When I was growing up in South Florida in the '70s and '80s, it seemed like—whether that person was on the law enforcement side, the criminal side, or often times straddling both—everyone knew someone who knew someone in the drug game. So I was familiar with the cocaine-fueled drug wars that played out on our streets, even if much of what I knew was a combination of hearsay, myth, and actual reportage. In 2006's mesmerizing Cocaine Cowboys and its 2008 sequel, documentarian Billy Corben exhaustively covered the story, talking to former dealers, smugglers, and cops about the reality behind the tales perpetuated by movies like Miami Vice and Scarface. Stories about Miami's marijuana trade were relatively less well-known. Corben remedies that with his pot triptych, Square Grouper. Though South Floridians are familiar with the titular term, most others who know it at all probably heard it in Cocaine Cowboys, where it was first uttered by smuggler Mickey Munday. There he used the street slang to describe bales of reefer found at sea after smugglers abandoned them while evading the law.
