Two abandoned properties stand out amid sprawling lemon and banana fields. Their owners chose to leave when organized crime, omnipresent in Mexico, came to demand money from them.
• Also read: Mexico: Protesters demand justice nine years after the disappearance of 43 students
• Also read: At least eight dead and two missing after river flooding in Mexico
In Apatzingan, an agricultural community in the western state of Michoacan, criminals, like many others in the country, extort producers, which eventually spreads to consumers.
The threat is so great that lemon shipments are being escorted by police to various regions of the country, AFP noted. A situation that led to an increase in prices.
Despite an increase in national production and a slowdown in inflation to 4.44% in September, the price of lemons rose 58.5% in a year, according to the Agricultural Markets Advisory Group (GCMA). In the capital of Mexico, the price doubled within a month in August, reaching almost $4.5 per kilo.
Photo AFP
“Prices have skyrocketed. I only buy the amount I need in a week, four or five pieces, no more,” explains Gabriela Jacobo, a 53-year-old housewife who lives in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan, two hours from Apatzingan Road.
The sacrifice is enormous in a country where lemons are at the heart of gastronomy.
“It is not a question of supply” but of extortion, assures Juan Carlos Anaya, analyst at GCMA.
Food shortages
Michoacan is the size of Costa Rica and is plagued by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), the largest Mexican mafia, and criminal groups such as Los Viagras and La Familia Michoacana.
For every kilo of lemons sold, producers have to pay the equivalent of 11 cents. The region produces up to 900 tons per day.
“They used to argue among themselves and make you work. Now it’s like, ‘I won’t even let you work,'” complains a producer from Apatzingan on the condition of remaining anonymous. “They charge a price for everything,” he complains under the blazing sun between the lemon trees in his field.
The scourge also extends to producers of tomatoes, bananas, mangoes and even avocados, as well as transporters and traders.
According to official figures, extortion and theft cost the country’s businesses about $6.8 billion annually, or 0.67% of Mexico’s GDP.
In southern Chiapas, where an unprecedented parade of Sinaloa cartel members took place last weekend to the cheers of locals, extortion and violence have led to food shortages.
“There is no electricity, no network (internet), no food, no water, no gas,” a resident told AFP.
A war is raging in the region between the Sinaloa cartel and the CJNG, which has closed dozens of businesses and forced residents to source supplies from neighboring Guatemala.
Cities such as Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero, have faced closures in the poultry sector in the past after the killings of breeders and traders who allegedly refused to be extorted.
“Very expensive”
Threats against an American health inspector in Michoacan last year led to a temporary suspension of avocado exports to the United States, a very large consumer of guacamole, particularly during the Super Bowl.
To combat these extortions, lemon producers like Hipolito Mora formed self-defense groups, but they were eventually accused of having ties to criminal groups.
After his militia was disbanded, Mr. Mora continued to vehemently condemn drug addiction before he was shot dead in June.
“We are helpless against the existing cartel. They charge us for everything: the basic food basket, drinks, beer, chicken. Because of them, everything is very expensive,” complains Guadalupe Mora, Hipolito’s brother, surrounded by several bodyguards.
In an interview with AFP, prosecutor Rodrigo Gonzalez, head of a unit responsible for prosecuting organized crime in Michoacan, called on “citizens to come forward” to denounce extortion. But many fear that they will suffer the same fate as Hipolito Mora.
“We will hold out as long as God wants us to,” assures the fatalistic producer, hiding among his lemon trees.