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. 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.

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.

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.

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.”

Cartels have been in the avacado business a long time.

Lime business as well.

My biggest problem with my avocado tree is fucking squirrels .  Those little fuckers along with possums have taken every avocado on my tree three years running.

I have started trapping and by next year I will have all the coons possums and a bunch of the tree rats killed out.

Wonder where they are getting their guns.

And this is the country the Democrats want open borders with.

Avocados are another product I only buy if they're from the US.
Our local supermarket (Food City) has tags under their produce stating country of origin.

Getting them past the nude cannibal women is a bitch though.

There's a LOT of regular families around there that make their money from avocados.  Between this, the cartel violence, the pack of other jobs in michoacan, the pages police corruption in michoacan, and other stuff. .. They won't have a lot of other options, coming here will be about all they have left.

It’s a well known fact Fast and Furious armed avocado farmers.

Where's the Magnificent Seven when they need them?

I'm sure cartel soldiers are a dime a dozen there. Kill one & five more pop up in his place. It's a shame cartels couldn't be used as some sort of sniper training exercise. Cut the head off the snake & all that.

Just sayin'...………….  

I would be more than happy to pay a premium for USA-grown avocados.  Unfortunately around here you pretty much take what you can get.  

If you're gonna take over you might as well run it all.  Drugs may make good money, but it's taking over food production that makes you god.

The cartels have a LOT of equipment, they train a LOT in using it, they have a LOT of spies, and they operate a LOT of intel.

As one example, in the recent battle between the military and a cartel, *while the battle was still going on*, the cartel had hit squads going around the city killing the families of the military members taking part in the battle.

The cartels aren't a bunch of yokels pissing around and having a good time.   The only way they'll be stopped is if Mexico ever gets any functional law enforcement, which should arrive in... oh... about...never.  

Around a significant portion of Michoacan, drugs *are* food... they're the main industry.  When you get down to Nueva Italia and Apatzingan, the drug trade accounts for at least a full 50% of the income of the towns in one way or another.

Easy to point the finger at fast and furious (and well-deserved), but it's not like all those "cuernos de chivo" just suddenly popped up once Obama took office.

In a sane and just world, it would be extremely easy for the vigilantes to slaughter the cartels. Governments always hate armed citizens more than criminals though.

FWIW, when I was down there, there were a lot of guns in the hands of private citizens.  Getting one isn't *hard*, it just costs *money*.

But even if you have a gun, or you and twenty or fifty of your buddies have guns, going up against a very well-equipped, well-organized, brutal, savage, murderous organization is a pretty tough thing for ordinary citizens to do.   The cartels are much more willing to torture and murder your entire bloodline, they have good intel networks, etc..  We're talking about an organization that defeats the Mexican military in battles, joe-schmoe citizens don't stand a chance.

Even with tommy-guns available mail-order, citizens certainly didn't/couldn't raise up against the organized crime mobs in America that were shaking them down with protection, extortion, theft, etc., it took functional law enforcement (from the federal level) to step in and take them down.  And functional law enforcement is something that Mexico just doesn't have.

Honestly, the best thing Mexican citizenry could do might just be to pool all of the money they can scrounge to hire some "contractors" to take on the Cartels, since the Mexican government/military/police sure aren't going to do it.

Where's the picture of the millenial white woman surrounded by 3rd worlders giving her stuff?

Seems very appropriate here.

We should source stuff from the USA and not 3rd world shitholes.

I would bet much of the tourism infrastructure of Mexico was built with drug money investment.
It's a way of legitimizing your wealth.  Kind of like organized crime setting up family members in a legitimate business using ill gotten gains/immoral gained profits.
Isn't that the way the Kennedy's started?

I assume we'll be seeing "conflict avocado" legislation, like we do over half the shit mined in Africa?

My assistant is from Michoacán and her family owns an avocado farm. She used to visit family regularly until her last trip in the spring where the whole town was basically being extorted by guys at checkpoints with guns. She’ll never go back.
She also speaks fluent English, just paid off her house in August, is a citizen, works her ass off, and is one of the most Conservative people I’ve ever met

"Donde el polvo y el pleito nunca se acaban...."

Holy Guacamole!!!

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/10/4-cartels-threaten-avocado-farmers-w.html

Good netflix documentary called Rotten

Well done sir, that got me.

Putting that on my watch list

I have few fucks to give. I can live without Avocados and dam near anything else they have. The farmers can not win. It is a failed state headed for even worse times. Failed state from the very top.
IMO we are seeing the beginning of a tremendous downward spiral in Mexico that may very well bring the entire Country to a violent end as we know it.
So bad the US completely shuts down the border. As if our Southern neighbors were Iran, Iraq or Syria. I think that within 5-10 years that is an actual possibility.

Mexico is a Narco country.

They have their hands in anything profitable and they take their cut. They are diversified and employ smart individuals.

No idea why anyone would assume otherwise, or why this is a surprise to anyone.

Guess what, it happens with coffee too!

They should hire the A-Team...because only fiction will win in Mexico.

So when Trump started pushing the wall, and libtards started screaming about avocado prices soaring, they were really defending cartel interests? That goes hand in hand with my theory about dirty politicians and cartel funding.

After we get rid of our dem-cartel, we should make Mexico great again.

The problem I have always had with squirrels is that if you get one three more show up to take it's place.

I'd pay to see video of that.

Al Capone said he should have gotten in the milk business as there’s more profit in that than booze

Mainly the majority who drank booze only bought a bottle once or twice a month but milk, well....moms demand it every morning

Drove over to the south bay last weekend ( Gilroy ) to visit the MIL,  stopped by the roadside on the way out and picked up a BIG bag of garlic for $5 and 10 for a dollar Avocados.

With all the wide open space in the south west why haven't we seen a boom in avocado farms given the rapid rise in popularity of the fruit?

It's on YouTube- tried to fast forward and see titties, only saw Bill's.

After the vigilantes kill or tun off the cartels, they become the cartel. It's a way of life as long as their is money to be made-

I drove a truck over-the-road for just a couple years. I preferred refrigerated transport. It could happen that some elements of the job could be kind of interesting.

I carried avocados from Laredo to Chicago on just two occasions. When you haul them like that, you are not allowed through some states. You are pretty much restricted to a straight shot up to Illinois.

My girlfriend is from Michoacan, and I go down there from time to time.  We were in avocado areas, and there were groups of armed dudes hanging out in the open.  Odd mix of guns, M1 carbines, tired looking vintage ARs and shotguns.  I figured they were Autodefensas, or something similar.

Dodgy shit going on down there.

That's how the Viagras Cartel came to be, ex autodefensas legitimized by the government then saw the money to be made.

The society knows who is part of the cartels, yet they seem to tolerate it.  If the entire society, were to shun anyone having anything to do with the cartels, other than to hunt them down, the cartels could not exist.  The cartels exist because there are few other jobs for many people there that wouldn't leave them in poverty, and the society has accepted the cartels, and cartel money as their way of life.

The locals know who works for the cartels, even if it is only the lowly errand boy.  They have decided to bitch rather than take arms against the cartels.  If everyone in town were to take up arms against the cartels, things might just change.

Michoacán used to be some kick ass weed.
Or so I have heard.