the top are the farmers, who own the land and make the rules. One step below are the growers, in charge of organizing the work and agreeing on the conditions with the trimmers, who occupy the bottom rung. The boss’s rule varies depending on who you work for.

Russians avoid any trickery by weighing each pound before and after. Mexicans, Bulgarians, and Albanians prefer chaos: they place a plastic bucket overflowing with marijuana in the middle of the room, from which each seasonal worker takes what they can, which generates conflict over who gets the heaviest share. Because the slower one is, the more money the other makes. Americans, unpredictable, alternate between rigidity and disorder. On the vast majority of farms, bags are signed with each seasonal worker’s ID to avoid fights.

The insecurity in the Emerald Triangle doesn’t stem solely from those with guns. Lacking papers and health insurance, seasonal workers often pose as homeless people in order to receive hospital care. “They know you’re a trimmer. They’re used to it, like the police. You sign a document saying you’re living in your car parked on a random street, and they treat you,” explains Redondo, who for two months had a “large, infected cut that wouldn’t heal” on his hand.

Those returning to the Emerald Triangle after having to leave the U.S. because their visas expired avoid American airports. Thus, all trimmers have a phone number for someone named Coyote, Guillermo, or Juan at Mexican customs who reopens the doors. Isabel, Redondo, and Unai (33) always returned through the endless stretch of Tijuana border crossing after almost using up their 90-day visa.

While “stripping weed” during his first season, Unai learned that Mexican customs would stamp passports for $100 on “any date you want.” “The key is to cross the border on foot or by car and not use up all the days on your visa, in case they ask you something when you enter the United States,” he explains in a video call.

He has trimmed buds on more than 20 farms in three years, sometimes “with up to 100 people at a time” and in very precarious conditions. “My days were work, work, and work. And I stopped as little as possible to eat. But even when I didn’t trim for four or five months, I made more money that year than in Spain,” he explains.

Like so many others, many of the farmers didn’t pay him for his work, but that hasn’t stopped him from buying land in Cancún. He’s not afraid. He assures us he’ll return in the coming months: “If I hadn’t gone, I wouldn’t have what I have today.”

Before returning, some trimmers agree with farmers to continue their work in Spain, especially in Catalonia and Andalusia. Last year, the Mossos d’Esquadra (the Catalan regional police) dismantled 439 plantations, 56 of which were farms like those in California, which are declining due to the drought affecting the region. In 2021, the Mossos dismantled more than 200 such facilities.

Ramón Chacón, head of Criminal Investigation for the Mossos, nods when the landscape of tents, trimmers, and criminal networks in Eastern Europe and China is described to him. He explains that half of the more than 2,000 seasonal marijuana workers they arrest each year are “young Spaniards working in appalling conditions, with no criminal record and unaware that they are part of a criminal organization.”

Only in Catalonia are more drugs seized than in Italy. Chacón recalls the case of Pol Cugat, a young university student murdered more than three years ago while guarding a plantation in Les Borges Blanques (Lleida) with three friends, whose body disappeared: “They came to report it, and when we got to the farm, the body was gone. We’re still investigating.”

The Mossos d’Esquadra mapping reveals that the greenhouses are increasingly moving toward the Pyrenees to hinder the search. “The paradox is that the drug we view most favorably is the one that is causing the most homicides, the most organized crime, the most human trafficking, the most drug robberies, and the most kidnappings,” says Chacón, who points out that they have awarded a contract to three companies worth €334,700 ($382,420) to clear the plantations.

Son (40) picks up his phone to be interviewed. He’s in Spain, at a beach bar. The music pierces the phone’s microphone during the conversation. He returned from California in February. He’s been going to the same American farms in Humboldt and Trinity for 10 years. The most he’s ever earned was $54,000 in nine months, not including food, hotels, and leisure travel.

“That stuff about making $10,000 in three months is a lie. You make $4,000 if you’re lucky. I know a lot of people who came with an idea for their projects and didn’t get anywhere near it,” he stresses. He doesn’t recommend anyone venture into the mountains of the Emerald Triangle now. The marijuana business has changed, it’s become more obscure, and current prices don’t match the sacrifice, he says. “Now what makes the money is hashish,” he explains.

— So why are you going back?

— I’m only going for a couple of months, with my usual bosses. It’s a way to be free and not be a slave to society. If you’re a good worker, it’s like any other job. The American dream is within each of us.

Isabel isn’t considering a return: “I want to get away from that world. Travel and work in Europe with my truck, which is what I’ve always wanted.” Redondo says the money he earned in California gave him freedom, a cushion, and the ability to help his parents. “But you’re very scared because it seems like this is going to be your life. And you ask yourself: Do I really have to do this? What I want is to spend time with my family and friends.”

— What if the need reappeared?

— Ask a soldier if he would go back to war.

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