Country-farmed marijuana - that cultivated in mass quantities, employing traditional methods, on extensive swathes of land - has a new queen: the proletarian weed known as “Cominera,” in honour of the village of this name near where it is grown in the foothills of the Colombian Massif, in the province of Cauca (Colombia).
With an average THC content ranging up to 18%, it features the reddish, compact and spicy buds of this South American sativa, whose gigantic plants - most towering over three meters high – absorb, in the plantations, the cold and rich waters flowing down from the glaciers of the nearby Nevado de Huila National Nature Park.
The path taken by “Cominera” to assume the throne of country-farmed marijuana was no easy one. It had a tough and difficult infancy, brought up on the remote and mountainous slopes controlled by the Colombian guerrilla group, the FARC. Normally these areas cannot be accessed by outsiders, and their peasants have historically struggled to eke out a living with coffee, yucca or maize plantations.
Now, by planting ganja, they're doing much better: their crops are not as sensitive to price drops, thus allowing them to lead more stable lives. It was the patient and expert hands of these farmers that, generation after generation, gave life to this queen of rural grasses. They did so with expertise, hard work and patience, taking traditional Colombian strains, like the hallucinogenic Punto Rojo and the Santa Marta Golden—whose buds hardly contained 1.5% or 2% of THC— and cross-fertilizing them with other strains from Europe and North America.
A farmer from the village of Cominera, tending to his plants. Courtesy of Luis Robayo. AFP.
The result? A highly productive sativa with compact reddish flowers and small, dense buds bursting with all the geological power of the Colombian Massif mountains, producing an intense high on the brain, which will take you to the borders of a psychedelic and hallucinogenic trip; an intense and very mental buzz, only suitable for experienced smokers. Now, when tasting it you will notice a very special flavour: hot and spiced evoking the torrid streets of New Delhi at three in the afternoon.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to enjoy a hit of this proletarian THC queen. Its illegality, geographical distance, and the remoteness of the territories where it grows, controlled by the FARC, prevent the international distribution of this strain. But not all the news is bad. Numerous “coffee shops” in Amsterdam already have its neighbour on their shelves: the “Corinto” weed, produced in a nearby town and already catalogued as Premium product.