Cartels muscle into avocado, lime business
EL AGUAJE, Mexico — Antonio had grown limes and raised cattle on his farm in western Mexico for years, managing to eke out a living by following a rule he and many others in Michoacán, one of Mexico’s most violent states, had always known: Leave the narco-trafficking routes alone and no harm would come their way.
But now the valley of lime trees that once made this region prosperous had been set on fire, a casualty of the drug cartels’ emerging business model.
Some criminal groups are going to unprecedented lengths to muscle into mainstream sectors of the economy, including avocados and limes, threatening to disrupt the lucrative, bilateral trade partnership between Mexico and the United States, one of the largest in the world.
Mexico exports $3.2 billion worth of avocados and $500 million of limes annually, and some cartels are forcing their way into these profitable businesses, not only extorting them as they have for years, but also running the operations themselves. Some are even planting orchards and opening avocado packing plants to diversify their revenues and fund their efforts to capture more territory.
“There is an evolution toward a classic Italian-style criminal-political relationship,” Romain Le Cour, program director for Mexico Evalúa, a research institute focused on public security policies, said of the cartels. “When you think of the mafia, it’s a gray zone where you tie legal with illegal, the crime with business and the crime with politics.”
This evolution has even emboldened the cartels to threaten the U.S. government’s presence throughout the country, Le Cour added, as criminal groups “understand that they have more power than anyone else, the government or the businesses they extort.”
Increasingly, farmers and communities tied to the agricultural trade have been caught in the middle of a turf war, while tens of thousands of others have been displaced, as the government struggles to clear out the gangs and quell the violence.
“It’s a conflict that never ends,” Antonio said bitterly, asking that only his middle name be used to protect his identity.
A recent military clearing operation in El Aguaje allowed families who fled the cartel violence to return in February. They drove through clouds of smoke billowing from the smoldering valley, past their ruined town square with its buildings pockmarked by bullets and graffiti: CJNG, the Spanish acronym for Jalisco New Generation Cartel — the region’s most powerful cartel.
Some people, like Antonio, came back to work the farms they had been forced to temporarily abandon. Many returned only to pack up their belongings and leave again.
Hardly anyone in El Aguaje believed the government gains would last, as the town had been contested by various criminal groups for years. Recent military operations focused on the Jalisco cartel, but the newly scorched orchards were a clear sign that other cartels were trying to move in to fill the void.
In Michoacán, until recent months the only Mexican state licensed to export avocados to the United States, the cartels have cut down protected forests, forcing the population off the land to establish their own orchards. And they have started extorting minor producers, previously considered too small to be worth the trouble.
While there is no clear estimate on the extent to which these criminal groups have affected trade, the net profits from their international operations could reach up to $20 billion annually, nearly 2% of Mexico’s gross domestic product, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to give his name.
With little faith in the government’s ability to protect them, some towns have decided to take up arms. In Tancítaro — known as the world’s avocado capital — the city established a self-defense unit in 2014, tired of cartels extorting their crops, assaulting their women and kidnapping their children for ransom.
Tancítaro’s mayor, Gerardo Mora Mora, said they had to choose between defending themselves or “see our future end.”