DK how accurate it is, but I've read that the marijuana verse ("La Cucaracha, Ya no puede caminar, Porque no tiene, porque le falta marijuana por fuma" -- "The Cockroach can't walk because he doesn't have any marijuana to smoke") was about the outlaw and mercenary Pancho Villa and not exactly an endorsement of marijuana use. (The same song talks about how funny Villa looks with his shirt off.) (I've also read, alternatively, that "La Cucaracha" was Villas old rattletrap of a truck.

When I do the song at senior residences, I semi-jokingly tell them that the song is about Pancho Villa, who was called "The Cockroach" and who had a drug problem.

And I sing one of the verses as
"Pancho Villa, he's a cockroach,
He's an outlaw, he's a thug.
Pancho Villa going nowhere:
He can't move without his drugs."

This doesn't mean I think the marijuana verse needs to be included when the song is done for or by school kids. (The Danhoff, Nivert, Denver song "Take Me Home, Country Roads" has been altered in some grade school music books to change "misty taste of moonshine" to "misty haze of moonlight," and that seems innocuous enough.)


Thompson, your info about cheap tobacco also being a possible referent of "marijuana" is interesting, but in a setting like a school, without the background being explained on every occasion, I think I'd just use "tamer" lyics.

My sister, when she used to sing this song to her young kids, would sing the chorus as:

"La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha,
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Fina ropa por llevar." (Because he doesn't have a nice shirt to wear.)

Genie