OPINION & COMMENTARYIV THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2020
EDITORIALS OF THE TIMESMEXICO CITY
Guacamole’s popularity is feed-
ing a roaring trade over the south-
ern border of the United States.
Some estimates have put Ameri-
can consumption of avocados on
Super Bowl Sunday alone at over
45 million kilograms, and last year
a record 950 million kilos of the
succulent green fruit was import-
ed from Mexico.
The avocado’s success illus-
trates how commerce over the
Rio Grande continues to grow, de-
spite President Donald J. Trump’s
moaning about the trade deficit.
When he was elected in 2016, im-
ports of all goods from Mexico
were worth $293 billion; last year
they shot up to $358 billion.
As exports of avocados, known
as “green gold,” have boomed,
they have helped lift rural Mexico
out of poverty, especially in the
state of Michoacán, and helped
reduce the need to migrate to the
United States.
Unfortunately, this has drawn
the attention of drug cartels, who
have been extorting avocado
growers, often charging them for
every kilogram they export.
Fed-up avocado producers have
taken up arms against the cartels,
and have hit the streets in protests.
The state governor has promised
a new anti-extortion unit, but this
has yet to deliver results. While
these shakedowns have been a
problem for years, a wave of recent
media attention has led to debate
about whether it is ethical to buy
“blood avocados,” considered a
“conflict commodity.”
The chef JP McMahon, who
owns a Michelin-starred restau-
rant in Galway, Ireland, said that
avocados were the “blood dia-
monds of Mexico.” The Daily Mail
even used the avocado issue to at-
tack Meghan Markle, the Duchess
of Sussex, with an article titled,
“How Meghan’s favorite avocado
snack — beloved of all millennials— is fueling human rights abuses,
drought, and murder.”
After covering Mexico’s drug
violence since 2001, I think it is
extremely misguided to advocate
boycotting avocados to fight car-
tels. When industrious growers
are shaken down by gangsters, it
is crazy to hit them in their wallets
again. We need to pressure Mexi-
can security forces to stop extor-
tion, not punish businesses.
“It’s not a problem limited to one
commodity,” said Falko Ernst,
senior analyst for Mexico at the
international Crisis Group. “A
boycott (of avocados) would drag
down thousands of hard-working
families that have done nothing
wrong.”
Some reports argue that the car-
tels themselves have taken over
avocado farms. Indeed, organized
criminal groups in Mexico launder
money in a range of businesses in
the United States, as illustrated
in a blacklist compiled by the U.S.
Treasury. They also “invest” their
profits in the United States as an
infamous case of cartels hiding
money in U.S. horse races shows.
This does not mean a whole sector
should be shunned because of it.Granted, there are concerning
issues of deforestation and over-
use of water in Mexico’s avocado
production. But this applies to ma-
ny crops and requires the enforce-
ment of environmental laws rather
than attacking all the farmers, in-
cluding those who follow the rules.
It would also help if the Unit-
ed States allowed the importing
of avocados from more areas in
Mexico. There are currently only
a limited number of municipali-
ties certified by the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture, which leads
to a concentration of crops in
Michoacán.
The origins of Mexico’s avo-
cado boom lie in the 1990s, when
marketing helped increase U.S.
demand way beyond production
capabilities in California and the
doors were opened to imports
from Mexico. From 1997 to 1998,
the first year imports were per-
mitted, six million kilograms of
avocados were sent to the U.S. The
delicious creamy avocados were
a hit, and imports have since in-
creased exponentially.
By 2013, there was widespread
extortion of avocado farmers
by the bizarrely named Knights
Templar cartel. The mobsters al-
so shook down many other busi-
nesses, including lime farming,
cattle ranching and taxis, leading
to an uprising of vigilante squads
against them. The collapse of the
Knights gave a breath of respite to
farmers, until new gangs, includ-
ing the equally bizarrely namedViagras, stepped in.
Some farmers manage to avoid
paying extortion; in the town of
Tancítaro they pay for their own
“avocado police.” With such en-
claves, my research finds, there is
actually less extortion in Micho-
acán than under the days of the
powerful Knights Templar.
Profits from avocados and oth-
er popular legal exports, such as
mezcal, can offer alternatives to
the drug trade. In December, I
traveled to the mountainous town
of Guadalupe y Calvo in Chihua-
hua and saw how the mayor, NoelChávez, was encouraging local
farmers to switch from growing
opium poppies and marijuana to
avocados. “This can be the pacifi-
cation of the country, an alterna-
tive,” he told me.
There are various global in-
dustries that are linked to cartel
violence. More effort needs to be
made to stop American-sold guns
flowing south and drug dollars be-
ing laundered in big banks.
But you can enjoy that unique
taste of guacamole; refusing to eat
it is not going to smash the cartels.What does the hard-won,
long-overdue conviction of Har-
vey Weinstein demonstrate?
It shows how difficult it can be
to bring abusers to justice, partic-
ularly when they are wealthy and
powerful. It shows how much the
#MeToo movement has changed
American life. And it shows how
far society still has to go. Mr. Wein-
stein was convicted on February
24 of a felony sex crime and rape in
the third degree but was acquitted
of the most serious counts against
him, predatory sexual assault. He
is headed for at least five years in
prison. That is a victory for Mr.
Weinstein’s victims.
But the Weinstein case shows
the obstacles presented by the
American legal system to suc-
cessfully prosecuting abusers.
The case, tried in a Manhattan
courtroom, rested on testimony
from just six women out of the
more than 90 who have accused
Mr. Weinstein of sexual miscon-
duct. (He also faces charges in
Los Angeles of raping one woman
and groping and masturbating in
front of another.) It took decades
of persistence by survivors, ad-
vocates, journalists and law en-
forcement to call Mr. Weinstein
to account before the law. In 2015,
Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhat-
tan district attorney, declined to
prosecute credible allegations
against Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Vance
acted years later only after doz-
ens of women went public with
their allegations.
Mr. Weinstein’s prosecutors
were able to break through a
barrier common to many assault
cases, a lack of physical or other
corroborating evidence. They al-
so overcame a more fundamental
barrier: basic mistrust of women
alleging sexual assault. Women
have internalized that message of
mistrust. Despite the far-reaching
message of #MeToo, a vast majori-
ty of sexual assault victims — esti-
mated to be more than three-quar-
ters of them — never report their
attackers to the authorities. Ma-
ny have been conditioned to feel
ashamed, as though the assault
was their fault; those who know
it was not still have little faith in a
criminal justice system that rou-
tinely disregards the testimony of
victims.
If a more balanced legal ap-
proach to sexual assault is goingto become the norm instead of the
exception, then, for a start,state
statutes of limitations need to be
extended or eliminated to give vic-
tims the opportunity to come for-
ward even years after a traumatic
assault.
Enforcement needs to change
as well. Law enforcement author-
ities need to let women know that
they will be listened to, and that
their cases will be prosecuted
quickly and thoroughly. Victims
need to have confidence that
their attacker’s DNA will not be
stashed away for decades in a file
cabinet.
Mr. Weinstein’s lead lawyer said
her client was simply “a target of
a cause and of a movement.” That
is correct — if the cause is holding
sexual abusers to account, and the
movement is the national shift in
consciousness over these crimes
that arose in large part out of
the revelation of Mr. Weinstein’s
behavior. So his conviction, too,
stands for something larger: that
some measure of justice can be
attained, and with it the balance
of power between sexual preda-
tors and their victims can begin
to shift.INTELLIGENCE/ IOAN GRILLOThe Futility of Boycotting AvocadosLessons of #MeToo’s MonsterIoan Grillo is the author of “El
Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal
Insurgency” and, most recently,
“Gangster Warlords: Drug
Dollars, Killing Fields and the
New Politics of Latin America.”
Send comments to
[email protected].
A crackdown onMexico’s ‘green gold’will hurt farmers.ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBRIAN STAUFFERThe avocado industry of
Mexico has drawn the
attention of drug cartels,
which have been extorting
avocado growers, charging for
every kilogram they export.