The Green Gold: Avocado Cartels & the Water Mafia

Once a humble fruit in Central America, the avocado has become a global commodity drenched in Instagram filters and eco-wellness fantasies. Its rise to superfood stardom is not accidental. It is the byproduct of Western capitalist food systems that romanticize “natural” products while torturing their environment and human labor. In this landscape, avocados function more as aesthetic status symbols than as food — an emblem of curated health rather than collective sustainability.

But the demand is not innocent. As of 2024, the U.S. imported a record 137,000 tons of avocados for Super Bowl weekend alone, a symbolic fusion of commodity fetishism and sports nationalism. Most of them come from Mexico — specifically Michoacán — where forests are being razed and biodiversity displaced to plant rows of avocado trees. Entire ecosystems are being traded in for monocultures of green fruit. The word Green might sound natural, but in this context, it’s the color of destruction.

Avocados are now worth $3 billion annually to Mexico’s economy, making it the world’s largest producer. This “green gold” has pushed avocado farming into overdrive — the cultivated area has increased by 173% since 1994, reaching over 252,000 hectares by 2022. The value of production has surged 527%, reflecting a capitalist success story — or so it seems.

Marketing has played a critical role in distorting consumer perception. Avocados are portrayed as ethical, wholesome, and “clean,” a stark contrast to meat or processed sugar — and yet the global supply chain behind them is tainted with violence and exploitation. This is greenwashing in its most literal sense. The supposed health food of the West comes soaked in the blood of the forests, farmers, and carries a death count.

Michoacán: A Green Warzone

At the epicenter of this crisis is Michoacán, Mexico, which produces over 45% of the world's avocados. This region, with its volcanic soil and temperate climate, is naturally suited for avocado cultivation. But it’s also plagued by poverty, weak governance, and violent criminal networks.

As the demand for avocados skyrocketed, so did the stakes. Cartels, once invested in narcotics, have diversified into avocados. Why? Because the industry is booming, legal, and largely unregulated in terms of security. As fentanyl undercuts the drug trade and coca prices fluctuate, avocados offer a stable and lucrative alternative for organized crime.

Shifting to what many now call green gold, avocados offer comparable profits with a fraction of the legal risk. Groups like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), the Michoacán Family, the Viagras, and the Knights Templar have aggressively moved into the sector, particularly in Michoacán, which alone produced 2.25 million tons in 2023 — over 75% of Mexico’s total harvest.

Some smallholder farmers are forced to pay protection taxes, while others are coerced into selling their land or converting entire hillsides into avocado plantations under cartel oversight. In the worst cases, entire communities are displaced—not for drugs, but for fruit.

This criminalization of food is not coincidental — it’s structural. Free market economics created a high-demand commodity, and the absence of effective regulation allowed organized crime to fill the governance vacuum. The avocado is no longer just a fruit — it’s a currency in the informal economy, one that bypasses state control while fueling a brutal capitalist order.

The Water Mafia: Avocado and the Thirst of Capitol

Avocados aren’t just political—they’re ecologically catastrophic. They are notoriously thirsty. Each fruit requires 70 gallons (265 liters) of water to grow. In water-scarce regions of Mexico and Chile, this demand has become unbearable.

In Michoacán, illegal tapping of aquifers and rivers has intensified. Cartel-backed operations have reportedly siphoned water through clandestine pipes or bribed local officials to access municipal water systems. What were once community wells are now controlled by private farms or syndicates. The result: water insecurity for indigenous and rural populations, and environmental stress that could take generations to reverse.

In parallel, deforestation has accelerated. Over 30,000 hectares of forest have been illegally cleared in Michoacán alone to make room for avocado plantations. Much of this land was previously covered in biodiversity-rich pine and oak forests, home to species like the monarch butterfly. In their place: water-guzzling monocultures and barren hillsides prone to erosion.

From Cocaine to Guacamole: Narco-Capitalism Evolves

The appeal for cartels is clear:

• High global demand from the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

• Low policing of agricultural products compared to narcotics.

• Easy money laundering through legal exports.

• Stable growth and institutional normalization via certification and trade partnerships.

In 2019, several reports revealed that cartels were not just skimming off the top—they were running parallel avocado mafias, directly controlling orchards and coercing cooperatives. Farmers refusing to pay are often threatened, and in some cases, assassinated. Municipal governments are unable—or unwilling—to intervene. Meanwhile, consumers thousands of miles away remain largely unaware, tossing avocados into grocery carts without a second thought.

Labels like organic or Fair Trade offer a moral bandage, not a solution. These certifications are often unenforceable in regions dominated by organized crime. The romantic idea that conscious consumerism can reform entire food systems is a neoliberal myth, one that transfers responsibility to individuals while letting structural injustice persist.

What’s worse is that the very people displaced, coerced, or impoverished by this trade can rarely afford to eat the product of their own labor. Avocados have become luxury items in their land of origin — an edible export that leaves destruction in its wake while offering little in return to local populations. This is culinary colonialism, served with lime and salt.

The Illusion of “Sustainable” Avocados

Corporate giants and certification boards like Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, and USDA Organic claim to vet the avocado supply chain. But several investigative reports suggest these seals of approval often overlook cartel involvement, illegal land use, and water theft. Cartels have become savvy—registering farms under proxies, falsifying documentation, and even bribing certification agents.

Meanwhile, supermarkets and wellness influencers tout these avocados as ethical and healthy—perpetuating the greenwashed illusion that what's good for the body is good for the planet. One of the most tragic consequences of avocado expansion is deforestation. To keep up with international demand, farmers clear-cut biodiverse forests, often illegally. Michoacán’s pine and oak forests — once protected zones home to monarch butterflies and hundreds of endemic species — have been sacrificed for orchard space.

Unlike visible monocultures, many avocado farms engage in silent deforestation — introducing trees under the existing canopy, then gradually removing native flora until only avocado remains. This covert conversion allows them to avoid legal scrutiny while maximizing profit. But the ecological price is immense. Forest loss equals carbon loss, habitat destruction, and cascading biodiversity collapse.

The irony is cruel: avocados are promoted as eco-foods, yet they are exacting an ecological cost akin to extractive mining or logging. To call such products natural is to strip the word of all meaning. The only thing green about these avocados is the currency they generate — not the planet they leave behind.

Rethinking “Wellness” and Food Justice

The avocado is a potent symbol of how Western wellness is often built on the extraction of the Global South's resources. Their aesthetic appeal masks a violent infrastructure: cartel economies, ecological ruin, water theft, and labor abuse.

Food justice isn't just about ingredients. It’s about systems: Who grows it? Who profits? Who suffers? As long as the avocado remains divorced from these questions, we’re complicit in a silent war—one fought not with guns or drugs, but with trees, water, and indigenous people.

In the end, the avocado is not just a food. It is a reflection — of power, consumption, and denial. And if we are to build ethical food cultures, we must begin by unmasking what we eat — and unlearning the systems that tell us it’s healthy, when it is, in fact, built on the bones of the Earth.

The fruit of wellness in the North has become the fruit of war in the South.

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