Imagine it’s Friday night, and you are at the grocery store preparing for the game on Saturday. It’s an away game, and you are helping to plan a party to watch the game with some friends. You decide that you are going to make your homemade guacamole that your friends love. So you go to the grocery store to get what you need and make a beeline for the produce section to get the most important ingredient, avocados. You pick a couple that you find the most appealing and notice that they have a sticker on them saying "Product of Mexico." You think to yourself that you couldn’t be more authentic than that, right? Would you change your mind if I told you that by buying those avocados you just gave money to Mexican drug cartels?
The widespread popularity of avocados has only come about in the past two decades. In fact, until 1997, the importation of Mexican avocados was completely banned.The adoption of NAFTA and tests proving that the Mexican avocados would not introduce a new species of fruit fly worked to completely lift the ban by 2000. These days 6 out of 10 of the avocados that are eaten by Americans were produced in Mexico.
So where do the drug cartels come in? Well, like any business venture, a drug cartel wants to make the most money that it can in whatever way possible. After 2000, avocados became an extremely profitable business. The explosion in popularity of guacamole in particular led to farmers being barely able to keep up with the demand, as avocado exports climbed more than 237 percent between 2010 and 2015.
This success began to attract a more unsavory crowd. Beginning with Los Zetas in 2007 and continuing with La Familia Michoacana and Los Caballeros Templarios (translated: Knights Templar), the industry has been rife with assassinations, abductions, extortion, price controls and the seizing of farmland. The drug cartels’ influence is so extensive that it is estimated that the Templarios make an estimated $150 million annually from avocados. Avocados have even been equated to the blood diamonds of Africa. Farmers have tried to defend themselves by forming "auto-defensa" groups, but their success is marginal. With government support unlikely and local law enforcement on the Templarios’ payroll, most farmers have no choice but to pay the extortions and accept the prices the cartel sets. In effect, a percentage of what you paid for those guacamole making avocados went directly into the pocket of a drug lord.
Though it is difficult for Mexican farmers to escape the cartels' tyranny, and it is easy to empathize with their situation buying their avocados brings up more ethical and moral questions than a person should ever have to face when buying some fruit. Especially when other options, like avocados grown in California, exist. So the next time you get a burrito and are asked if you want a side of guac, think twice and ask where they got their avocados. Because chances are, you are about to be a part of a drug deal you never planned for.