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📹Semple, K., & Villegas, P. (2019, December 12). Arrest of Top Crime Fighter Stuns Mexico, Where Corruption Is All Too Routine.

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📹Semple, K., & Villegas, P. (2019, December 12). Arrest of Top Crime Fighter Stuns Mexico, Where Corruption Is All Too Routine.

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The news shocked even a country grown used to graft: The man who for years led Mexico's war against drug traffickers was accused of taking millions in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.

Genaro García Luna speaking in 2010, when he was a cabinet-level security official in Mexico. He is accused of accepting bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. Credit... Alxandre Meneghini/Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - Even in a nation almost inured to corruption, the news was astonishing.

The man considered to be the brains behind the Mexican government's militarized war on drug traffickers stood accused by American prosecutors of having been in the pocket of one of the major criminal groups he was ostensibly pursuing, severely undermining the very fight he was helping to lead.

Genaro García Luna, Mexico's former public security secretary, was charged with taking millions of dollars in bribes while in office to protect the Sinaloa Cartel, allowing the organization to smuggle tons of cocaine and other drugs into the United States. At the time, the group was led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence in the United States.

The indictment, unsealed in New York on Tuesday, and the subsequent arrest of Mr. García Luna in Dallas hours later, stunned Mexico. It was as if Eliot Ness had actually been an accomplice of Al Capone.

"It's huge," said Jaime López-Aranda, a security analyst in Mexico City who briefly worked under Mr. García Luna in the late-2000s. "I'm still a little bit in shock. And I keep thinking back to the guy and our conversations and his team and his people. It's the sharp disappointment. I mean - my God, man. It's like - " He paused. "It's like the end of an era."

Mr. García Luna was the chief engineer of the country's controversial counternarcotics strategy that relied heavily on the armed forces to confront criminal groups and kill or capture their leaders. Mexico is still grappling with the legacy of his approach.

While it had some success in capturing dozens of prominent crime bosses, deploying the military also spurred a sharp increase in violence and left a trail of death, as monolithic criminal enterprises were fragmented into an array of groups that have proven to be even more violent and uncontrollable.

For some Mexicans, the news of Mr. García Luna's arrest was almost unimaginable. For others, it was proof of enduring suspicions that he had been in bed with criminals all along. Still others interpreted it as a sweeping - and scalding - referendum on the two administrations in which he served.

Then there were those who found confirmation that the whole apparatus of Mexico's government was once and forever corrupt.

Mr. García Luna was one of the architects - and the embodiment - of Mexico's security strategy for a decade. From 2001 to 2005, during the administration of President Vicente Fox, Mr. García Luna led the Federal Investigative Agency, Mexico's equivalent of the F.B.I. He then became the public safety secretary in the cabinet of President Felipe Calderón from 2006 to 2012, overseeing his boss's "war" on drug trafficking organizations and the deployment of the Mexican military to wage it.

Politically powerful, Mr. García Luna curried intense loyalty among his supporters but also inspired deep animosity among his critics, particularly when violence soared amid Mr. Calderón's offensive against the traffickers. The strategy disrupted the criminal ecosystem but did not contain the violence between criminal groups, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the disappearance of many others.

The strategy continued under President Enrique Peña Nieto, but the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has sought to discredit it, pointing to the fact that it failed to curb either drug trafficking or violence.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. López Obrador said his government would not use the case of Mr. García Luna to beat up on Mr. Calderón, an outspoken critic of the current president.

"I do not want you to think that we are taking advantage of this circumstance to attack former President Calderón, despite all the damage he did to us, not only to me, but to the country," Mr. López Obrador said.

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President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, center, greeting federal police officers with Mr. García Luna, left, in Mexico City in 2011. Credit... Alexandre Meneghini/Associated Press

But the president couldn't seem to help himself, moments later describing the arrest as "a defeat to an authoritarian, corrupt regime, an element of proof that this model failed."

Anabel Hernández, a Mexican investigative journalist who has reported extensively on the alleged ties between Mr. García Luna and drug traffickers, found in his arrest some vindication of her work.

"There was not a war against drugs per se, but rather a war between cartels in which the federal government picked a side and protected the Sinaloa Cartel, which only meant more violence for society and more power to the cartel," Ms. Hernández said in an interview.

But for her, the indictment and arrest - in a foreign country - also reaffirmed her abiding frustration with the weaknesses of the Mexican state.

"It reflects the immaturity of the Mexican political system, the lack of autonomy and inefficiency of the Mexican justice system," she said.

Some delighted in the news with a certain schadenfreude. In office, Mr. García Luna was hungry for media attention. Federal agents under his command once staged the arrest of a suspected kidnapper, and the liberation of three hostages, for broadcast on national television. He also enjoyed parading suspects before reporters and posing them with the piles of weapons and drugs impounded during their arrests.

"For poetic justice, I would very much have liked a live television transmission of the detention of García Luna," Leonardo Núñez González, a political analyst in Mexico City, wrote on Twitter. "But these things only happen in places like Mexico."

Many close associates of Mr. García Luna have largely kept quiet since the news of his indictment broke, as observers have speculated whether he has information that could lead to further indictments of former officials, not only in Mexico but also in the United States, which worked closely with Mr. García Luna during his years in government.

Some observers were quick to point an accusatory finger at Mr. Calderón, saying that if his chief security minister had been working hand-in-hand with the Sinaloa Cartel, and getting huge payments for his efforts, then the president had to have known.

"This indictment discredits the whole Calderón presidential term for a lot of people," said Mr. López-Aranda, who served as Mr. García Luna's spokesman at the Public Security Ministry for less than a year.

For supporters of Mr. López Obrador, he added, "Christmas came early. Christmas for the next five years came early."

Mr. Calderón, who was not accused of any wrongdoing in the American indictment, said on Twitter: "My posture is always in favor of justice and the law." But if the charges against Mr. García Luna were true, he wrote, it would be "a serious violation of the confidence entrusted in him."

Guillermo Valdés, who ran CISEN, a national security intelligence agency, during Mr. Calderón's term, cautioned that even if Mr. García Luna were to be found guilty of the charges he faces, the entire government should not be implicated.

"This would be a major blow to the Calderón administration, having a corrupt secretary of public security," he said. But, he continued, "you simply cannot conclude that because of one corrupt government official, the rest of the government were obedient to the corrupt."

"It will be very sad to realize that you worked with a two-faced official," he added. "And in that case we will have to admit that it was a monumental mistake to keep him."

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Arrest of Top Crime Fighter Stuns Mexico, Where Corruption Is All Too Routine

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The news shocked even a country grown used to graft: The man who for years led Mexico's war against drug traffickers was accused of taking millions in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. MEXICO CITY - Even in a nation almost inured to corruption, the news was astonishing.

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📹Mexican avocado in grave danger due to organized crime. (2019, June 17). The Yucatan Times.

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📹Mexican avocado in grave danger due to organized crime. (2019, June 17). The Yucatan Times.

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Every day, avocado producers are victims of robberies and lose an average of four loaded trucks of around 12 tons (26,448 pounds) on the state's highways, during the journey from the orchards to the packing zones.

MICHOACÁN Mexico. (TYT) - Packers and exporters of avocado in Michoacán are desperate and ask for the immediate intervention of the government of López Obrador who according to them, "has not moved a finger against organized crime".

Every day, avocado producers are victims of robberies and lose an average of four loaded trucks of around 12 tons (26,448 pounds) during the journey from the orchards to the packing zones on the state's highways. They ask the authorities to stop the criminal gangs, which threaten the economic activity and the lives of the workers.

In an ad that began to circulate this week in the national press, the guild, grouped in the "Association of Export Producers and Packers of Avocado from Mexico" (Apeam), the "Union of Packers and Traders of Avocado of Michoacan" (Udecam) and the "Association of Packers of Periban", launches a warning: "if a truck loaded with this product is stolen on the way from the orchard to the packing area, instead of full price, the producer only gets paid 15 pesos per kilo".

They claim that taking these measures is extremely painful but necessary, since they cannot longer sustain the losses. and they assure that not stopping the theft of trucks will have an irreparable impact on the avocado industry.

In the text, avocado packers and exporters denounce that there has been a worsening of the situation of insecurity since the arrival of the López Obrador's government and they suffer daily during the transfers.

"Apart from theft and kidnapping of the units and drivers, we expose our physical integrity given the prevailing insecurity on the roads we must travel to reach the destination with the product already packed". They expose.

That is why they demand that the authorities of the three orders of government, federal, state and municipal, undertake an effective fight against crime.

"Given the inability and opacity of all authorities to stop this violence and deal with crime, we respectfully communicate that it is impossible to continue to face losses, as well as the strong economic impact that this generates". In the text, the packing and exporting guild also addresses the producer members, to whom they ask for their understanding and support.

The production of avocado, known as "green gold" originates in the fertile lands of Michoacán and is exported practically all over the world.

Producers and exporters of avocado have to share the territory with the activities of different groups of organized crime that dispute both the production, distribution and transfer of drugs, as extortion and theft from various industries of the entity. The latter are dedicated to the production of various basic foods for the diet of Mexicans, mining and the transfer of goods.

The British newspaper, "The Guardian" addressed the situation of insecurity affecting the avocado growers. It recalled that Michoacán was the testing ground for Mexico's military war on drugs launched in 2006.

Falko Ernst, Mexico's senior analyst for the "International Crisis Group" points out: "There are at least 20 illegal armed groups violently competing for territories and markets in that entity. However, none has been able to establish dominance over the others. That means the war has become perpetual and extremely costly for the criminal groups". He explained.

"The avocado sector, a billion-dollar industry, is, after all, too attractive (for the armed groups) to pass up, and producers and exporters bear part of the cost" Falko Ernst said.

"The Association of Export Producers and Packers of Avocado from Mexico" or Apeam in Spanish, was founded in 1977 and its main task is to promote the export of Mexican fruit.

It is the only association recognized before the Mexican and U.S. agricultural authorities for the export of Mexican avocado. It is also in charge of the promotion of the fruit in other countries under the brand "Aguacates de México".

The association has 26,234 producers, 58 packers and in the 2017-2018 season exported 869,057 tons to the United States, according to data from that group.
Sources: La Jornada, Exportadores de Aguacate de México (Apeam), The Guardian, International Crisis Group.
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Mexican avocado in grave danger due to organized crime

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Every day, avocado producers are victims of robberies and lose an average of four loaded trucks of around 12 tons (26,448 pounds) on the state's highways, during the journey from the orchards to the packing zones. MICHOACÁN Mexico.

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Michoacán, a mountainous state in western Mexico, has the ideal climate for growing avocados. Hot, with rich volcanic soil, the 60,000-square-kilometre region is the world's top producer of the creamy green fruit-known locally as oro verde, or "green gold"-and is the only place on Earth where they grow year-round. Michoacán exported over $500-million (U.S.) worth of avocados in 2015, with over 90 per cent of the crop heading north to Canada and the United States.

Michoacán's location also makes it a transportation hub. It has one of the country's largest ports, as well as offering direct routes by land to the centre of Mexico, and from there, easy access to the U.S. Its convenient location has meant Michoacán has historically harboured a strong drug cartel presence-in 2011, the Knights Templar cartel assumed prominence, in part due to its "devil you know" promise to use its power and revenues from the sale and distribution of crystal methamphetamine (conservative estimates suggest the industry nets anywhere between $15- and $60-billion U.S. annually) to protect Michoacán's locals, many of them avocado farmers, from potentially more predatory cartels. And yet while drugs are big money in Mexico, "Gangs are a business," says Yale School of Management associate professor Rodrigo Canales, whose research includes the institutional implications of the Mexican war on drugs. "If they find another source of revenue, they're interested." (For local farmers, the fruit is more profitable than marijuana.)

Coinciding with the ascendance of the Knights Templar, the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Administration launched two major multi-agency task force operations-Project Coronado and Project Delirium- aimed at hobbling Michoacán criminals' delivery networks in the United States, arresting over 3,000 people. Seeking to diversify their revenue sources, as well as to secure raw materials that can be traded with China in exchange for components of synthetic drugs, the Knights Templar began extorting local businesses-primarily mine owners and farmers. As the demand for avocados surged, with per-store sales at North American Whole Foods Market locations doubling in the last decade and avocado toast becoming a foodie craze, the profitable avocado industry looked, to the drug lords, like low-hanging fruit.

Avocado is known locally as oro verde, or "green gold".

Cartels have long preyed upon farmers, but by 2013 the violence had escalated to extremes. The Knights Templar is reported to have charged a fee for every box of avocados gathered from local farms, taken cuts from fertilizer and pesticide sales, and forced farmers to turn over the titles to their land. In Tancítaro, a region in which 56,000 acres of avocado groves flourish, farmers paid an estimated annual tax of $60 per acre for fear of retribution; kidnapping, rape, and extortion occurred daily, and oro verde was given a new nickname: blood avocado. After the rape and murder of Maria Irene Villanueva, a woman whose avocado farmer father was unable to pay the Knights Templar a $600,000 ransom, locals hit their breaking point. Left vulnerable by Mexico's complex and corruption-riddled government, Tancítaro's residents united to defend themselves.

Mexican communities have a long history of taking the law into their own hands. "Autodefensas"-independent defence forces composed of locals-have generally formed to combat small-scale banditry and violence, but in Michoacán, things reached a whole new level. By early 2014, large and well-organized vigilante groups reclaimed the town of Nueva Italia, a Knights Templar stronghold, and proceeded to go on an anti-cartel spree, accruing federal police reinforcements along the way. And yet, "Even in the case of the 'good vigilantes', part of the complexity of this issue is that the natural progression of gaining power is usually to end up becoming what was resisted in the first place," says Canales. While the Knights Templar has disbanded and protection for the region's farmers has increased, new cartels have emerged from the vigilante movement itself and peace in Michoacán remains tenuous, if somewhat restored.

"Mexico's problem is not that we have very powerful criminal organizations, but that we have very weak local institutions," says Canales. "By continuing to frame the problem as a 'drug problem', we pursue organized crime and create this evolutionary dynamic where we force gangs to evolve, instead of focusing our efforts on strengthening local institutions that would protect communities from the negative consequences of the drug trade."

"Progress has been made to protect avocado growers and packers," says a representative of APEAM, the association of producers, packers, and exporters of avocados from Mexico. "The federal government [of Mexico] has launched social development programs to improve economic conditions and further aid the community, which is a positive step forward." For avocado addicts in the Western world, Canales recommends maintaining your habit. "This notion of asking consumers to stop buying avocados because farmers are suffering extortion from organized crime is kind of like punishing the victim even more," he says. "Boycotting avocados would be the worst thing we could do for people who are suffering the most."

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Michoacán, a mountainous state in western Mexico, has the ideal climate for growing avocados. Hot, with rich volcanic soil, the 60,000-square-kilometre region is the world's top producer of the creamy green fruit-known locally as oro verde, or "green gold"-and is the only place on Earth where they grow year-round.

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📹Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com). (n.d.). Mexico’s bloody fight over avocados. DW.COM.  

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📹Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com). (n.d.). Mexico’s bloody fight over avocados. DW.COM.  

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The "global capital of avocados" lies nestled among gentle hills, with plantations filling their slopes. In downtown Uruapan, a central Mexican town of 300,000 inhabitants, there's no sign of hectic activities on this winter day.

Elderly people are having a chat near the local church; indigenous women are selling wooden toys. But the calm is deceptive.

Over the past couple of years, Uruapan has turned into one of Mexico's most dangerous cities. Mexico's Inegi stats agency logged 297 killings in 2018 alone - a number that would normally only be reached in war-torn areas.
Latest killing just a couple of weeks ago
Silvia Martinez doesn't have to think long to tell me why the situation is as it is in Uruapan. The 52-year-old is an executive with one of the largest avocado exporters that sends dozens of truckloads of the fruit to the United States daily.

"The latest killing happened just two weeks ago, with a distributor found dead near his car," Martinez recalls (her name was changed to ensure her safety). She's trying to hold back her tears. She's afraid of somebody holding her at gunpoint. Her home town used to be a quiet place, she says," but now the narcos completely control the place, and whoever puts up any resistance to them will be eliminated."

Workers checking the quality of avocados in Uruapan, Mexico

The Mexican state of Michoacan, where Uruapan is located, accounts for 40% of avocados grown globally. The largest part of them goes to the US. In 2018, Mexico exported avocados worth $2.7 billion (€2.4 billion) to the United States. Right now, a kilogram (some 5 avocados) costs around $1.40 in Uruapan, whereas in a US grocery store the price is $1.30 - per avocado.

That sort of big business has not gone unnoticed by the drug cartels. Javier Oliva, a political scientist from Mexico's national university, UNAM, says there's an escalating conflict in Michoacan between the competing Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Los Viagras cartels.

Cocaine, marijuana and other drugs are still their core business. "But there's rising competition, and the number of criminal cartels has jumped from four big ones in the past to now 250 criminal units in Mexico." New sources of income are always welcome. According to Oliva, criminal activities include the theft of oil, simple robberies, prostitution, the trade in human organs and the protection racket - and now avocados.
The avocado boom
Global appetite for the avocado "superfood" has exploded in the past few years. In Germany alone, demand rose fivefold between 2008 and 2018, according to the National Statistics Office (Destatis). Dietitians praise the avocado's high content of vitamins, with the fruit's vegetable fat said to protect against diabetes and strokes.

The avocado hype was triggered in America. In 1994, the US, Canada and Mexico signed the NAFTA free trade agreement. While avocados used to be an expensive thing for gourmets only, they all of a sudden were available in every grocery store. Today, Americans eat on average 3.2 kilos of the fruit per year.

The sporadic presence of police officers as shown here in front of an avocado factory doesn't mean locals feels safe in Uruapan

Israel Cuevas has witnessed the boom himself. The avocado farmer shows me his plantation as big as 10 soccer fields. "We harvest the fruit several times a year, some 600 kilos per tree. Two decades ago, it was only about half of that," the 44-year-old explains.

The volcanic soil and the humid climate are ideal for high yields; higher yields than anywhere else in the world in fact. "It was running smoothly for a long time, but then men came with pistols in their hands and my boss had to pay protection money, as anyone else had to here," Cuevas says.
More and more violence
More and more innocent people are getting caught between the front lines, though. In early February, 20 people died within just three days as rivaling cartels in Uruapan fought each other. Reports of bloody fights can be heard on a regular basis now in Mexico, a country where up to 250,000 people have died since the beginning of the drug war in 2006.

Why doesn't the state intervene? "In Mexico, local police cooperate with organized crime more often than not," says a high-ranking US official who trains Mexican security units. He adds that decades of corruption have led to a situation where the lines between friends and foes are fleeting.

Silvia Martinez doesn't think that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador can effectively change anything on the ground. The Guardia Nacional, which is meant to be immune against corruption, shows up once in a while, she confirms, "but after a few days on the ground the officers are gone again."

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Mexico's bloody fight over avocados | DW | 03.03.2020

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The "global capital of avocados" lies nestled among gentle hills, with plantations filling their slopes. In downtown Uruapan, a central Mexican town of 300,000 inhabitants, there's no sign of hectic activities on this winter day. Elderly people are having a chat near the local church; indigenous women are selling wooden toys.

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📹EU risks buying "illegally produced" Mexican avocados as imports surge 70% in 2019. (2020,  January 29). 

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📹EU risks buying "illegally produced" Mexican avocados as imports surge 70% in 2019. (2020,  January 29). 

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EU risks buying "illegally produced" Mexican avocados as imports surge 70% in 2019

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Criminal groups now "embedded in the entire supply chain" of production in Michoacán where violence, extortion and illegal land clearing are rife Mexico's avocado heartlands are being infiltrated by criminal groups seeking to cash in on its global popularity and this is leaving international consumers increasingly exposed to buying "illegally produced" fruit.

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📹Webber, J. & Terazono, E. (February 1, 2020). Avocados prove a whole new ball game for  criminals; Mexico. Michoacán state ; Gangs develop taste for 'green gold' beloved by US sports fans after opium price fall hits profits. Financial Times (London, England). 

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📹Webber, J. & Terazono, E. (February 1, 2020). Avocados prove a whole new ball game for  criminals; Mexico. Michoacán state ; Gangs develop taste for 'green gold' beloved by US sports fans after opium price fall hits profits. Financial Times (London, England). 

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📹Stevenson, M. (2019, October 24). They’re not avocados, they’re “green gold,” and hyperviolent  drug cartels have sights set on them. Associated Press. 

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📹Stevenson, M. (2019, October 24). They’re not avocados, they’re “green gold,” and hyperviolent  drug cartels have sights set on them. Associated Press. 

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SAN JUAN PARANGARICUTIRO, Mexico - Small-scale avocado growers armed with AR-15 rifles take turns manning a vigilante checkpoint to guard against thieves and drug cartel extortionists in this town in the Michoacan state, the heartland of world production of the fruit locals call "green gold."

The region's avocado boom, fueled by soaring U.S. consumption, has raised parts of western Mexico out of poverty in just 10 years. But the scent of money has drawn gangs and hyperviolent cartels that have hung bodies from bridges and cowed police forces, and the rising violence is threatening the newfound prosperity. A recent U.S. warning that it could withdraw orchard inspectors sent a shiver through the $2.4 billion-a-year export industry.

Some growers are taking up arms. At the checkpoint in San Juan Parangaricutiro, the vigilantes are calm but attentive. They say their crop is worth fighting for.

"If it wasn't for avocados, I would have to leave to find work, maybe go to the United States or somewhere else," said one of guards, Pedro de la Guante, whose small avocado orchard earns him far more than he would get from any other legal - or illegal - crop.
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Luis, another guard who asked that his last name not be used out of fear of reprisals, lists the problems that came to the town with the avocado boom: extortion, kidnappings, cartels and avocado theft. "That is why we are here: We don't want any of that."

While Mexican avocado growers have for years lived in fear of assaults and shakedowns, the situation went international in mid-August when a U.S. Department of Agriculture team of inspectors was "directly threatened" in Ziracuaretiro, a town just west of Uruapan in Michoacan. While the agency didn't specify what happened, local authorities say a gang robbed the truck the inspectors were traveling in at gunpoint.

"For future situations that result in a security breach, or demonstrate an imminent physical threat to the well-being of APHIS personnel, we will immediately suspend program activities," the USDA wrote in a letter, referring to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
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Such a move could block shipments and devastate the industry that supplies U.S. consumers hungry for guacamole and avocado toast. It was only in 1997 that the U.S. lifted a ban on Mexican avocados that had been in place since 1914 to prevent a range of weevils, scabs and pests from entering U.S. orchards.
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The Michoacan-based Avocado Growers and Packers Association published the warning letter from the USDA - an unusual move that some in Uruapan interpreted as a gesture aimed at making criminals aware they risk killing off the state's biggest money-making industry if U.S. inspectors stop approving exports. Neither the avocado association nor the USDA responded to requests for comment.

The police chief in a town in western Mexico's avocado belt described what life is like with the Viagras cartel. The chief asked that his name not be used. The Viagras are so thoroughly present that he doesn't venture into nearby Uruapan without a phalanx of armed bodyguards. The Michoacan-based cartel derives its unusual name from their founders' habit of combing so much gel into their hair that it stands up on end.

"They've done everything - extortions, protection payments. They've flown drones over us," said the chief. "They come in and want to set up (drug) laboratories in the orchards."

But the Viagras are now also the hunted. The vicious Jalisco New Generation cartel is trying to move into Michoacan on several fronts. In August, the cartel hung nine bodies from an overpass in Uruapan, and left 10 more corpses hacked up or dumped by the road. On the overpass they hung a banner saying: "Be a Patriot, Kill a Viagra."

Farther south, in the hotter, lime-growing region of Michoacan, Jalisco cartel gunmen ambushed and killed 13 state police officers in mid-October. The attack so terrified police that when they went to collect the dead officers' burned vehicles, they worked so hastily they left behind a crushed, charred, bullet-perforated skull.

Cartels, police and vigilantes alike are spooked by the Jalisco cartel onslaught.

In the cattle-ranching town of Tepalcatepec, which lies on the border with Jalisco state, heavily armed vigilantes - apparently in the employ of a local gang - mount a 24-hour guard in a sniper post atop a hill guarding against incursions by the Jalisco cartel. One vigilante with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, who refused to give his name, came down from the hilltop to scare away a news photographer. "Clear out of here! Don't you know you have a .50-caliber (rifle) aimed at your head?"

As in much of Michoacan, the violence is largely hidden by a wave of apparent prosperity brought by fruit: miles of chain-link fencing enclose seemingly endless groves of avocado trees with limbs hanging heavy with the harvest. New packing plants seemingly go up overnight.

But Hipolito Mora, who founded the state's civilian armed self-defense movement in 2013, said appearances are deceptive. The new fruit packing plants had already been robbed at gunpoint three times in one week by thieves who apparently knew exactly when they would have cash on hand to pay farmers.

"If the business owners were to close their plants, the region's economy would come crashing down," said Mora, who is also a lime grower.

Mexico supplies about 43% of world avocado exports, almost all from Michoacan. The USDA has a near-permanent delegation of inspectors posted in Mexico.

A few weeks after the incident with the USDA inspectors, an avocado orchard manager and a worker were kidnapped at gunpoint in Ziracuaretiro, allegedly by municipal police. Seven officers are under investigation in the case, and the Ziracuaretiro police department was essentially disbanded.

Today, heavily armed state police patrol Ziracuaretiro and Mayor José Rodríguez Baca is worried. He has seven town policemen in jail, illegal loggers felling pine trees in his township and a potential economic crisis on his hands.

"This has everyone worried," Rodriguez Baca said of the U.S. warning and violence in his town. "If they close the door on us in the United States, everything would come crashing down."

His township shows the shortcomings of state and federal anti-crime strategies, in which police, the army and National Guard often come into troubled towns, make a show of force for a few weeks and then leave. State police had been assigned to patrol Ziracuaretiro earlier this year, before the U.S. inspectors were assaulted, but were withdrawn in July to attend another hot spot.

Avocado growers are feeling scared, alone and caught in the middle.

Carlos Martínez is a third-generation avocado grower whose 6-acre grove in Ziracuaretiro can produce as much as 50 tons of avocados in a good year, worth about $100,000.

"It is a question of crime and that affects us as third parties, and our customers," Martínez said. "We just wake up each morning hoping it doesn't happen to us."

Martínez hasn't had any shipments of avocados stolen yet - a common complaint in Michoacan - but he said thieves often steal avocados from the orchards. He, like most growers, had to put up chain-link fences and hire a guard. But it is the fear of kidnapping or the phone call demanding protection payments that worry him most.

"I don't answer phone calls from numbers I don't know," Martínez said.

In San Juan Parangaricutiro, De la Guante is an example of how avocados have lifted many in Michoacán out of poverty.
People paid much more for gas in California last year: Mark Zuckerberg appears before Congress again: Here's why The governor wants an investigation
He was an itinerant farmworker before he planted avocados on 2.4 acres of sandy land 11 years ago. That relatively small plot now yields as much as 10 tons of avocados. This year he was lucky to sell in August, when prices were high, at 40 pesos ($2) a kilogram. That means De la Guante earned at least $15,000 this year.

Adriana Villicaña, a professor at Univa Catholic University in Uruapan, said the avocado boom has lifted thousands out of poverty.

"There are a lot of women working at packing plants, and a majority of them describe themselves as single mothers or single," Villicaña said.

However, the rising tide hasn't lifted all boats. The region's 15,000 or so avocado pickers earn an attractive wage for the region, but the job is seasonal and the physical demands of climbing trees with long poles to get the avocados mean few can work beyond age 45.

Villicaña, who also sits on the Uruapan citizen's safety advisory board, says the region's crime problem will be worse if the avocado industry collapses.

"If there were no avocados, where are they going to work?" Villicaña asked. "The most likely things is that they would hire themselves out to work for the criminals."

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They're not avocados, they're 'green gold,' and hyperviolent drug cartels have sights set on them

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SAN JUAN PARANGARICUTIRO, Mexico - Small-scale avocado growers armed with AR-15 rifles take turns manning a vigilante checkpoint to guard against thieves and drug cartel extortionists in this town in the Michoacan state, the heartland of world production of the fruit locals call "green gold." The region's avocado boom, fueled by soaring U.S.

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📹Philips, T. (2020, August 20). Mexico rocked by claims of corruption against three former presidents.  

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📹Philips, T. (2020, August 20). Mexico rocked by claims of corruption against three former presidents.  

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Mexico's political establishment has been shaken by claims that three former Mexican presidents and an all-star cast of lawmakers and aides may have been involved in alleged acts of corruption.

The accusations were leveled by Emilio Lozoya, the former head of Mexico's state oil company Pemex, and will boost efforts by the country's current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to portray himself as an anti-corruption crusader.

López Obrador, a 66-year-old nationalist, swept to power in 2018 pledging to rid Mexico of corruption and unseat the "mafia of power" he claimed had seized control of Latin America's No 2 economy.

In a leaked 63-page deposition, Lozoya, who was extradited from Spain in July to face corruption charges of his own, dragged some of Mexico's best-known politicians into a rapidly unfolding scandal.

According to the newspaper El Universal, the former Pemex chief implicated Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico's president from 2012 until 2018, in multimillion-dollar bribes and illegal campaign financing.

Reuters said Lozoya also claimed that Felipe Calderón - president from 2006 until 2012 - and Carlos Salinas - from 1988 to 1994 - had committed "acts possibly constituting crimes".

Lozoya worked as international relations coordinator of Peña Nieto's 2012 election campaign, and was later appointed to run Pemex.

"He was one of the masters of the universe," said Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez, a sociologist in Mexico City. "He was appointed to that position because he was part of Peña's most intimate circle."

Lozoya was arrested in Spain in February and extradited to face charges he received more than $4m in bribes from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

On Thursday morning López Obrador, who is widely known as Amlo, told reporters he believed the leaked document was genuine but had not read it all because he "wouldn't want to have nightmares".

Reporters gather around a car, part of a convoy believed of transporting Emilio Lozoya after his extradition from Spain, in Mexico City last month. Photograph: Luis Cortes/Reuters

Amlo has previously said he hoped Lozoya's extradition would contribute to the "purification" of Mexican public life.

Calderón hit back on Twitter claiming Mexico's president was seeking to weaponize the former oil boss and his "ridiculous accusations" as "an instrument of revenge and political persecution". "He's not interested in justice but in a lynching," Calderón said.

Neither Peña Nieto nor Salinas responded immediately to the allegations.

Few doubt the extent to which corruption has permeated elite Mexican politics. During Peña Nieto's six-year term a series of eye-watering political scandals caused public outrage, helped pave the way for Amlo's landslide election and saw Mexico slide dramatically down Transparency International's corruption index.

But Calderón is not alone in suspecting that Amlo is using the investigation to eliminate powerful political opponents and bolster his corruption-fighting credentials.

Some have likened the Mexican president's campaign to a high-profile anti-corruption drive waged by China's Communist party leader, Xi Jinping. That crackdown allowed Xi to jail several prominent rivals, including China's former security chief Zhou Yongkang and the Communist party heavyweights Bo Xilai and Sun Zhengcai.

"This is not a trial, it is a telenovela," said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst in Mexico City.

"Some of the things Lozoya says might be true [and] given the position he is in and the improper way in which this has been handled, this will have a tremendous political impact. But no justice will be done."

Others question the timing of the revelations, suspecting they may be a deliberate distraction from the coronavirus crisis currently playing out in Mexico.

Mexico now has the world's third highest death toll, after the US and Brazil, and is set to surpass 60,000 deaths in the coming days.

"[The leak] distracts from everything else," said Esteban Illades, editor of the Mexican magazine Nexos. "The economy is in tatters, nearly 60,000 people have died and there's not a single thing going right as of this moment. But by creating a political circus there's distraction."

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Mexico rocked by claims of corruption against three former presidents

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Mexico's political establishment has been shaken by claims that three former Mexican presidents and an all-star cast of lawmakers and aides may have been involved in alleged acts of corruption. The accusations were leveled by Emilio Lozoya, the former head of Mexico's state oil company Pemex, and will boost efforts by the country's current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to portray himself as an anti-corruption crusader.

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📹Linthicum, K. (2019, November 20). Inside the bloody cartel war for Mexico’s multibillion-dollar  avocado industry. 

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📹Linthicum, K. (2019, November 20). Inside the bloody cartel war for Mexico’s multibillion-dollar  avocado industry. 

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The cartel members showed up in this verdant stretch of western Mexico armed with automatic weapons and chainsaws.

Soon they were cutting timber day and night, the crash of falling trees echoing throughout the virgin forest. When locals protested, explaining that the area was protected from logging, they were held at gunpoint and ordered to keep quiet.

Stealing wood was just a prelude to a more ambitious plan.

The newcomers, members of a criminal group called the Viagras, were almost certainly clearing the forest to set up a grow operation. They wouldn't be planting marijuana or other crops long favored by Mexican cartels, but something potentially even more profitable: avocados.

Mexico's multibillion-dollar avocado industry, headquartered in Michoacan state, has become a prime target for cartels, which have been seizing farms and clearing protected woodlands to plant their own groves of what locals call "green gold."

More than a dozen criminal groups are battling for control of the avocado trade in and around the city of Uruapan, preying on wealthy orchard owners, the laborers who pick the fruit and the drivers who truck it north to the United States.

"The threat is constant and from all sides," said Jose Maria Ayala Montero, who works for a trade association that formed its own vigilante army to protect growers.

After seizing control of the forest in March, the Viagras announced a tax on residents who owned avocado trees, charging $250 a hectare in "protection fees."

But they had competition. Rivals from the Jalisco New Generation cartel wanted to control the same stretch of land - and residents were about to get caught in the middle of a vicious fight.

In May, a convoy of pickup trucks loaded with Jalisco fighters raced into the woods and an hourlong gun battle broke out.

Juan Madrigal Miranda, a 72-year-old professor who runs a small nature center in the area, cowered on the floor of his small cabin as bullets flew overhead.

His fear eventually gave way to anger at the growing power of the criminals, 10 of whom died in the forest that day.

"Around the country, the cartels want land, forest and water," Madrigal said. "Now they are fighting for the keys to life."

::

Homicides are at an all-time high in Mexico, which has long been home to the world's most powerful and violent narcotics traffickers. Yet much of the killing today has little to do with drugs.

Organized crime has diversified.

In Guanajuato state, the homicide rate has nearly tripled over the last three years as criminals battle for access to gasoline pipelines, which they tap to steal and sell fuel.

In parts of Guerrero state, cartels control access to gold mines and even the price of goods in supermarkets. In one city, Altamirano, the local Coca-Cola bottler closed its distribution center last year after more than a dozen groups tried to extort money from it. The Pepsi bottler left a few months later.

In Mexico City, bar owners in upscale neighborhoods must pay taxes to a local gang, while on the nation's highways, cargo robberies have risen more than 75% since 2016.

Compared with drug trafficking, a complex venture that requires managing contacts across the hemisphere, these new criminal enterprises are more like local businesses. The bar to entry is far lower.

This new approach to organized crime was pioneered by the notorious Zetas cartel and spread in response to the government's 2006 declaration of war on drug traffickers.

Mexican forces, with strong U.S. support, focused on capturing or killing cartel leaders. But that strategy backfired as the big cartels fractured into smaller and nimbler organizations that sought criminal opportunity wherever they could find it.

"For many of those smaller groups, it's far easier to just prey on local populations," said Falko Ernst, a Mexico-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, which promotes nonviolent solutions to conflicts. "It's a myth that it's only about drugs."

In Michoacan, where there have been dozens of cartel splits over the last dozen years, organized crime's invasion of the avocado industry is a microcosm of what is happening elsewhere in the country - and a potent illustration of how the government has unintentionally fueled more violence.

Many people here now long for the early 1990s, when just one family trafficked drugs through the region and the state was largely at peace.

::

The Valencia family was known as a benevolent force.

It built churches, gave money to the sick and averted violence by paying local authorities to ensure easy shipment of marijuana, heroin and cocaine to the United States.

But by 2000, trafficking groups from other parts of the country had grown envious of the Valencias, in particular their control of the Lazaro Cardenas seaport on Michoacan's Pacific coast.

The Gulf cartel, based in the eastern state of Tamaulipas, went to battle with the family, sending in its paramilitary force, the Zetas.

Formed in the late 1990s by deserters of an elite Mexican army unit, the Zetas embraced a new philosophy when it came to the drug trade. Instead of simply controlling strategic points along drug transport routes, they sought to minimize risk by also commandeering businesses along the routes.

In Tamaulipas, that meant taking over the sale of stolen gasoline and the smuggling of migrants. In Michoacan, the Zetas partnered with locals to put the Valencias out of business and then began extorting money from cattle ranchers and lime farmers.

The local partners eventually rebelled, denouncing the Zetas as thieving outsiders while also adopting their predatory tactics.

In 2006, members of a group that called itself La Familia Michoacana burst into a crowded nightclub in Uruapan and rolled five severed heads onto the dance floor - a message to the Zetas and a turning point for a nation not yet accustomed to such barbarity.

The group's methods helped it win control of the state, but they also provoked President Felipe Calderon to send in several thousand troops, the opening salvo in his national fight against cartels.

The government strategy failed to end crime and violence in Michoacan, and in some ways only made things worse.

The Viagras, for example, probably wouldn't exist today if not for the state's interventions.

Originally part of La Familia and later the Knights Templar cartel, which emerged in 2011 after the government crackdown, the Viagras later joined a government-run rural police force designed to topple the cartels.

When that force was disbanded, the Viagras lost their paychecks. But they still had their weapons and military-style training, so they returned to crime.

At the same time, another important change was transforming the state: Americans were falling in love with avocados.

Between 2001 and 2018, average annual U.S. consumption increased from 2 pounds per person to nearly 7.5 pounds.

Michoacan, whose plentiful rain, sunshine and rich volcanic soil make it an ideal place to grow the fruit, was uniquely positioned to capitalize on its rising popularity. It is the only state in the country allowed to sell to the United States, which banned avocados from Mexico until 1997 over concerns about pests.

As exports of Michoacan avocados boomed - on their way to $2.4 billion last year - luxury housing developments and car dealerships sprang up in Uruapan and elsewhere as huge swaths of forest were cleared to grow more.

And the increasing number of criminal groups all wanted a piece of the action.

::

On a recent chilly morning at a large farm a few hours outside Uruapan, dozens of avocado pickers sipped coffee around a crackling fire, preparing for a grueling day.

Scaling trees and clipping avocados pays much better than many jobs in Mexico - $60 a day compared with the $5 minimum wage - but it increasingly comes with serious risks.

Mayco Ceja, a slight 28-year-old who spent his childhood in California, said the dozen-man team of pickers that he leads was recently summoned to a farm that turned out to be run by gang members.

"They came at us with pistols," he said. "They forced us to pick for seven hours and didn't pay us."

On other occasions, gangs have barred his team from working in order to create a scarcity in supply, which raises the profits for cartel-controlled groves.

Before the Valencia family trafficked drugs, it grew avocados, and it is an open secret here that for decades criminals have used avocado farms to launder money. But never have the lower rungs of the industry been so vulnerable, with multiple gangs extorting cash from small-time growers and state officials recording an average of four truckloads of avocados hijacked each day.

One driver, who was heaving 45-pound crates of avocados into a tractor-trailer, said that in the last six months he has been held up twice by armed men who forced him to drive to a safe house and unload there.

He was too afraid to give his name. "They'll come to your house and shoot up your whole family," he said. "Kids included."

Last year, 1,338 people were killed in Michoacan, more than any year on record. This year has been even deadlier, with 1,309 homicides through October, putting the death toll on track to top 1,500.

Security has become so tenuous that in June a group of avocado producers bought ads in several national newspapers warning of an "irreparable impact" to the industry unless officials address the problem.

In August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture temporarily suspended its avocado inspection program in a town near Uruapan after threats to some of its employees. Local media reported that one inspector had been carjacked and another group of employees subjected to intimidation after they canceled a farm's certification.

Eduardo Moncada, a political scientist at Barnard College who is writing a book in part about extortion in Michoacan, said the avocado trade's relationship with organized crime varies dramatically across the region, which makes it difficult for authorities and citizens to navigate.

"When you don't know who controls what, it becomes much harder to live your daily life," he said.

Many here had high hopes for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office a year ago and declared that Mexico was no longer at war with cartels. But besides vowing to fight poverty and shift security duties from the military to a newly created civilian National Guard, he has yet to articulate a new plan to curb violence.

"There is an abject absence of law enforcement strategy," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "If you're going to say what does not work, you have to say what will work."

In the meantime, avocado producers in Michoacan are taking their own drastic measures.

After gangsters burned down two major packing plants and kidnapped the 16-year-old son of another prominent packer several years ago, producers in the municipality of Tancitaro, a major avocado hub an hour and a half from Uruapan, rose up.

Working with the local avocado trade association, the producers armed their own civilian police force, built guard towers at the entrances to every town and orchestrated a takeover of the municipal government by ensuring that only one mayoral candidate - theirs - was on the ballot.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

The strategy has been criticized as a dangerous experiment in frontier justice. Yet the government has not intervened, and for now, the efforts appear to be working.

"It's safe here now," said Diana Flores Murillo, the sister of the 16-year-old who was kidnapped.

Now the director of finance at her father's profitable company, she arrives safely to work each day in a shiny red Jeep and new Gucci sneakers.

::

Madrigal, the ecologist, was so angry after war broke out in the woods in May that he went to state authorities to complain about a cartel takeover of the forest.

Instead of helping, he said, state police officers broke into his home when he was not there, overturning furniture, stealing gardening tools and leaving him a warning note to stay silent. State police officers did not respond to requests for comment.

He fought back by filing a complaint with the state's human rights commission and taking the story to local journalists.

"The worst-case scenario is that they decide I'm making too much noise and they kill me," he said.

In the forest, the felling of trees continues. So does the cartel war.

One morning in August, residents in Uruapan awoke to a grisly scene.

"Be a patriot," read a banner draped from a highway overpass and signed by the Jalisco New Generation cartel. "Kill a Viagra!"

Dumped nearby were 10 corpses, some of which had been dismembered. Nine more bodies hung from the bridge - seven men and two women strung up for the whole town to see.
Cecilia Sanchez of The Times' Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.

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Inside the bloody cartel war for Mexico's multibillion-dollar avocado industry

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The cartel members showed up in this verdant stretch of western Mexico armed with automatic weapons and chainsaws. Soon they were cutting timber day and night, the crash of falling trees echoing throughout the virgin forest. When locals protested, explaining that the area was protected from logging, they were held at gunpoint and ordered to keep quiet.

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📹Kan, P. (2020, April 23). El Chapo Bin Laden? Why Drug Cartels are not Terrorist Organizations.  

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📹Kan, P. (2020, April 23). El Chapo Bin Laden? Why Drug Cartels are not Terrorist Organizations.  

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Dr Paul Rexton Kan

Drug cartel violence in Mexico took an ominous turn late last year. Mexican authorities captured Oxidio Guzman Lopez, the son of imprisoned Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, but were forced to release him after the cartel unleashed a wave of violence in the city. Heavily armed cartel enforcers took soldiers hostage, attacked the living quarters of their family members, torched vehicles and took over roads while prisoners in a nearby penitentiary rioted and escaped. The daylong siege left eight dead and gave a black eye to Mexico's new president. A few short weeks later, a different drug cartel ambushed an American Mormon family in northern Mexico, killing six children and three women.

The increase in the scope and intensity of the violence in Mexico has led to stronger calls to label drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations. US President Donald Trump said that he would "absolutely" designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations. "You know, designation is not that easy, you have to go through a process, and we are well into that process," Trump said in a November radio . President Trump is not alone. Ioan Grillo, a journalist and longtime observer of Mexico's drug violence agrees that drug cartels have crossed over into terrorism: "[Cartels] kill innocent civilians for broader goals, including pressuring the government and controlling political ." Although President Trump ultimately decided against designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations, 2019 was not the only time that there was momentum for labeling drug trafficking organisations as terrorist groups. In 2011 and 2012, bills were introduced in the US House of Representatives seeking to designate seven Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations.

In the face of rising violence and strong political pressure, the labeling of drug cartels seems to be a logical step. However, there are significant differences between drug traffickers and terrorists that cannot be overlooked. A term like "terrorism" creates policy options and strategic choices that are different from those that would be responses to "criminality." Ignoring these differences and conflating criminal violence with political violence will create policy confusion to the benefit of drug cartels.

At first glance, violent organised crime groups and terrorist organisations share a number of organisational and operational characteristics.

1. They are involved in illegal activities and frequently need the same supplies;

2. They exploit excessive violence and the threat of violence;

3. They commit kidnappings, assassinations and extortion;

4. They act in secrecy;

5. They challenge the state and the laws (unless they are state funded);

6. They have back up leaders and foot soldiers;

7. They are exceedingly adaptable, open to innovations, and are flexible;

8. They threaten global security;

9. Quitting the group can result in deadly consequences for former .

Despite this similarities, the arguments for designating drug cartels as terrorist groups fail to be convincing because their inability to answer a number of fundamental questions. The first set of questions surround the origins of cartel violence in Mexico. If cartels are akin to terrorists, what are their grievances and what political or social goals are they fighting to achieve assuaging these grievances? In short, what is the "rallying cry" for their constituency? The current outbreak of cartel violence is a continuation of the Mexican cartel wars of the 1990s, which were primarily motivated by new trafficking opportunities, the breakdown in the political-criminal nexus, and improved border security. The successes that cartels have had in penetrating the political realm of Mexico or purging local communities of mayors and police through bribery, extortion, and coercive violence have all been to ensure the smooth operation of cartel profit making activities in the illicit drug trade. In these instances, they have not overthrown the state to implement a social or political agenda, but have sought to get the state out of the way. For example, according to the trial testimony of former Juarez police captain Juan Fierro Mendez, cartels seek to control plazas "to maintain order over the local, state and federal agencies then to have free reign to continue trafficking drugs without any ." Terror groups have constituents that they are trying to sway with their violence while cartels have clients for their products and services that they are attempting to satisfy by circumventing or undermining the . Unlike terrorists, the cartels in Mexico are not motivated to create a homeland to call their own, substitute their ideology for the existing one, or to achieve any other sort of political goal that is routinely associated with armed groups who instigate social upheaval.

The cartels' use of sophisticated weaponry, the proficiency of their violence, and their operational prowess against the Mexican police and army cannot be denied. But, equipment and tactics do not exist in isolation. The improved tactics, skills, and weaponry of cartels are not a substitute for a strategic political objective which tactics are intended to serve. Having better weapons does not compensate for a cause. It would be as if J. Edgar Hoover declared Al Capone and his gang to be terrorists because they had machine guns while local police merely had pistols. Indeed, cartels have aimed their violence at political targets. Even violent acts by the cartels and gangs that have been directed at government targets are meant to signal the government to retreat from its confrontational stance; they are to intimidate the government rather than to serve as a political . Mexican cartels seek to intimidate the state to protect their economic interests, keep themselves out of jail, and to remove their families from harm's .

In fact, like any profit-motivated organisation, Mexican drug cartels have diversified their business portfolios. For example, several cartels have expanded into Mexico's lucrative avocado industry. They have demanded monthly "protection" fees from farmers and have hijacked truckloads of . They have also used similar tactics against Mexico's oil industry. All of this, once again, reveals their profit-centric goals. Cartel members are shaking down money-rich industries rather than entering politics as candidates.

The inability to successfully address questions regarding the origins and motivations of drug cartel violence significantly affects the critical questions about how to end such violence in Mexico. What would "winning" look like? Most terrorist groups have goals that are negotiable, because, once again, these goals are generally political in nature. Because the violence in Mexico is not low-intensity conflict, any sort of negotiations with the cartels in Mexico would have distorted contours. The criminal nature of their enterprise would forestall the willingness of the government or cartels to find the common ground needed to begin a "peace process" that would lead to the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of cartel and gang +members. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had suggested the idea of granting pardons and amnesties for cartel leaders and gang members. However, such an approach was seen as unworkable. Even if such an offer were made, a drug cartel would be unlikely to accept any offer if it undermined its ability to make money through illicit activities. Such an offer would be an invitation to go out of business.

Outside of successful peace negotiations, terrorism has ended in a variety of different ways. Insurgent and terror groups have been unable to pass the cause on to the next generation; they have lost popular support; they have transitioned into legitimate political avenues; they have been successfully repressed by the established authority; their leaders have been captured or . Many organised crime groups have ended similarly, but they have also been defeated by financial strangulation. Terrorist groups support their armed struggles in a number of ways. For example, states can sponsor them, so can charities, sympathetic communities, and even other armed groups. They have also themselves engaged in organised crime activities. But-because a drug cartel is a profit seeking entity at its core-governments that have focused long-term campaigns directed at a cartel's finances have often caused it to disintegrate.

The promise of government power in tackling drug cartels also creates the question of what happens to bilateral relations between the US and Mexico should the US at any time in the future designate cartels as terrorist groups. As of now, the Mexican government stands opposed to any terrorist label for criminal groups. US policy makers should refrain from officially designating cartels as foreign terrorist organisations for a number of important reasons. First, doing so could put a strain on relations between the US and Mexico because the Mexican government is vehemently opposed to labeling the cartels as terrorist groups. In fact, Mexico's Senate majority leader, Ricardo Monreal, called President Trump's initial desire, "inadmissible." If the US labeled the cartels as terrorists without an agreement from Mexico, it would represent a step beyond where the Mexican government is willing to go. Second, doing so may raise the profile and prestige of the cartels, giving them more prominence than they merit. Once again, this may create a rift with Mexico. Finally, the cartels are already vulnerable to a vast array of criminal punishments-"anti-terror measures would not have any practical effect against them in terms of US law enforcement." Simply put, classifying cartels as terrorist groups would add very little to current counter-cartel efforts.

Labeling drug cartels as terrorist groups would nonetheless have legal implications...for US citizens. The debate over Mexican drug violence often serves to obscure the huge demand for narcotics in the US that drug traffickers are seeking to supply. Once again, drug cartels have customers, not constituents. This begs the question, if drug cartels are officially labeled as terrorists, could American drug users be charged with supporting terrorism whenever they buy a dose? If so, US Federal courts would become paralyzed with the volume of cases that were once municipal offenses, but are suddenly raised to the level of national security crimes.

As seen by the events in latter part of last year, drug violence affects both the U.S and Mexico. Finding the appropriate level and combination of resources, legal tools, and political will to reduce the power of Mexico's drug cartels is an ongoing process of statecraft between the US and Mexico, and will likely be one for the foreseeable future. Although drug violence and terrorism are different, defeating both will require some shared characteristics-namely, balanced strategies and thoughtful decision-making. However, confusing drug traffickers with terrorists does little to boost efforts that will reduce criminal violence in Mexico
About the author
Paul Rexton Kan is Professor of National Security Studies at the US Army War College. He is the author of the books, Drug Trafficking and International Security, Drugs and Contemporary Warfare and Cartels at War. He is also the author of numerous articles on the intersection of drug trafficking, crime and modern forms of armed conflict. In February 2011, he served as the Senior Visiting Counternarcotics Adviser at NATO Headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan and he has provided advice to the US Office of National Drug Control Policy (also known as the Drug Czar's office). He has also briefed the Pennsylvania Attorney-General's Office on drug cartel activity in the state. The views expressed are his own and do not represent those of the U.S. government.

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El Chapo Bin Laden? Why Drug Cartels are not Terrorist Organisations - ICCT

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Drug cartel violence in Mexico took an ominous turn late last year. Mexican authorities captured Oxidio Guzman Lopez, the son of imprisoned Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, but were forced to release him after the cartel unleashed a wave of violence in the city.

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📹Grillo, I. (2020, March 2). Boycotting Avocados Won’t Hurt Cartels. The New York Times.  

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📹Grillo, I. (2020, March 2). Boycotting Avocados Won’t Hurt Cartels. The New York Times.  

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📹Frazier, B. (2018, April 18). Blood Avocados: Cracking Down On Cartels. Brown Political Review. 

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📹Frazier, B. (2018, April 18). Blood Avocados: Cracking Down On Cartels. Brown Political Review. 

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Last year, millionaire real estate mogul Tim Gurner told 60 Minutes Australia that millennials are blowing potential savings on "buying smashed avocado for nineteen dollars." While hyperbolic, Gurner's comments highlight the avocado's place in the pantheon of food fads. Trendy neighborhoods and Instagram feeds across the United States are replete with avocado toast and similar homages to the fruit. The boom of avocados has largely been attributed to the lifting of many NAFTA restrictions that previously prevented agricultural imports from Mexico. Since the policy change, the avocado has become a hot commodity, and US demand for the crop has continued to grow. As of 2016, the US was responsible for the consumption of eighty percent of the production of avocados in Mexico, and farmers saw $2.2 billion in profit from them alone. This spike in demand has proven lucrative to Mexican farmers, and the rise in value of avocados has caught the attention of Mexico's most notorious drug cartels. Last October, Reforma reported that avocado farmers in Mexico were being forced to give a percentage of their profits to cartels or risk violence against themselves and their families.

Organized crime syndicates using cash crops to diversify their income is nothing new. Mexican drug cartels have extorted lime farmers in the past, and the Sicilian mob in Italy rose to prominence through the extortion of lemon growers in the 19th century. US officials have long sought to combat cartels by stifling US appetite for illegal goods-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a talk in Austin, Texas that "U.S. demand for drugs drives this violence"-but such an approach is no longer effective with cartels' expansions into legitimate industries such as avocado growing. Efforts to fight cartels must stop focusing so much on the products themselves, and instead turn to directly attacking their financing. If the money stops flowing, so will the flow of illicit goods.

The avocado industry in the Mexican state of Michoacan demonstrates the devastating reach of the cartels. In the 1980s, the avocado was the largest cash crop in the region, and the profitable industry quickly became a primary target of the Los Caballeros Templarios cartel. By some estimates, the cartel gains $150 million each year from the local avocado industry, now controlling 10 percent of orchards in the state. Using this income, the cartel has consolidated its power to gain control over the police and the courts.

Vigilante groups have developed in various towns in retaliation to cartels' state-like control over the region. These groups-whose membership comprises avocado growers-function like watchdog organizations. Members patrol the farms, report suspicious activity, and are funded by their towns and by other growers. The Mexican government has gone so far as to deputize vigilante groups, with great success in small towns. This past January, NPR reported that these avocado watches managed to effectively remove cartel influence from Michoacan. But, while vigilantism may work for smaller communities, this approach is not realistic on a larger scale.

Currently, many strategies to counter cartels focus on the illicit products themselves: these include securing the border, criminalizing drug use, and punishing distribution. While increased border security can help to cut off cartel drugs before they ever enter the states, cartels' expansion into foods, such as avocados and limes, makes it much harder to stop cartel business. Another approach seeks to attack drug cartels by decreasing demand for the products in question. However, even if demand for avocados were to decline, the cartels have a sophisticated enough network-and people have sufficient appetites-that another lucrative food would likely pop up and be commandeered.

"These cartels are able to expand at high rates because of the litany of big banks, such as Wells Fargo, that fail to apply anti-laundering policies to the billions of dollars worth of currency exchanges that occur behind their closed doors."

A scalable solution needs to focus on weakening the cartels themselves-not on the demand for the products they sell-to have any hope of loosening the cartels' industry strangleholds. With cartels' expansion into agriculture, policies must prevent the structural monetary operations of these organizations, not just the products' movements.

The best policies do not treat the violence on a case-by-case, town-by-town, or product-by-product basis. Rather, policymakers should redirect their efforts to curtail cartels' access to financial resources. These cartels are able to expand at high rates because big banks, such as Wells Fargo, fail to apply anti-laundering policies to the billions of dollars' worth of transactions that occur behind their doors. If properly followed, these laws and regulations could significantly hinder the cartels' ability to maintain their complex system of smuggling and intimidation.

Cartel operations are financed primarily using big banks, not back-door cash payments or seedy investments. In 2011, the Guardian reported that the Sinaloa trafficking cartel purchased a private plane carrying 5.7 tons of cocaine using an account from the bank Wachovia, which has since been absorbed by Wells Fargo. In this instance, it didn't matter whether the plane was carrying cocaine or avocados: The bank did not follow anti-laundering policies, allowing for the cartel to transport products and people internationally and expand its influence.

"Millions of dollars from drug cartels have been effectively washed through these banks leaving them untraceable."

This phenomenon is not limited to a handful of banks. In 2012, HSBC paid a $1.9 billion fine for knowingly laundering cartel cash and was placed on probation by the US Department of Justice. In February, the European bank Rabobank was fined $369 million by the US government for failing to track cash deposits. Large deposits are correlated with escalating cartel violence in Mexico, and lax bank policies help enable their activity. Millions of dollars from drug cartels have been laundered through big banks, leaving their sources untraceable. Though cartels have other ways to obfuscate their illegal activity, such transactions provide the easiest path for egregious amounts of cash to evade oversight. These financial institutions provide assurance to cartel organizers that their money is safe and anonymous.

Because cartels are adaptable, cutting them off from banks will not put them out of business completely. They will ultimately shift their financing options to alternative money laundering schemes, such as horse racing or family businesses. But these methods are not capable of effectively and anonymously transferring billions of dollars of cash under the radar. Therefore, placing stricter anti-laundering policies on banks-and ensuring proper enforcement of said policies-will limit the influence of cartels. The goal of the policy is not to immediately bankrupt these cartels, but rather to force them to scale down their operations to a level that is more manageable for governments and citizens to address on a local level.

Martin Woods, the former anti-laundering officer for Wachovia Bank stated, "the drug industry has two products: money and suffering." Cartels are interested in whatever industry brings in money, and the nationwide extortion of avocado farmers is a symptom of organized crime syndicates just like drug violence is. These products' profitability alone does not grow these cartels. Rather, banks that legitimize billions of dollars' worth of cartel transactions enable these evil empires to effectively finance their operations. The exploitation of cash crops is a demonstration of the opportunism that underpins organized crime, and unless policy can successfully weaken the world's biggest cartels, other industries will be quick to fall under their influence.

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Blood Avocados: Cracking Down on Cartels - Brown Political Review

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ast year, millionaire real estate mogul Tim Gurner told 60 Minutes Australia that millennials are blowing potential savings on "buying smashed avocado for nineteen dollars." While hyperbolic, Gurner's comments highlight the avocado's place in the pantheon of food fads. Trendy neighborhoods and Instagram feeds across the United States are replete with avocado toast and similar homages to the fruit.

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📹 Ernst, F. (2020, February 23). America’s appetite for avocados is helping to fuel the Mexican cartels, but  giving up guacamole isn’t the solution. Business Insider. 

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📹 Ernst, F. (2020, February 23). America’s appetite for avocados is helping to fuel the Mexican cartels, but  giving up guacamole isn’t the solution. Business Insider. 

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US consumption of avocados has increased drastically in recent years.

But the increase has also become a boon to Mexican cartels, who have extorted avocados farmers for money.

While the long-term solution to this problem will require serious reforms in Mexico, US consumers can help to advocate for change from avocado buyers.

But boycotting avocados altogether will not help the thousands of people employed on the avocado farms.

Falko Ernst is Senior Analyst Mexico at the International Crisis Group based in Mexico.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For Mexico's avocado producers, the explosion in their crop's popularity has brought a veritable green gold rush, but it also has a darker side. So rich in nutrients they are widely labeled a "superfruit," consumption of avocados in the US alone has doubled in the last ten years to make for a $2.4 billion market.

As a result, everybody from producers down in Mexico, which provides 80% of what is consumed in the States, to your local Whole Foods has been making a killing. The issue: so has Mexican organized crime, literally. Above all in the state of Michoacán, which exports 90% of Mexico's avocados, the bloodshed is no longer "just" about drugs. It is also about avocados.

Splintering criminal organizations set the stage

To understand how Mexican organized crime got its fingers into the guacamole bowl, you need to zoom out and see that what looks like a "drug war" from afar has long mutated into something much more complex - and dangerous.

Mexican organized crime used to be all about producing and shipping drugs to the US, by far the largest illicit drug market world-wide. Feeding U.S demand was and remains a highly lucrative business for the narcos and politicians getting a juicy cut in exchange for turning a blind eye. That's always been the case.

But twenty years ago, something did change. Until the year 2000, Mexico was governed for an uninterrupted 71-year stretch by a single authoritarian party. That party might have been a synonym for corruption, but it did manage to impose certain rules onto the narcos and keep violence in check.

Then came democracy and former president Felipe Calderón's attempts to go after the cartels head-on. Regional governments became more autonomous, opening up new avenues for corruption in the absence of effective oversight.

And Calderón's notion that taking out criminal leaders would see their organizations crumble time and again instead led larger cartels to fracture and proliferate. In late 2006, there were six major criminal organizations in Mexico. Today, there are many dozens smaller ones that have proven harder to control and far more aggressive than most of their larger forebears.

In a situation where no one is truly in control anymore - neither the state nor a single dominant criminal group - and there is no-one to impose rules, the default means for these groups to sort out their affairs with each other is violence.

Extracting the local resources

Many of today's illegal armed actors more closely resemble micro warlords than the leaders of large, sophisticated criminal organizations. Drugs do still play a role, but the business model has prominently shifted toward extracting profits from whichever commodity is locally available.

The reason for the shift away from drugs is twofold. First, it's easier - think not having to ship merchandise for thousands of miles through hostile terrain, not having to bribe officers along the chain and still risk losing it all to law enforcement and not having personnel arrested or killed. Second, there usually is no state actor capable or willing to keep a criminal group from going after licit crops and other resources.

Hence, Mexican organized crime has turned to extorting whoever does well in a given sector or taking over businesses directly - be that logging, mining, agriculture, public transport, or even mom and pop tortilla shops.

This is where avocados come into play. The super fruit is a big magnet for the warlords, the more so due to the recent explosion of demand and prices on global markets.

For local growers, in many cases, it means a visit from the warlords' men - usually starting with a plain-clothed envoy to respectfully inform the grower that a protection payment is expected.

If the grower fails to comply, the next visit will often be by pick-up trucks loaded with sicarios, or enforcers. The pressure can then escalate into violence in the form of beatings, torture, disappearances, or even killings. Farmers, their families, and their employees are all at risk. Businesses and orchards can be simply expropriated by force.

These criminal groups get away with these actions because, in contemporary Mexico, you can literally get away with murder. Due to corruption and collusion victims usually have nowhere to turn to for help, and less than one in 10 homicides gets solved.

A showdown over avocados

The billion-dollar-a-year avocado industry has generated a fierce battle between different armed groups who seek to dominate it.

The Jalisco Cartel - Mexico's up-and-coming criminal powerhouse now that the Sinaloa Cartel's El Chapo has been locked away in the US - is going for it, as are a handful of regional warlords.

Just in August, the city of Uruapan, a major avocado hub, woke to the gruesome find of 19 human bodies dumped on its streets. Some of the bodies were hung from a bridge, a common way for criminal groups to try to intimidate rivals. Since then, the killing has continued, in spite of governmental vows to end it by sending in the National Guard, a new militarized police force. In Michoacán, an average of five people are killed every day.

What to do about it

The avocado conflict provides a glimpse of a far wider and more complex armed conflict that has enveloped organized crime, the government, and everyday Mexicans. 250,000 people have been murdered in the country since 2006, and at the current rate more than 30,000 people are added to this total every year.

There is no quick fix for the situation. The reforms that are necessary to cleanse Mexico's institutions and enable them to do their job - including through more effective oversight and by better training, paying and protecting the people who work for them -will require years of gradual, painstaking effort from all sides.

Meanwhile, precisely because conflict avocados are but a symptom of larger dysfunction, a boycott would do more harm than good. Avocado production sustains thousands of hard-working, peaceful families in Mexico. No longer consuming what they produce would mean pulling the rug out from under their feet, and most likely prompt criminal groups to prey on civilians even more aggressively to make up for lost income.

Still, there are things international consumers can and should do. They can ask the companies they buy produce from not to remain silent bystanders to human rights crises in producing regions such as Michoacán. The private sector and investors can be a crucial voice in pushing governments toward needed reforms to fight impunity, beginning with the strengthening of police and the justice system in Mexico.

Finally, addressing the role of the US guns in keeping deadly conflict in Mexico ablaze is another necessary remedy. The guns Mexican organized crime uses to threaten and kill avocado producers are predominantly made in the US, flowing south from gun shops in the border area. Domestic pressure to curb the tide of guns into Mexico could go a long way in making Mexico a more peaceful place.

Boycotting Mexican avocados would not.

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America's appetite for avocados is helping to fuel the Mexican cartels, but giving up guacamole isn't the solution

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US consumption of avocados has increased drastically in recent years. But the increase has also become a boon to Mexican cartels, who have extorted avocados farmers for money. While the long-term solution to this problem will require serious reforms in Mexico, US consumers can help to advocate for change from avocado buyers.

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📹Dehghan, S. K. (2020, January 6). Are Mexican avocados the world’s new conflict commodity? The  Guardian. 

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📹Dehghan, S. K. (2020, January 6). Are Mexican avocados the world’s new conflict commodity? The  Guardian. 

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The 19 mutilated bodies, nine hanging semi-naked from a bridge in the Mexican city of Uruapan, were initially thought to be the result of a clash between rival drug gangs. But the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which claimed the murders in August, is believed to be fighting for more than drugs. It wants dominance over the local avocado trade.

Mexico is the world's biggest producer of avocados. Exports of the "green gold" from the state of Michoacán, which produces most of Mexico's avocados, were worth $2.4bn last year.

Now, the risk analytics group Verisk Maplecroft has warned in a new analysis that Mexican avocados risk becoming the next "conflict commodity", akin to "blood diamonds" in Angola and Sierra Leone and conflict minerals in the Democractic Republic of the Congo.

The analysis examines a range of factors contributing to the increasing risk profile of Mexican avocados, including the growing involvement of cartels and the associated violence, as well as the use of forced and child labour in farming.

It also examines illegal deforestation, illegal logging and forest-clearing for cultivation. The environmental situation has been exacerbated due to cartel activity, "as criminal groups clear protected woodlands to make room for their avocado groves", according to the report.

"The exponential growth of the avocado's popularity is a mixed blessing for Mexico's communities and farmers," Verisk Maplecroft's Americas analyst, Christian Wagner, says in the report. "While most have benefited from record-breaking prices, many have attracted the attention of organised crime groups that are sinking their teeth into the profits."

He adds: "From cultivation through to transportation, violence and corruption now pervade Mexico's avocado supply chain - particularly in Michoacán, a long-standing hotbed for criminal violence. The similarities with conflict minerals are striking for companies that source avocados from the region. Association with killings, modern slavery, child labour and environmental degradation is becoming an increasing risk when dealing with Michoacán suppliers and growers, especially when establishing traceability is increasingly hard."

Avocados have been lauded by dieticians for their high nutritional content and "good" fats. In Mexico, the industry is popular because it pays up to 12 times the Mexican minimum wage, according to the study. The country tops the list of world exporters, ahead of the Netherlands, a major non-producing exporting hub, and Peru.

Most of Mexico's avocados go to the US, despite domestic production in California and Florida. Avocados in UK supermarkets mostly come from Spain, Israel, South Africa, Peru and Chile. The fruit is also in high demand in China, which imported 1,000 times more of the product in 2017 than it had six years earlier.

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Avocado orchards stretch far into the mountains in Michoacán state. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP

Europe's consumption of avocado stands at 1kg per person per year, according to the Netherlands' Centre for the Promotion of Imports, while the US consumes four times as much. France is the fruit's largest market in Europe.

In Mexico, the cartels have turned to other activities, most notably avocados, in the face of the government's tightening war on drugs, Verisk Maplecroft's Wagner said. They engage "in both extortion and direct cultivation, usually on lands taken over from local farmers or carved out from protected woodlands".

The study notes that "2019 has seen the rise of criminal organisations that behave in every way as drug cartels but are not even engaged in drug trafficking. In Michoacán, the avocado industry is providing the diversified income that criminal groups obtain through fuel theft elsewhere in Mexico."

At least 12 criminal groups are operating in the region. Some local packers and growers have responded by recruiting their own defence forces. But "this increases the risk of both more violence and the potential for human rights abuses", says the report, and criminal groups often coerce pickers into temporary forced labour.

Falko Ernst, International Crisis Group senior analyst for Mexico, said avocados have been a prominent item in Mexican organised crime groups' portfolio for at least a decade, especially in Michoacán.

"It's not only avocados. Mexican organised crime has long mutated away from 'just' drugs trafficking," he said. "Today, the model is this: you control a given territory, and within in it you exploit whichever commodity is locally available. That includes avocados, but also limes, papayas, strawberries, illegal logging and mining, to name but a few."

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A farmer loads fruit boxes with avocados on to a truck at an orchard in Uruapan, Michoacán. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

Ernst said a boycott of Mexican avocado is not the right response because "we're talking about a huge sector that sustains thousands of hard-working, peaceful families. A boycott would mean pulling out the rug out from under their feet, and most likely prompt criminal groups to prey on civilians more aggressively yet to make up for lost avocado income."

He added: "What consumers can and should do is voice their expectations toward the companies they buy goods from, to not remain silent bystanders to human rights crises in many of the producing regions in the global south. Governments often ignore their citizens, but if the private sector, if investors, start budging, it's a whole different story."

Boycotting Mexican avocados is not the best way to fight cartels | Adrienne Matei

Ryan Aherin, senior commodities analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, said there isn't a simple answer on how consumers should respond.

"Avoiding avocados from Mexico altogether might deter greater expansion of criminal activity in the production of Mexican avocados, but cartels are unlikely to abandon the business of producing them without causing greater suffering for local communities," he said.

"Traceability is key to getting these issues under control, but is often easier said than done. The nature of avocado value chains make it difficult, if not impossible, to trace an individual fruit back to its source."
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Are Mexican avocados the world's new conflict commodity?

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he 19 mutilated bodies, nine hanging semi-naked from a bridge in the Mexican city of Uruapan, were initially thought to be the result of a clash between rival drug gangs. But the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which claimed the murders in August, is believed to be fighting for more than drugs.

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📹Birrell, I. (2020, February 22). Ian Birrell on how violent Mexican cartels  have realised avocados are more profitable than drugs. Mail Online. 

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📹Birrell, I. (2020, February 22). Ian Birrell on how violent Mexican cartels  have realised avocados are more profitable than drugs. Mail Online. 

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Mexico grows almost half avocados sold globally, nicknamed as 'green gold'

US sales have risen almost fivefold this century and have also surged in the UK

Almost all of Mexico's avocados are grown in fertile volcanic soil of Michoacán

Violent gangs have seized 35 per cent of the £1.9 billion sector in this state alone

One collective of 40 farmers is being forced to pay £500K a month to gangsters

When one distributor refused to pay 'protection' money, daughter was executed

Sergio was working in the avocado orchards when two men suddenly appeared and told him to accompany them to see their boss. Having already survived a kidnapping and execution threat, he knew this was bad news.

He was driven a few miles to another orchard, where a prominent drug cartel chief was sitting at a table surrounded by 15 heavily armed goons. Sergio was offered a glass of water, asked a few innocuous questions, then dismissed.

A few days later, the phone calls started. He was told to tell his boss to give the two men almost £100,000 - a huge sum in Mexico, where the average annual household income is about £6,600.

'The men said they were asking for a contribution because they had so many expenses and workers to pay,' he said. 'They said they were asking in a friendly way - but if we were not friendly, then they would take other measures.'

Sergio, a tall and amiable man, knew what this meant. Farmers have been disappearing and turning up dead in Michoacán, the fertile heart of Mexico's billion-pound avocado trade, ever since drug cartels discovered the humble green fruit could be as lucrative as heroin.

Sergio's bosses duly negotiated a lower sum and he delivered the agreed first instalment. Two days later came another call. 'They asked if this was a joke, saying it was not enough money and wanting the original amount.'

Then the farmers faced a barrage of menacing calls. They switched off their phones, but the gangsters turned up at their homes and hustled their families.

When I met Sergio, they had one more day to hand over the cash - or face death.

Such is the fragility of life in Michoacán. This state became one of the most blood-soaked parts of our planet after murderous cartels fought to control vast profits from cocaine, heroin and cannabis flowing through their country.

Now the price of heroin has crashed due to creation of synthetic opioid alternatives, cannabis is legal in much of North America - and violence has surged in Mexico with a record toll of murders as its savage gangs diversify into new areas.

How ironic that these symbols of health-consciousness in the West are suddenly at the centre of mass killings, kidnappings, torture, extortion and corruption.

Mexico grows almost half the avocados sold globally. The product has become so valuable that it is nicknamed 'green gold'.

US sales have risen almost fivefold this century and have also surged in the UK.

Celebrity chefs pushed them hard as they are one of the few fruits to contain hardly any sugar but are rich in vitamins, fibre and healthier monounsaturated fats.

Ella Woodward, of bestselling brand Deliciously Ella, whizzes them into breakfast smoothies while celebrity cook Nigella Lawson says avocado toast is 'part of the fabric of my life'.

I was returning to my hotel in the city of Uruapan after talking to Sergio's boss when I came across scores of heavily armed police and troops. As rain lashed down, soldiers trained guns and even grenade-launchers at cafes, shops and bars in the street.

Inside a small video arcade, there was carnage. Four gunmen had entered and, after asking for two local cartel leaders, sprayed about 65 bullets around the room without waiting for an answer.

Nine people lay dead, the floor was covered in blood. The youngest was Luis Sandoval, only 12 years old. 'They were just playing games in an arcade,' Ana, his aunt, later told me. 'All the victims were kids, good kids going to school from poor and humble families.'

Few of the terrified people who live in this 500-year-old city would argue with her next words. 'It is so difficult to live in these circumstances because you never know when something bad is going to happen.'

Uruapan has been hideously scarred by violence since an infamous day in 2006 when five severed human heads were hurled on a nightclub dancefloor, heralding the start of a reign of terror by cartels trafficking Colombian cocaine.

The cause of the latest horror is assumed to be a turf war between Los Viagras, a local gang that takes its name from the spikily erect hair of one of its founders, and rivals Jalisco New Generation, from a neighbouring state.

Six months ago, nine bodies were hung from a bridge alongside a banner threatening Los Viagras, with ten more corpses, mostly dismembered, dumped on the road below.

The day before the arcade killings, 11 bodies were found in a shallow grave. Last week, 24 more corpses, including those of five women, were found in a rural spot near the city, bearing signs of torture and execution.

Everyone, from wealthy doctors to struggling street taco-sellers, faces extortion - yet no one dares go to the police since many are in the pay of cartels and informers get killed.

One taxi driver told me that he and his colleagues must stump up a monthly sum in protection money equivalent to about one day's earnings. 'Los delincuentes [criminals] are expanding to steal from everyone. Every day I am afraid. The whole town will soon be empty as it gets dark. People all hide behind locked doors.'

Almost all of Mexico's avocados are grown in the fertile volcanic soil of Michoacán, which has lifted the region out of poverty - but at terrible cost. Initially, the cartels saw the avocado industry as a means to launder money but rapidly realised the potential for vast profits. 'They stopped seeing drugs as their main industry and moved into avocados as well as mining,' said one analyst.

Gabriel Castaneda, director of security policy in Michoacán, says the gangs, which are thought to have 200,000 members in his state alone, have seized 35 per cent of the £1.9 billion sector. 'They're taking control of the whole industry,' he said. 'It is replacing many of their former activities, including drug-trafficking. In many cases the takeovers are done by murder, extortion and kidnapping.'

Castaneda told how one collective of 40 farmers is being forced to pay £500,000 a month to gangsters, while up to four trucks carrying avocados are reportedly hijacked each day in the state. 'It is so profitable,' he said.

After one avocado distributor refused to pay 'protection' money, his daughter was executed on the company's doorstep as a warning to others.

Another grower was kidnapped from his orchard earlier this month and his body found days later.

According to a local source, 20 gangs contest this terrain. Yet the authorities' impotence was clear when I went to talk to Sergio's boss Tomás at his farm near a checkpoint run by the National Guard, an anti-cartel police force created last year.

Tomás clearly loves his land as he showed me round his orchards and plucked an avocado for me to taste - but he was also obviously under huge stress as talked about the struggle to find protection money.

'They have a lot of information about you. They know exactly how much land we all have. You pay off these people - but who knows if another lot will appear next week demanding money? They can get you any time, ask for any sum, steal any land.'

He said they did not have the cash so would have to cut down as much ripe fruit as possible - although payment for sales would take six weeks to come through - and then borrow from friends, family and loan sharks.

'I am frightened for my family - I don't want any of them to be harmed. If I was single, I would just go to Mexico City. But there is no way out. We can't just flee.'

Such is the suspicion that stalks this land that Tomás took me aside to talk away from his own workers. He is dismayed by the failure of the authorities to protect local people - but he is resisting, so far, calls for creation of a self-defence militia.

Later, in a nearby forest, I met a group of families of the indigenous Purépecha people who have armed themselves to fight off cartels trying to take their property.

Inside a wooden cabin, they showed me a sophisticated camera system that is scanning their 4,200 acres of pine-filled woods - and a hiding place for guns to fend off gangsters who want their land for avocados.

Their spokesman showed me scars on his fingers left by a machete during a clash with five criminals last October.

'We inherited this land from our grandfathers so we feel obliged to protect it,' he said.

I spoke also to an environmentalist whose forest has been stripped by gangsters who sell 'licences' to loggers for about £20 a day. He says his home, too, has been destroyed by police in league with the gangs. He estimated that 56,000 trees have been cut down in the 250-acre site and said that he had to dive for cover last year during an hour-long ambush by Los Viagras that left ten rival gangsters dead.

Little wonder, amid all this carnage and corruption, that some residents in Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, a village five miles down the road from Uruapan, have taken the law into their own hands.

'Municipal Council' checkpoints, run by locals using walkie-talkies, ring the town. One man told me their weapons were stashed out of sight under a deal with the federal government but they possessed 2,000 rifles in this place of 15,000 people. A cattle trader said he did not like guns, but added: 'I have a few grenades if I need them.'

Another man in his 70s explained how the area had been under control of two gangsters who lived in the town. 'We had no freedom. There was a curfew at 10pm. These guys could do what they wanted, even taking young girls to rape.'

Two years ago, residents rose in revolt after the shooting of a local man. Grabbing their guns, they drove the main gangster out of town after killing his brother.

It is reminiscent of the Wild West. Cartel members are allowed to pass freely through the town - I saw three young armed toughs clad in black stroll into a shop from a pick-up truck without licence plates.

Armando Galindo Espinoza, the police chief, said his force had been reformed at the same time as the residents' revolt. 'Some left with the gangs because they were part of them. We fired a few officers to clean it up and replaced them with local people.'

As I entered his office, he shifted two semi-automatic rifles from my seat. Later, he showed me the small .223 bullets fired from his police guns and compared them with the far bigger ones used by gangsters, rattled out by automatic weapons with 75-bullet clips and able to pierce his heaviest protective vest.

'We're fighting an evil - and it was political negligence from the authorities that let this cancer grow,' he said.

Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a veteran socialist and close friend of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, won power two years ago by promising to end violence with a focus on the economy and a naive policy of 'abrazos, no balazos' (hugs not bullets). But the economy has stagnated and violence worsened.

During my visit, his new National Guard was humiliated after an egg-throwing crowd supporting an arrested Viagras gang leader forced troops clearing road blocks into retreat.

One of the president's former senior party colleagues said it was vital that this force was given far greater powers to investigate and crush the cartels. 'The policy should be to protect the majority of the population, not to defend the human rights of gangs with no respect for other people.'

Back in Michoacán, the cartel did not turn up to collect the cash from avocado farmer Tomás on the appointed day.

Was this a relief, I asked? 'Not necessarily,' he replied wearily. 'You don't know when they will come back.'

Such is the tragic cruelty of this verdant land where our love of avocados means that a luscious fruit is valued more now than human lives.

Some names have been changed to protect identities.

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IAN BIRRELL on cartels realising avocados more profitable than drugs

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Mexico grows almost half avocados sold globally, nicknamed as 'green gold' US sales have risen almost fivefold this century and have also surged in the UK Almost all of Mexico's avocados are grown in fertile volcanic soil of Michoacán Violent gangs have seized 35 per cent of the £1.9 billion