Latinas accuse marijuana company of cultural appropriation

A woman stands at a railing in front of a colorful mural

Sept. 17, 2020 5 AM PT

The story of the three Mexican sisters who broke into the cannabis industry started out like a fairy tale and ended up like a reality television show gone awry.

Maria was the oldest sister, “the plant whisperer of the familia,” who perfected cultivation techniques while tending her family’s sugar cane fields in Mexico. Sonia was the backbone of the business who learned to heal with plants and herbs as a child while following her abuelita around the family ranch.

Adriana, the baby of the bunch, had the fiery heart. Small but ruthless, she learned the art of negotiation and persuasion selling sugar cane at the market with her father. When the Del Rosario sisters launched their L.A.-based cannabis company this year, they named it La Chingona: The badass woman.

There was one problem. The sisters were the creation of Michael Kaiser, the owner and founder of healthcare and cannabis manufacturing companies. The sisters were at most a composite of the strong women in his life.

The rest was fiction.

Which Susie Plascencia — a public relations social-media marketer who focuses on the cannabis industry — found out to her great dismay.

There isn’t an abundance of cannabis brands focused on women — let alone run by them. So when the 30-year-old stumbled on what she thought was both in a single company, she said, she was intrigued.

“I am a Latina in cannabis and we are not represented,” Plascencia said. “Latinx culture isn’t represented in this way. I go to their website and I saw ‘La Historia de La Chingona’ sisters and I was like, ‘Wow! They’re Latino-owned and from Guadalajara, Jalisco! That’s where my family is from!’”

Non-Latinos have long gone after Mexican Americans’ spending dollars. But for Plascencia, the story of the Del Rosario sisters was more than just a marketing ploy concocted by a businessman to make his way into a profitable corner of the marijuana market.

La Chingona, she said, was deceptive and a blatant case of cultural appropriation. So Plascencia and a friend trained their digital sights on the company.

Kaiser wants you to know a few things. He might look like a white guy, but his grandmother, Sarah Ornales, was Mexican. She helped raise him in East L.A. And she was, indeed, kind of an inspiration for the brand and for the women Kaiser created out of thin air.

The 51-year old purchased Cannable Organics, Inc., a cannabis manufacturing company in Adelanto, Calif., about a year ago. He’d always wanted his own brands, he said, and he started brainstorming.

“Me and my sisters had often called our grandmother the ultimate chingona,” Kaiser said. He wanted a brand that would resonate with and celebrate strong women like her.

“As I thought around that concept, the light went off in my head that La Chingona was such a natural name,” he said.

Making the brand “Latino,” Kaiser insisted, was a secondary thought. “I envisioned that the word ‘La Chingona’ would connect with … women in general.”

Did he think the brand would appeal to Latinos? “I thought it might,” Kaiser said.

I didn’t think that anyone would believe that the legend story, the origin story, was factual.

— Michael Kaiser

Next came the tale. He thought back to his days in Boston, Mass. His roommate at Harvard Business School — where Kaiser attended the Owner/President Management program — was “a Mexican guy from Mexico” whose family owned a sugar plantation. He made that the setting of the sisters’ upbringing. As for the chingona trio, Kaiser said, he reflected on the women in his life. Maria and little Adriana were inspired by his grandmother, a fierce green thumb who’d prepare teas and remedies from herbs in her garden. Sonia the healer was a combination of his mother and sisters, all nurses.

As the brand’s look crystallized, everybody seemed to love it, Kaiser said. His slew of cannabis products, including concentrates and vape cartridges, were adorned with Dia De Los Muertos inspired-art and stamped with the tagline “Sinsemilla Mas Fina” and names like “Fiesta Flower,” “Caliente Budder” and “Siesta HCE,” a cannabis extract.

In April, Kaiser and his team published the sisters’ story on their website, just before launching the brand.

“I didn’t think that anyone would believe that the legend story, the origin story, was factual,” he said.

Column One

A showcase for compelling storytelling
from the Los Angeles Times.