The Mexican avocado, hostage of the drug violence that worsens in Michoacán

While in the United States they devoured tons of guacamole to liven up the Super Bowl, in Michoacán, the huge orchard that produced the avocados (avocados)a soldier deactivated explosives planted by drug traffickers who make the law in this region of Mexico.

In a race against time, both countries have recently reactivated exports of the fruit, suspended on February 11 by the United States due to telephone threats against one of its health inspectors in the state of Michoacán, in central Mexico.

The Super Bowl party passed and shipments resumed on February 21. But Michoacán, the world’s largest producer of avocado and origin of 85% of what is consumed in the United States, continues to see its great agro-industrial wealth threatened by the siege of organized crime, which takes a cut of the business through robbery, kidnapping and extortion.

Shot houses, abandoned crops and anti-personnel mines are part of the panorama in Aguililla, birthplace of Nemesio Oseguera “El Mencho”, head of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG), for whom Washington offers a US$10 million reward.

With sales of US$2.8 billion in 2021, Mexican avocados are a bounty for the CJNG -the most powerful in the country- and the Los Viagras cartel, who are also fiercely fighting over this strategic area to get drugs from the mountains to the Pacific coasts.

This month alone, when consumption soars due to the American football final, 140,000 tons of this ovoid berry whose greenish pulp has the texture of butter are exported.

ghost towns

New security measures, not yet detailed, allowed exports to resume. The Army had already entered Aguililla in early February, before the inspector’s incident, without using force.

Since then, the military has patrolled several municipalities in Michoacán among the vestiges of traffickers: bullet holes, barricades and graffiti with the acronym “CJNG” on walls, now varnished blue.

The criminals also left artisanal mines, a practice hitherto unusual in Mexico and that reflects the escalation of drug violence to which most of the 2,732 homicides recorded in Michoacán in 2021 are attributed.

In mid-February, one of those explosives killed a 79-year-old man. Some 250 mines have been located during the deployment, the military said during a demonstration to clear them.

In the hamlets of Aguililla, with 14,000 inhabitants, few people are seen and at times they look like ghost towns suffocated by temperatures of almost 40 degrees.

Some residents who show up to get some air shy away from talking to the press. Those who agree, fearful, express their hope that the Army will stay.

“Hopefully and that there is peace, that peace comes and this does not arise later,” comments a middle-aged man who avoids giving his name. Some skeptics believe that the criminals are just waiting in the wings for the Army to leave.

infiltrated avocados

Months ago, Aguililla lived almost under siege. With blockades preventing the transportation of food and goods, many people have moved to other areas of the state and some are trying to migrate to the United States.

The cartels sought to prevent their enemies from getting supplies, but the communities got the worst of it. Residents say that even “El Mencho”, 55, walked through the town last year, while authorities accuse his organization of attacking them with drones loaded with explosives and of possessing heavy weapons and armored vehicles known as “monsters”.

According to members of the industry, behind the threat to the inspector there would be attempts by some producers to send avocado from other states to the United States, since Michoacán is the only Mexican region with US approval to export.

The temporary suspension generated uncertainty in the sector, accustomed for more than two decades to record export figures in the weeks before the Super Bowl.

“It caught us all by surprise and well, we were also cutting (harvesting) and many people were cutting, others had already finished cutting,” says Jorge Moreno, a businessman from the municipality of Ario de Rosales, one of the largest producers.

Claiming to be fed up with crime and the passivity of the authorities, in 2021 a group of producers formed the “Pueblos Unidos” self-defense group in that town to confront criminals.

But the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, rejects these squads -which emerged for the first time in Michoacán in 2013- considering that generally criminals infiltrate.

The leftist president advocates a policy of “hugs, not bullets” that, according to him, favors social investment over the military offensive deployed in Mexico since 2006 and that accumulates some 340,000 murders, without drug trafficking has decreased.

warm cloths

With millionaire economic and security interests at stake, controlling Michoacán is vital for both the government and the criminals.

This dispute “increasingly involves violence for all these actors,” says Romain Le Cour, coordinator of the Security and Violence Reduction program at the organization México Evalúa.

In the midst of the din there are people like Evangelina Contreras, 54, who left her community on the Michoacán coast and is looking for her missing daughter.

“If some person came around 2003 or 2004, Michoacán has nothing to do with that time, that you could walk with all your freedom, go out at night. Not right now,” she laments.

For some residents, the problems are so serious that the military presence or humanitarian aid are only lukewarm cloths.

“Will ten kilos of food solve the problem? For how long?” asks a 60-year-old woman in the city of Apatzingán, who helped displaced people with groceries during the Aguililla siege.

“When the fever (fever) goes away, the symptoms remain. This is how it is, too, ”says the peasant from Aguililla who protects his identity as his own life.