https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/mexicos-avocado-boom-a...
> While the European Union and Mexico are in the final rounds of negotiations towards the “modernization” of the EU-Mexico Trade Agreement (Global Agreement) our objective is to understand the dynamics of violence that accompanied the avocado boom, including organized crime activities, human rights violations, environmental crime and harm, and the potential impact of further liberalizing trade between Mexico and the EU.
> ...
> Increased international demand led to an expansion of land dedicated to avocado production, to the detriment of forest cover, resulting in deforestation and the subsequent degradation of soil, water, and biodiversity.
> Increased international demand led to an expansion of land dedicated to avocado production
I'm sensitive to that. That is my point on California.
Avocados are not the problem. The cartels will get their cut one way or the other.
Jalisco, Sinaloa, and Nayarit are major petrochemical hubs in Mexico, but when Mexico entered the Peso crisis in the 1990s and China ascended into the WTO in 2000, a major bout of deindustrialization happened in that region.
Turns out chemistry is chemistry, so you had plenty of unemployed chemical engineers and soldiers (the Mexican government did mass layoffs in the army during the peso crisis) which meant you had the brains and muscle needed to enter the drug manufacturing space.
Traffic, for example, came out in 2000 and was based on the ongoing drug war in Mexico. The primary antagonists are the Tijuana Cartel, was formed in the 1980s out of the remnants of the Gaudalara Cartel originally formed in the late 1970s, and the Juarez Cartel, originally formed in 1970. Both cartels have since been superseded by more violent cartels.
Heck, Los Zetas is a notable example, where a bunch of pissed off special forces broke bad because a government salary during the peso devaluation just wouldn't cut it.
Same with the professionalization of synthetic drug manufacturing during the mass layoffs at Pemex during the 1990s.
> Traffic, for example, came out in 2000 and was based on the ongoing drug war in Mexico
Yep! After the Mexican economy straight up collapsed during the 1994 Peso Crisis and the Salinas administration began mass layoffs at Pemex in the early 1990s.
It's ridiculous to ignore the effects of the Peso Crisis and the offshoring of Mexican manufacturing when also talking about the rise of the Cartels during the 1990s-2000s.
Mexico's GDP collapsed by 6.5% in just 1 year (comparable to Lebanon's 2019 Liquidity Crisis), the inflation rate jumped to 35%, real wages fell by 35%, unemployment jumped from 3.9% to 7.9%, and infant mortality rates spiked from 5% to 12% all in just 1 year (1995).
This was a straight up economic collapse that made cartel employment (or hopping the border) enticing
No? There are countries that are far more unequal. Even US is higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_of_Wealt...
I don’t see your point.
False. The US just deployed spy planes to Mexico in the last couple of months after approval by Mexico. Doing so without their permission would have been an act of war.
A simple google search can show articles from the era.
The CIA operated as a rogue organization for many decades and that has been curtailed in the last couple of decades. As a side note I am still of the opinion that is who actually created bitcoin and what replaced the drug money which I am in support of as there are less lives lost and they just get the desperate people. That should significantly reduce their dependency on South America as a source of income but now I am delving into whacky-ping-pong-ding-dong conspiracy theories.
Also, the Colombian Cartels are a different set of organizations that have different origins from the Mexican Cartels - the former being a side effect of the Colombian Civil War and the latter being a side effect of the 1990s Peso Crisis and the mass layoffs in the Mexican Army and Petrochemicals industry
Read or watch "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. The fissures of the 1899-1903 Colombian Civil War (4-10% of Colombians died) were never resolved and it morphed into "La Violencia" which then morphed into the ongoing Colombian conflict.
You need money to buy weapons, so Colombian insurgent groups (right and left leaning) entered the drug trade to arm themselves - especially after the USSR reduced funding in the 70s-80s to concentrate on Afghanistan.
You see the same dynamics in Afghanistan, Syria, and Myanmar.
This is not the case. The US intelligence has been deploying forces in Latin America against cartels for long long time.
Mexico withheld permission for American military and intelligence deployments from 1990 to 2025 (DEA and other law enforcement was allowed), but they changed recently.
> The parent claimed that this has never happened before because it would have been considered an act of war.
Because it has never happened before in Mexico. It has been political suicide to even consider allowing foreign troops in Mexico because of the memory of the French Occupation.
You cannot treat "Latin America" as a monolith. Each country has a different sociopolitical background and history.
[0] - https://www.southcom.mil/About/History/SOUTHCOMs-60th-Annive...
But let's not fool ourselves. These are American operations taking place in Mexican soil (with the cooperation of the Mexican forces of course, it was not an attack against Mexico).
All including dea with intel and actual boots in Mexico.
The semantics comment was on the point that this is not technically the US military. Sure it is not the military it just has access to its personel and equipment.
It does not have access to the same equipment or (more critically) personel - especially in intelligence, as intelligence ops were not allowed either until the Sheinbaum admin.
I love mexico btw
Let's see if the EU is as concerned about the environmental impact of all those tanks that they are building.
EU did wanted and tried to cooperate in win-win setup with America, it is America who decided they want to attack former allies.
For the military industry part, I completely agree. This applies already to certain war situations that were and keep being encouraged.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
The alternative is an Anglo-French nuclear strike. The tanks are a lot less environmentally damaging, relatively speaking.
I just love when developed countries (mine included) that have already cut down most of their forest cover get all in arms when a developing country wants to improve it's economy at a cost of cutting down some of their forests.
I'm just pointing out that this trade isn't really unusual, there's the typical tradeoffs involved.
Unless you mean let them decide on whether a tariff should hinder their competition, in which case hell no don't let any industry be in charge of their own protections.
If you’re optimizing for the free flow of goods: zero out the tariffs. You can do this unilaterally, even if the counterparty nation doesn’t reciprocate.
If you want to protect an industry, then adjust tariffs to such a degree that the counterparty nation is either not favored or disfavored in pricing.
If you want to punish the counterparty nation, zero out trade and/or blockade the nation, or otherwise prevent its most valuable resources from coming to market.
What you don’t need to do at any step or point of this process is to try and think at a “higher level” about what’s best for California farmers in terms of what they ought to be doing with their land instead. The California agricultural industry is already the largest, most valuable, most lucrative and most diverse in the nation. It’s got plenty of cash crops, of which avocados are just one. If you’re eyeballing agricultural reforms, start with the subsidies that encourage much of the other 49 States to continue their ways as corn and soybean republics.