Dreamland: Part 1: All About the 501s Summary & Analysis

The Xalisco Boys refine their system in the 1990s. They emphasize no violence, which stands in contrast to other drug gangs, like the Bloods and Crips, who deal crack cocaine in Los Angeles. The Xalisco Boys build and expand their business in opposition of these violent tactics. Polla, a Mexican man in his 40s operating out of Boise, is a part of this expansion. 

Ed Ruplinger, a narcotics investigator in Boise, becomes interested in the Xalisco Boys as he starts arresting more and more Mexican traffickers selling heroin out of their cars. These dealers are easy to arrest, but they never serve time because, as Dennis Chavez also noted, they carry such small amounts of heroin. Ruplinger realizes that all these dealers are from Nayarit, and he sees how quickly arrested drivers are replaced with new men.

Ruplinger identifies Polla as the cell’s boss. The cell operates successfully in Boise until Christmas 1996, when a post office’s drug-sniffing dog reacts to a package that contains a Santa Claus doll filled with black tar heroin. The narcotics team follows the package to its delivery address and busts a group of clean-cut Mexican men sorting through heroin. All of these men are from Nayarit and bear the last name Tejeda. This seizure marks the beginning of the end of Polla’s reign in Boise. However, Polla’s cell is almost immediately replaced by a new group of dealers and drivers from Xalisco.

In researching Dreamland, Quinones comes across a woman who was married to one of Polla’s drivers. She tells him how her husband helped Polla form a new cell in Salt Lake City before breaking off from him and starting a competing cell in Boise. She also notes that the Xalisco Boys especially enjoyed using their drug money to purchase Levi’s 501s, which were a sign of wealth among young men in Xalisco. The Xalisco Boys acquired these jeans from addicts who would trade shoplifted jeans for drugs. The woman goes so far as to claim that “this thirst for Levi’s 501s […] is part of what propelled the Xalisco system as it began to expand out of the San Fernando Valley.” Quinones compares the men’s consumerism to a junkie’s addiction to dope: “just as an addict couldn’t choose not to use dope, these men couldn’t not return to sell it.”

Ruplinger can’t keep up with all the new cells popping up. Eventually, he wiretaps Polla’s phones and gains new insight into the extent of Polla’s businesses, which extend to Portland, Salt Lake, and Honolulu. Ruplinger notes how “massive and connected the Xalisco network [i]s,” as well as Polla’s practice of “just-in-time supply” and his emphasis on quality customer service. By 1997, Boise hosts a half-dozen Xalisco crews. In addition, Ruplinger’s wiretaps reveal that Polla runs other crews all across the Western U.S.