#digital longform

Spending time with another family is like traveling to a foreign country. Each has its own culture, forged over generations. Unraveling that history is the work of a lifetime—hard to do with our own families, let alone a stranger’s.

The drug-smugglers of the Coronado Company transported massive amounts of marijuana with custom-built barges like this one from Maravia Corporation. Little did the women who built the rafts realize what they would actually be used for.

“Elsewhere in the barn were the new Maravias, 35-foot-long Kevlar barges they had bought for towing the pot back from the mother ship. Dave had them custom made; he told the Maravia sales agent that they would be used to transport cattle across the Rhine. Where Dave came up with that, he didn’t know. It was the kind of cover story that just rolled off his tongue by now, the instinctive cloak-and-dagger of a life built on anonymous P.O. boxes and money orders and answering services and forged identities.”

Read the whole story for free and explore exclusive multimedia artifacts in Coronado High by Joshuah Bearman, an incredible true story about California surfers who became drug kingpins. Sponsored by warbyparker.