“Avocados have destroyed my country,” Mexican-German photographer and filmmaker Axel Javier Sulzbacher writes in a Washington Post op-ed. The son of a Mexican mother, whose second home is the “avocado capital” Uruapan, describes in the text how the avocado plantations in the area have completely displaced the pines and guavas. However, the security situation has also changed along with the landscape.
“The once ordinary city is now plagued by corruption, violence and terror. (…) My relatives face kidnappings and threats on a daily basis. And for what? So people in other countries can dip Dorritos into guacamole while watching American football?” Sulzbacher asks in the commentary.
In addition, the success of avocados on the world market is not reflected in the standard of living of the local population, almost half of whom live below the poverty line.
The allusion is not accidental. The United States is the largest buyer of Mexican avocados, and the country always reaches its highest consumption during the Superbowl final. In 2023, Americans ate an estimated 139 tons of avocado during the sports holiday, mainly in the form of guacamole. Consumption of the crop has quadrupled in the last decade compared to the 1990s and continues to grow.
United States Avocado
The origin of the drug cartels’ growing interest in tropical fruits can be traced back to the end of the last century in the United States. It wasn’t until 1997 that the Department of Agriculture lifted the ban on the import of Mexican avocados into the US, and the dark green fruit dubbed a “superfood” became a hit.
The reason for the ban, which had been in place since 1914, was mainly due to concerns about pests and fungi that could threaten American crops. But Washington returned to the short stop of imports in February 2022, coincidentally a few days before the already mentioned Superbowl.
This time, however, the suspension of exports was not due to the concerns of American farmers, but directly to the food inspectors who supervise imports. According to the AP agency, several of them faced threats from the cartels, which, in addition to drugs, also focused on tropical fruits.
Mexico is currently the world’s largest exporter of “green gold”, a fact that even the local underworld has noticed. Avocado exports to the United States alone were worth over three billion US dollars last year.
Hell called Michoacán
The Mexican region of Michoacán, which accounts for more than 75 percent of Mexico’s avocado production, saw the greatest increase in crime. The state in the southwest of Mexico, with an area larger than the whole of Croatia, has become a paradise for criminal cartels, which have begun to collect burning fees derived from the cultivated area from local farmers, or outright kidnap them.
The most active in this regard was the brutal Los Viagras gang, which became famous for publishing footage of torture and murder on social networks. Each of the farmers had to pay the gang from three to five thousand pesos (between 3,500 and 5,000 crowns in 2021) per hectare of their crop.
Farmers thus began to procure illegal weapons on a large scale with the help of middlemen in the United States. Over time, the group Pueblos Unidos (United Towns) was formed to defend farmers from violence by cartels. Immediately in several smaller towns, however, members of the militia formed after the expulsion of Los Viagras took over business and weapons, and they became just another armed group blackmailing farmers, as the El País newspaper documented the situation.
Meanwhile, the larger cities of the region have become the site of a struggle between the Jalisco-New Generation cartel and its rivals. “In Michoacán, the agricultural boom and the money associated with it have generated a particular dynamic of violence,” academic Irene Álvarez, who has been studying the region for a long time, told El País. Pueblos Unidos brought “peace” to the area, which over time turned into a disaster, Álvarez said.
Murders of political leaders and environmental activists and their families are common in the area, i.e. those who try to prevent the further expansion of avocado plantations. Farmers and city leaders are worried about the lack of water for other crops and extensive deforestation due to the demand of avocados for irrigation, so the whole problem also has an ecological dimension.
Not just avocados
Violence by cartels and armed groups drives thousands of people out of the region each year, and some villages and smaller towns have turned into ghost towns. Up to half of the refugees from Michoacán try to reach the United States, the rest head to northern Mexican regions.
Moreover, the success of avocados on the world market is not reflected in the standard of living of the local population, almost half of whom live below the poverty line (that is, they earn less than $2.15 a day). This is another motivation to leave the region and try your luck elsewhere.
In addition, cartels are beginning to establish themselves in other areas of agriculture and forestry, where, similar to the case of avocados, they influence almost every step of production. In addition, criminal organizations in Colombia and other countries are starting to get involved in the business of avocados, but also, for example, limes or peaches, the Telegraph warns.
“The case of avocados from Michoacán is no different from many other cases in the world where products and goods come from areas where crime and environmental crime occur,” analyst Romain Le Cour told Insight Crime. A researcher at the UN’s Global Initiative against International Organized Crime (GITOC) then recommends in a report that the European Union “ensure that imported goods do not come from illegal entities” as part of the agreement with Mexico.
“Currently, avocados are not included in the EU’s list of regulated goods, so we recommended inclusion in this list to push the industry to reform towards a better regulated market,” said Le Cour. At the same time, he recognizes that the approach of the USA will be much more important, because the main exporters of avocados to Europe are mainly Chile, Peru, Spain and Israel.
No boycott
This leaves the question of how the situation of avocado growers can be improved. According to Crisis Group analyst Falk Ernst, the worst solution would be a boycott of Mexico’s “green gold.” “We are talking about a huge sector that supports thousands of hard working peaceful families. The result would primarily be more aggressiveness on the part of the cartels because of the lost profit,” Ernst told the Guardian.
“What consumers can and should do is raise their concerns with the companies they buy from. So that these companies do not remain mere bystanders to the human rights crisis in many regions of the global South,” thinks Ernst.
Experts agree that a change in approach must come from both the U.S. and Mexican governments, which need to more rigorously enforce their laws, and businesses, which can improve the situation with more rigorous control of supply chains and greater transparency.
US crackdown helps cartels
Meanwhile, the number of Mexicans leaving their country is growing. From October 2022 to October 2023, 180,000 Mexican migrants crossed the US border, four times more than in the same period a year ago.
Moreover, it turns out that the tougher action of the United States against incoming migrants benefits the criminal cartels the most. According to the aforementioned Insight Crime site, US immigration policy has created an even more lucrative market for people smuggling into the US, where migrants are more exposed to extortion and kidnapping than ever before. The number of cases of corruption among officials has also increased.
Meanwhile, along with Venezuelans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, thousands of Mexicans fleeing gang violence are also waiting at the Mexican-American border. “Just as the U.S. is horrified by the deaths caused by fentanyl, we in Mexico are horrified by the lives lost and the weapons that are coming here illegally,” Cecilia Farman, head of the security program at the University of California, told El País.
How serious the situation is is shown by the composition of migrants, who are no longer individuals looking for a better life, but increasingly families fleeing violence.
The author is an editorial associate.
Tags: cocaine green gold Cartels making money tropical fruit A2larm
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