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.They still steal from small farmers and remain violent. The president of Mexico is still on cartel payroll. I give them a tiny step, but overall, this is failed state. And this crap is coming to Caliuzela, you can bet on that.
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.”
Between the Texas mass killers and Mexican cartels, the border is not looking too safe.
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