The day - avocados, deforestation and cartels go hand in hand in Mexico

Cherán, Mich.In the Mountains of Pine of Western Mexico, where the taberrs sweep with whole slopes to plant avocado, the inhabitants have taken the fight against illegal felling by their own hand.They say that avocado reduces the local water supply and attracts drug trafficking cartels in search of money due to extortion.

In some places, such as the indigenous people of Cherán, in the state of Michoacán, the fight against felling and illegal plantations has been so successful that it seems as if a line had been drawn in the mountains: avocados and clear lands, by aside, and pine forest on the other.However, a political uprising of a decade in which the residents of Cherán have declared their autonomy and formed their own government has been necessary and formed their own government.

Other villages, harassed by producers and armed groups of the cartels, continue to fight, but they are usually intimidated by violence.

David Ramos Guerrero, a member of the Autonomous Agricultural Board, affirms that farmers have agreed to a total prohibition of commercial avocado plantations, which, he says, "all it brings is violence".

"They are allowed three, four, five or up to a maximum of 10 plants for only edible use for the community, but as a business it is not allowed," he said.

The reason is evident.During a patrol tour, Ramos Guerrero observes a practically deforested valley in a neighboring municipality.Avocado trees ranks are formed on the bare slopes that were previously full of pines and firs."This is an island.Around Cherán everything is invaded of avocado, "he laments.

Those who have traveled the fresh mountain of pine forest and firs in Michoacán knows that the cups of the pines serve as protection against heat and evaporation.The thick carpet of fallen pine needles serves as a sponge, absorbing and storing moisture.The roots of the pines prevent water and earth from falling down the slopes.

But the first thing the avocado producers do is create ponds that retain water for their orchards, draining the streams that were previously used by the settlers in the mountain areas.Then the drug trafficking cartels arrive to extort avocado producers.

"We have realized that avocado all it does is absorb all possible water of what our forests produce," says Ramos Guerrero.

Cherán, who began his autonomous government experiment in 2011 with the blockade of roads used by illegal tarators, now uses backhoes to make ditches along the forest exploitation roads.On the avocados, Ramos Guerrero states: “We intervene in a friendly way, first through a dialogue, and if no agreement is reached, it is now used.So the door goes, and avocado plants are started or cut off ".

If farmers do not agree to stop planting avocados, it is when the forest patrols of Cherán come into action.

Traveling in a pair of pickup type trucks through the forest, a community police force made up of men armed with AR-15 rifles seize an ax and then a chainsaw to two men who talrate trees.Men will probably be returned to tools with a warning to ask for permission for next time.The patrols find previously cut and hidden pine trunks between the weed.

Salvador Ávila Magaña, 65, remembers what it was before Cherán was built in 2011.He was thrown out of his lands before the threats of the taverors, who then talled them.

"Already to the last (we were) threatened that, if we were step back on there, they were going to‘ lift, "said Ávila Magaña."If we were going on the stock market.Several people died and delivered them with time in pieces ".

But despite the fact that his 18 -hectare plot (45 acres) had been completeThe one that was at the time a sustainable forest practice for the extraction of resin or cosmetics.

"We made an agreement with the community members who did not sow avocado, pure trees that produce a good air," he said.

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Avocados have been a kind of miraculous crop for thousands of small producers in Michoacán.With a few hectares of well -careful avocado trees, who have small lands can send their children to school or buy a pickup truck, something that no other crop allows them to do, but due to the large amount of water they require,The expansion of this crop has been given towards the humid pine forests instead of the disused corn fields.

Neither producers nor exporters have made serious efforts to ensure that their avocados come from sustainable orchards.

While the battle has been temporarily won in Cherán, it is still carried out in other towns in Michoacán who have not had a citizen shot of the local government.

Approximately 96.5 kilometers away, in the town of Villa Madero, the activist Guillermo Saucedo tried to create the type of forest patrol used in Cherán to detect illegal taators and an avocados orchards of unauthorized avocados.

He gathered up to 60 or 70 people to participate in the patrols, as of May 2021, but on December 6, Saucedo ran into armed men of a drug trafficking cartel.He says that perhaps he spoke too emphatically in the meetings or angered by powerful allies of the counters and avocados producers.

"I was going through the white car, with polarized glass, closed trucks and types," said Saucedo a month later.“Hence, three people descended with short and long weapons and the cartridge cut me.They pointed me while the one who left the front with me pointed to me.Two arrived from my back and they got on the vehicle and they took me out of the town."

During the journey, they placed a jacket and a balaclavas on the head.They hit him in the head with the ass of his rifles and guns.Later, in a security house, they repeatedly asked him about a arrested cartel leader, but Saucedo thinks it was an excuse for his true intentions: his work in the community organization.

“Me golpearon hasta que se cansaron", narró.Hours later, he was abandoned in a dirt road in a remote municipality, and informed him that he blamed a rival cartel of his kidnapping.

The patrols ceased and Saucedo has been forced to maintain a low profile in its native village in Zangarro.Their requests for the protection of the federal government have not been treated so far in a country where 96 community environmental or activists have been killed in the last three years.

Saucedo and environmentalist Julio Santoyo are not sure what the exact link between drug trafficking cartels and the taators and avocado producers in Villa Madero is.

Santoyo believes that criminal groups could be directly investing in avocados plantations.It would not be something incredible in Michoacán, where in 2010 another cartel, the Knights Templar, appropriated the business of the extraction of iron ore and its export to China.

Saucedo believes that the cartels are protecting the taverors and producers.

“Están apadrinados con ellos, ellos los protegen", sostuvo Saucedo.Certainly, avocado producers in other parts of the state have frequently complained that drug trafficking cartels are demanding payments for each fruit shipment, and it is easy to understand why cartels want production to increase.

In Villa Madero, a place that was previously surrounded by pine forests, Santoyo recently used Google Earth to detect approximately 360 water retention ponds that avocado producers have created to water their orchards.Saucedo says that now many of the pine forests have been carved and avocado producers are resorting to deep wells, which further decreases the water table.

Santoyo dijo que también ha recibido amenazas indirectas de un cártel que exigen un “ya bájale" con su activismo, pero informó que las familias agrícolas locales de antemano se han visto afectadas por los plantíos de aguacate.

“La gente de estos lugares tradicionalmente podía sacar agua de los arroyos para sus animalitos, chivas, vacas, borregos", explicó Santoyo. “Ya no puede hallar agua y tiene que ir en camioneta o a pie a buscarlo, a veces falta hasta para el consumo humano".