Violence and its environmental impact: the nexus between organized crime and environmental degradation in Michoacan through the lens of avocados, limes, and monarch butterflies

Instructor Introduction

In this essay, María depicts the entangled relationships between drug cartels, avocado farmers, and endangered monarch butterflies, as well as the connections between drug trafficking across the U.S.–Mexico border and the terrorized population in Michoacán, Mexico. Within this transnational exchange of goods and resources and at the same time, of financial and political power, a more complex answer emerges to today’s environmental and democratic challenges impacting the two nations. As María thoughtfully asks at the end of the essay, “Why can’t the death of a teenager from a fentanyl overdose in Portland be connected to the death of a monarch butterfly in a remote forest in Michoacán?” María's essay not only presents a strong argument, supported by rich historical and contemporary descriptions, but also explores the issue from a very creative and productive angle.

— Wenliang Han

Violence and its environmental impact: the nexus between organized crime and environmental degradation in Michoacán through the lens of avocados, limes, and monarch butterflies.

This paper explores how the traffic of drugs and guns between Mexico and USA, and the national and international politics of both countries associated with these matters, are simultaneously cooking guac for the Superbowl and a violent environmental disaster in the Mexican state of Michoacán. Michoacán has a unique natural environment which allows the production of high quality avocados that can be harvested all year long. It is also the home of several natural protected areas, like The Biosphere Reserve of the Monarch Butterfly which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2008. On the other hand, Michoacán is also home of various notorious drug cartels like La Familia Michoacana (the Michoacan Family) and the Michoacan New Generation Cartel (CMNG). Its favorable climate, its vast littoral, the access to one of the main ports in the Mexican Pacific make it an ideal breeding ground for organized crime. This unique mix makes Michoacán one of the most violent states in Mexico and one in which being an environmentalist -or an avocado farmer- is a death sentence.

The problem is compounded by the inability of the Mexican government to establish safety for their vulnerable population, the insatiable appetite that America has developed both for the Mexican Avocado and the hard drugs these cartels produce, and the uncontrolled influx of weapons from the USA to Mexico which enables these cartels to terrorize the nation.  The eclectic set of victims of this complex set of variables are the natural protected areas themselves -in which the cartels have a strong presence-, the monarch butterflies -now an endangered species-, local farmers, the indigenous people of the region, environmental advocates, journalists and the very democratic governability in the state.

Introduction

The biggest challenge the Mexican government faces these days is to be able to guarantee public safety while trying to dismantle the various powerful cartels of organized crime. The phenomena of the narco in Mexico is very complex and has its origins in social factors, poverty, lack of opportunities in rural areas, international relationships, political disputes, easy availability of guns from the USA, and the ever increasing demand for drugs in America.

Public Safety can be defined as “a quality of public and private spaces that is characterized by the inexistence of threats that undermine and/or suppress the assets and rights of people, and that reasonable conditions exist for the development of self” (Carpio-Dominguez 241).

The existence of organized crime in Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) is nothing new in Mexico, but the ‘war against the narco’ made evident the power and influence of these criminal organizations. The term war against the narco was coined after the politics of President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) in which the military power of the state was used to try to control the narcos and their influence. (Carpio-Dominguez 242).

Before we can talk about the impact of the narco in the NPAs, we have to recognize that the production of drugs was a common agricultural activity that existed in rural areas since way before they were illegal. And for many decades, it not only was tolerated by the state, but also welcomed by the general population because the communities close to the production areas benefited from the economics derived from it (Carpio-Domínguez 243). When Calderon declared the narcos as a public safety problem and his war against them, the tenuous equilibrium of the economies and social agreements derived from their activities broke and the narco became the main challenge to public safety in the nation.

Much of the production of the drugs, both the agricultural side associated with them and the clandestine labs, was done in remote areas of the sierras in the states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Durango, Michoacán and Tamaulipas (Carpio 244), due to their geologic characteristics, these states have poor terrestrial communications and as a consequence the cartels are “naturally” protected. For the very same reasons, many of these areas coincide with NPAs.

NPAs in Mexico

“Mexico is distinguished as one of the world’s megadiverse countries and centers of domestication and origin of cultivated plants” (Conabio 2009). In Mexico the Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Semarnat, Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources) is the organism in charge of determining which zones are an NPAs; based on its biodiversity and ecologic characteristics. This denomination tries to protect these areas from human activities in order to keep their biodiversity, mitigate climate change and protect the environmental benefits they produce.

One of the main challenges that Mexican biodiversity^[1] faces the loss of land due to the conversion of natural habitats into production areas. Due to the presence of narcos in many of these protected areas, and how their natural characteristics “protect” them, the media is now calling them narcoreservas (narco reserves).  NPAs are subject to the agricultural cultivation of drugs, deforestation, (Carpio 247) their use to build clandestine laboratories for synthetic drugs, and as hiding places for the narco.

This situation has endangered not only the NPAs per se, but also those people involved in their protection. The geographic distribution of the criminal organizations shifts over the years but in general the narco needs total control of their territory of action including the NPAs that “belong” to them.

Brief History of Organized Crime in Mexico and more specifically in the State of Michoacan ^[2]

Convention on opioids in La Haya in 1912- passed laws to control the use of several drugs. Shortly after, Mexico prohibited the commercialization of Marihuana and established controls for opioids. Since the demand for those products did not taper with the new regulations, these prohibitions generated small groups of drug traffickers, which were not a significant risk for public safety in Mexico. When USA entered the 2nd world war and their demand for drugs increased, these criminal groups managed to turn the state of Sinaloa and other Mexican Pacific states like Michoacan, Guerrero and Oaxaca into main producers of Marihuana and amapola (main ingredient for morphine and cocaine), and these states became the main exporters of those products to America.

From 1940 to 1980 the business of illegal drugs in Mexico gradually expanded without much violence in the country, the growing demand centered in the USA, and there was a discrete tolerance and protection of local and federal authorities.

Then came the cocaine boom in America that boosted the Colombian producers. In 1982, when the USA was able to block some of the traffic routes on the Caribbean from Colombia to America, Colombian producers sought alternative routes through Mexico. The association of the Colombian cartels with the organized Mexican drug organizations shifted them into powerful transnational cartels with increasing financial and armed power capable of capturing and corrupting the Mexican state.

Parallel to this situation and since 1929, Mexico was being governed by a single political party -PRI Partido Revolucionario Institucional [Revolutionary Institutional Party]- a situation that once Vargas Llosa described as “the perfect dictatorship”:

“The perfect dictatorship is not the Cuba of Fidel Castro: It is Mexico, because it is a dictatorship camouflaged in such a way that it appears not to be one, but that in fact has -if one digs in- all the characteristics of a dictatorship.” (Krauze 1)

When this characteristic of the Mexican government was added to the financial power of organized crime, a kind of equilibrium existed. The permanency of the government and the absolute certainty that their candidates will always be in power made possible stable alliances, truces, and illegal agreements with the narcos. A kind of peace was tacitly negotiated: the narcos did their business without much interference from the government, the population in general was not directly affected -or even benefited- from their activities, violence was minimal, and governability was possible, albeit with open corruption at many levels of the state.

In the late 80s and 90s Mexico started a democratic transition that made the government more plural and less centralized, and in 2000 Vicente Fox was elected as the first president of an opposition party in 71 years. This shift towards democracy broke the fragile equilibrium among the narcos and the state, because a plural democratic government could no longer be the arbitrator among the organized crime entities. A war among the cartels ensued, the violence escalated, crime organizations further armed themselves dominating the local security forces and corrupting local governments even more.

When in 2006 Felipe Calderón became president -the 2nd president from the opposition party-, he launched what was known as “War against Narco” bringing in the military along with the federal police to a direct combat with the criminal organizations and to this day “it is still a matter of debate if this federal strategy accelerated the violence or was simply incapable to contain it”² . What followed after 2007 was a series of executions, open combat, and thousands of assassinations that increased sixfold in the next four years, making organized crime the biggest challenge to the Mexican state. The armed power of the criminal organizations almost always surpasses the state’s military/police power creating a de facto “alternative government whose violence terrorizes the population”² not only with the drug trafficking per se, but also with systems of kidnaping and “spoliation that distorts the economy and perverts social life” (Rivera 5).  This is a national problem, but in states like Michoacán, the tradition of the Narco has created a truly failed state.

Michoacán, avocados, limes and butterflies

Michoacán lies in west central Mexico. It is a mostly rural state, although nowadays is considered to be well served by highway, air and rail routes (Britannica, Michoacan state, Mexico), it used to be a remote place lacking in communications which along with its climate and extensive Pacific coast made it ideal for the cultivation and trafficking of illegal crops, and an ideal place of hiding for organized crime.

Michoacán | Location, History, Points of Interest, & Facts | Britannica

Starting in the 1940s, Michoacán became a strong producer of marihuana and amapola and for the next four decades the production of these crops grew silently. Illegal and subject to occasional raids from the federal government, the drug business developed in relative peace -much as in the rest of the country- tolerated by the authorities and accepted by the population, which viewed them as a better source of income than traditional crops. The production in

Michoacán was subordinated to the largest criminal organizations of the north of the country. The situation started to change in the 80s with the cocaine boom in the US and the need for new routes for trafficking. Then in the 90s came the synthetic drugs whose raw materials come from Asia(Rivera 5) and Michoacán turned into a main producer of methamphetamine with hundreds of clandestine laboratories scattered throughout its remote forests. These facts along with the vast Pacific coast of the state and the access to its large Lazaro Cardenas port gave birth to the first large Michoacán’s cartels. In 2001 a major shift occurred when the big Gulf cartel and its military branch -los Zetas- decided to conquer and control the Michoacan region and routes, and wild violence erupted from the collision of the Zetas with the local cartels. The Zetas were not satisfied with controlling the drug business of the region, so they expanded their sources of revenue with extortion, kidnappings, and assassinations. It is only then that the general population started to view the narcos as a menace to their livelihoods (Rivera 6). This change in the relationship between the narcos and the general population eventually led to the formation of a new cartel: La Familia Michoacana (the Michoacan Family) who in 2006 “announced its presence by tossing five rivals’ heads onto a dance floor in the town of Uruapan” (Larmer 12) and shortly thereafter published its manifesto which included putting an end to kidnappings, extortions and assassinations and the local sale of narcotics. Basically, they wanted to restore the “order”, a new cartel with some sort of moral code of conduct (therefore their name The Family). The war between cartels was brutal and along came the War against crime promulgated by the then president Calderon. La Familia gained the monopoly of the region and developed its own models of extortion: the sale of “protection” and “taxes” to farmers, businessmen, transportists, and eventually even to the police and some governmental entities. In the surrealist environment of Michoacán, La Familia actually gained some social support due to its populist rhetoric and promise for “justice”^[3] to liberate the general population from the violence of other cartels. They became a sort of alternative authority that was feared and respected at the same time. After clashes with the authorities and the apparent assasination of their leader, La Familia was transformed into a new organization called Los Caballeros Templarios -commonly known as Templarios- (The Templar Knights) who rapidly took control of the region (Rivera 7-8).

The monopoly of these two organizations can only be explained by an absolute lack of power of the local government and the total control they had over these local governments. The links between the local governments and the cartels are vast and intertwined in all activities: public works, elections, nepotism, etc. Victims and accomplices, municipal governments of Michoacán had contributed one way or another to the creation of a wide criminal network that extorts the population and distorts all economic activity.

The situation progressively worsened with La Familia allegedly controlling the governor (Governor Leon Godoy 2008-2012) himself, sponsoring candidacies on many levels and infiltrating all levels of government.

In 2013 a group of producers of limes asked the state government for protection against the constant extortion of the Templarios. They were all killed and the very secretary of state of Michoacán was found to be linked to the Templarios. La Familia and Los Templarios built an empire of impunity through the spread of fear among the population, the great gun power they possess, and the lack of any authority to deter them. The level of exploitation of the population, led to a point in which the victims themselves couldn’t keep up with their demands and in 2013 armed civil groups formed to fight against the Templarios, they called themselves “Autodefense Groups”. And although they had certain success undermining the success of the Templarios, these are irregular groups of armed individuals and where they were getting the money for their weapons is in question.(Rivera 15).

In a parallel universe, that same Michoacán state has since precolombian times, been a strong producer of limes and avocados, both staples of Mexican cuisine. Lime and avocado producers did their business in the same areas that drug cartels cultivated their drugs, but historically they did not interfere with each other. Avocados were almost not exported anywhere and none were exported to the US since 1914 when Mexican avocados were banned in America (Larmer 13). But in 1994 NAFTA was signed and the US lifted its ban on avocados. Then some trendy millennial invented the concept of “avocado toast” in a fancy bakery, foodies started whipping guac, and marihuana became legal in many states of America. And with that perfect recipe for a superbowl watching party, the two universes collided with a wild explosion of violence that most recently resulted in the killing of the Uruapan major during the day of the dead festivities in the downtown of Uruapan on November 1st, 2025. At the time that American taste buds discovered avocados -the green gold-, the producers and traffickers of marihuana were seeing their weed business shrink, so they shifted their attention to the avocado farmers.

Mexico is the largest producer of avocados in the world. 90% of the avocados consumed in America come from Michoacán and the avocado farmers can’t keep up with the demand of the avocado craze in America. This unprecedented boom not only brought the attention of the cartels that were already a dominant force in the region, it also has brought the attention of environmentalists because -not surprisingly- Michoacan pine forests are being thinned out  to give place for more avocado orchards.

And just as the famous quote of the of the butterfly effect questioning of the flutter of a butterfly wing in the Amazon could cause tornado in Texas^[4], we could ask if an order of extra guac in New York could cause the extinction of the Monarch butterfly in North America.

The Monarch’s yearly incredible migration from Canada to Michoacan ^[5]

The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is the only place where these butterflies congregate over the winter and it happens to be in Michoacán. This NPA was established by presidential decree in the year 2000. Millions of butterflies get there each year, so many, that scientists assess their number by measuring the size of the forest covered by them. The population of the Monarchs has seen a steady decline over the last two decades. During the winter 1995-1996, 45 acres of forest were covered by the insects, in the winter of 2024-2025 4.42 acres were covered. Monarch butterflies are now considered a species in danger of extinction and their problems come from many sources: They need a large healthy forests to protect them from the wind and cold temperatures of the winter, much milder in Michoacan than Canada, but still cold, and they need a very specific range of temperatures to survive the season. Their forests are threatened because  -as mentioned above- they are excellent hiding places for narcos and they are being thinned to grow avocados.

On top of that, the insects are extremely sensitive to climate change and their breeding grounds in the US and Canada are full of insecticides and herbicides. Milkweed is the only plant on which monarchs will lay their eggs and the only source of food for their baby caterpillars. Unfortunately, millions of acres of milkweed in the US and Canada have been paved and plowed over. The development of GMO crops resistant to certain weed killers have inadvertently eliminated 99% of the milkweed that used to grow in corn and soybean fields (World Wild Life Organization). ^[6]

The last piece of the puzzle: Guns for the narcos in Michoacán.

Michoacán produces avocados, limes, marihuana and illegal synthetic drugs. Michoacán produces many other crops, is the land of rich indigenous cultures, and also the producer of many beautiful crafts. But the one thing -crucial for the narco business- that is not locally produced is: guns. Michoacán does not produce assault riffles, AK45s, or ammunition. And narcos need them by the thousands to conduct their illegal businesses. They require a steady flow of high quality weaponry. If the easy access of guns to the narcos were to be stopped, the local law enforcement would have a chance to fight them back. The armory of organized crime in the region far surpasses the one of local law enforcement. The recent assasination of Carlos Manzo, the mayor of Uruapan on November 1st, 2025 highlights the problem: for months before his brutal killing he repeatedly requested the intervention of federal forces because he recognized that local law enforcement was unable to combat the organized crime due to the disproportionate power of their firearms compared to the ones of the narcos.

Narcos have lots of cash to buy their weapons. They need to buy them freely and without background checks. The USA has laws that allow them to do so without much hassle. “The volume of firearms sold in the USA and trafficked across the US-Mexico border is notoriously difficult to estimate” (McDougal et al) and can only be roughly estimated by indirect statistical variables. What is certain is the level of sophistication of veritable armies at the disposal of the narco.  

“A new report by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) reveals that almost three in four firearms used by Mexican cartels (74%) are trafficked illegally from the United States, primarily from Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. The findings, part of the National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA), highlight the persistent flow of weapons across the border fueling violence in Mexico.” (Teixera) The report also reveals that -obviously- there is a preference for privately made firearms (commonly called ghost guns) because they do not have a serial number and can be obtained without background checks. A rough estimate by Mexican authorities points to 200,000 to 500,000 of US-origin firearms being smuggled into the country every year. (Teixera). As all businesses, gun manufacturers in the USA know their clients and it is only logical to infer that they know who their major customers are. A purchaser that buys that kind of volume has to be noticed by their supplier, if anything, to adjust their yearly production. But the American gun laws make accountability from gun manufacturers impossible. Most Americans are in favor of the 2nd amendment and most -even those staunchly in favor of gun ownership- favor reasonable gun control and stricter background checks. But that overwhelmingly favored position of the American population is never reflected in the American elections. It is reasonable to question then -with the cash that cartels have-,  who is really in charge of the money for the election of American senators, lawmakers, governors that can guarantee a vote against further gun control in America? Who is really selecting American politicians? That is, who is truly in power and calling the shots in the American government?

Conclusion

The social and environmental tragedies in Michoacán are very complex matters with many variables to account for: Historical, economical, political, etc. And there is absolutely no simple way to solve it. Yet, it is necessary to recognize that some of the problems that appear to be local, have in fact global roots and can only be solved by honest cooperation between US and Mexico. Both countries must recognize the need for each other's support and that the problem can not be solved unilaterally.

The death of a teenager from a fentanyl overdose in Portland might not appear to be connected to the death of Monarch butterfly in a remote forest in Uruapan, but they, in fact, share the same root causes, much like a gun law in Texas and an avocado toast in New York share the same boss: a narco in Michoacán.

Bibliography

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Butt, Bilal. Commoditizing the safari and making space for conflict: Place, identity and Parks in East Africa. Political Geography. 2012.

Convention of Biological Diversity, Country Profiles, Mexico https://www.cbd.int/countries/profile?country=mx

Carpio-Domínguez, J. L..Crimen organizado (narcotráfico) y conservación ambiental: el tema pendiente de la seguridad pública en México [Organized Crime (Drug Trafficking) and Environmental Preservation, the Pending Issue of Public Safety in Mexico], Revista CS, (33), 237-274, 2021,  https://doi.org/10.18046/recs.i33.4076 https://www.icesi.edu.co/revistas/index.php/revista_cs/article/view/4076

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Krauze, Enrique. La dictadura perfecta [The perfect dictatorship]. Enrique Krauze.com November 11, 2012  https://enriquekrauze.com.mx/dictadura-perfecta/

Larmer, Brook. “When Appetites Are Strong Enough for a Commodity like Avocados, Neither Organized Crime nor Tariffs Are Likely to Stop Its Global Trade.” The New York Times Magazine, 2018, pp. 12–15

McDougal, Topher L., et al. “The Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Trafficking across the US–Mexico Border.” Journal of Economic Geography, vol. 15, no. 2, 2015, pp.297–327, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbu021.

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[1] Although the term “biodiversity” is being rethought as a “discursive intention of recent origin” (Escobar 1) and it is suggested that “biodiversity” might not be a “true object that science progressively uncovers”, for the scope of this paper we focus on the fact that Mexico is considered a mega diverse country and is home of some unique breeding areas for species like the Monarch butterfly.

[2] This summary of the history of organized crime in Mexico and Michoacan is based on the article by Jaime Rivera, which in turn used the book by Guillermo Valdés, 2013. Historia del Narcotrafico en Mexico [History of Narcotraffic in Mexico]. Aguilar. Mexico as a source for his own introduction.

[3] Defining “justice” has for long been attempted. Most people understand it as a conception of how goods are distributed in a society and the principles by which to distribute those goods (Schlosberg). That a narco organization has their own concept of justice and that in some cases it reflects the concept of justice of parts of the population -often the most vulnerable- that may be “benefited” by the actions of such narcos has greatly compounded the problem as it has often been the case that the some portions of the population”protects” the narcos as they feel they are the ones “protecting” them from the injustices of the state.

[4] During the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Edward Lorenz posed a question: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”. The concept has been embraced by popular culture as the butterfly effect, but Lorenz, the MIT professor that posed it, “never intended for it to be applied in this way, he actually meant to convey the opposite point.” (Vernon)

[5] The violence against environmentalists trying to protect this area is well documented, this topic will not be expanded in this paper. But Mexico is unfortunately deemed today as the country with most homicides of environmentalists (Zerega)

[6] Ecoturism to see the Monarch butterfly reserve was banned when the place was discovered, but now it became prominent and there are ecotours to visit the place during their winter stay. Although many ecotourists are being scared by the violence of the region, the problems associated with ecotourism do exist here too. Promoting ecotourism as a sustainable economic activity that “engages with local people”(Butt), unfortunately this is not what happens in Michoacan where local indigenous people are left out of the benefits of ecotourism.