In my post the other day about the activity table I bought for Madame, I mentioned "La Cucaracha" and linked to the lyrics on El Mariachi.com. At the time I didn't notice, but last night I saw that the last line of the first verse is, "Marijuana que fumar."
Say what now? Is that right or is someone over at El Mariachi.com busting my gringo huevos? Apparently not only is it correct, but the Mexican folk song that kids all over the US learn, the song that made it's way onto my kid's Fisher Price learning table, is about a cockroach who can't go on a trip because he's fresh out of pot, weed, kind-bud, chronic, or whatever else the kids are calling it these days. I had my wife ask her Mexican-American coworker about it who said that yes, the song was about getting high, but they didn't teach it to school kids in Mexico like they do here. Maybe that's why I've never heard Dora sing it.
Here's the lyric (as translated by "Cecil Adams" of the Straight Dope):
La cucaracha, la cucaracha
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marijuana que fumar.(The cockroach, the cockroach
Now he can't go traveling
Because he doesn't have, because he lacks
Marijuana to smoke.)
La Cucaracha lyrics [El Mariachi.com]
What are the words to "La Cucaracha"? [The Straight Dope.com] A very good, detailed explanation of this weird "Spanish equivalent to Yankee Doodle."