The attack started in the early hours of Tuesday. Residents woke up to the sound of gunfire, which continued throughout the day. Four powerful explosions, believed to be from explosives dropped by drones, shook their homes. By the end of the terrifying attack, no one knew how many had been killed, as the victims were dragged away by the two rival cartels whose turf war had spilled so bloodily into the streets of the small Mexican town of Buenavista.
Yet this cruelty was not about the enormous profits to be made from smuggling illegal drugs, but about control over the region’s lime production.
Mexico is the world’s second-largest producer of the fruit and it is exported around the world – including to Britain – where it flavors margaritas, salsas, tacos and more.
Gangs wage a deadly battle for control of this lucrative business, committing protection fraud to impose ‘taxes’ on farmers trying to make a living. Workers who defy their threats and extortion demands risk being murdered, kidnapped, losing their homes, or being exiled.
An armed member of Pueblos Unidos poses in front of the Welcome to the Municipality of Ario de Rosales sign
A woman buys lemons at a market in Morelia, Michoacan state, Mexico
A prominent local figure suggested that as many as 3,000 lime farmers may have been slaughtered in the past decade in Michoacan, the western state that includes Buenavista.
have been massacred over the past decade in Michoacan, the western state that includes Buenavista.
It is believed that 150,000 people fled the state’s bloodshed and fled to America. “The entire lime industry is controlled by gangs and there is a lack of freedom for producers,” said 59-year-old Buenavista Mayor Sergio Baez. ‘So when people in Britain buy their limes they are in a sense contributing to organized crime.’
The battle for this market is so fierce that gangsters have used landmines and grenade launchers. Last week, security forces in the municipality seized at least 130 homemade explosives to be dropped by drones.
According to Michoacan’s governor, there are at least 14 organized gangs operating in the state, but a defiant Baez said, “We cannot let fear betray us.”
A lime farmer told me: ‘Criminal groups have taken control of our city, control of our economy, control of our lives. This is not life under the rule of a criminal enterprise, in the face of authorities who appear complacent.”
Last week’s nighttime attack involved hitmen linked to the Tepalcatepec cartel trying to oust Los Viagras, a group notorious for its brutality and reportedly led in the city by a man nicknamed La Sirena ( the mermaid). This gang rose to national fame with a video entitled No Mercy In Mexico, which showed the gruesome execution of a father and son accused of collaborating with rivals. The gangsters cut off the father’s head before ripping out his son’s heart.
A RIVAL clan released videos of a new armed wing called Lime Special Forces six months ago. It showed gangsters in armored vehicles wearing military uniform insignia with two pistols and a skull in a yellow lime. The terror is so great that the farmer said that if Los Viagras were driven out by rivals or by the military, they could be replaced by even more deranged gangsters – as has been seen so often in Mexico’s tragic recent history.
“The Viagras became too ambitious, too mean and aggressive against the people,” said another source in the city, adding that many locals supported the insurgents in the hope of reducing the extortion and violence inflicted on them.
Security forces patrol the streets after the murder of Armando Perez Luna
Lemons are washed in a packaging warehouse as the government mounts a police operation to counter extortion from criminal groups demanding protection money from lemon producers
‘But why should people choose the lesser evil?’ they added. “There should be no evil at all – no quotas, no extraction of wealth, no control over people’s lives and the economy.”
The cartels have also dug their teeth into the avocado industry, initially seeing the trade in both fruits as a way to launder drug money. But they soon realized the potential for hefty profits from control of these agricultural markets. Because Buenavista produces 220,000 tonnes of lime a year, the gangs’ levy on producers and packers nets them £22 million a year from this one scam in this one municipality.
“The equation is very simple: you pay or you risk criminals stopping and burning your next shipment along the way,” said one farmer. ‘So it is cheaper to pay the extortionists.’
Most victims are poor rural workers who lack the means to escape. Gangs dictate prices, transportation and even which days of the week farmers can harvest their crops. The workers, who typically earn around £20 a day selling their limes to packing plants, are only allowed to harvest their fruit on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
“It’s all about control,” said Gregorio Lopez, an outspoken priest and lime farmer from Buenavista who wore a bulletproof vest during services before having to flee for his life. ‘It’s a show of power. They decide it.’
He said the harvest ban allowed gangs to impose punishments such as taking over cars or houses if they disobeyed, sometimes planting landmines to prevent work on banned days. Lopez said lime growers felt “betrayed, abandoned and at the mercy of crime” and that they were “disposable cannon fodder” in the gang wars that have ravaged much of Mexico.
He added that four years ago, the entire 5,000 residents of a lime town left at night after threats increased and gangsters began using drones armed with explosives. About 500 have since returned to the ‘ghost town’.
Limes are exported from Mexico to Britain, where they flavor margaritas, salsas, tacos and much more (stock image)
At the end of our conversation he asked if I wanted to buy his lime tree orchard – an offer I easily declined. When I was in Michoacan four years ago investigating the gangs taking over avocado plantations, nine people, including boys as young as 12, were massacred by gunmen spraying bullets around a video game arcade near my hotel.
A study last year found that the drug cartels behind such massacres are Mexico’s fifth largest employer, with about 175,000 members.
Other analysts have identified nearly 200 armed gangs in the country, with the number soaring after a crackdown on kingpins led to the breakup of major cartels. Violence is expected to increase ahead of the upcoming elections as gangs compete for influence.
The drug cartels first tackled the lime trade in 2010 by setting fire to packing stations, demanding protection money and stealing land. This led to an uprising three years later by armed vigilantes led by a farmer named Hipolito Mora, which drove the cartels out of the region and attracted worldwide attention.
His self-defense movement was quickly corrupted and his son murdered, but he remained an outspoken critic of both the gangs and the government’s insipid response.
The narcos finally succeeded in killing Mora last June, ambushing him and his bodyguards as the vigilante leader drove to his home, which had been shelled by gunfire three days earlier. The bodies were set on fire in his pickup truck by the cartels in a grim show of force.
Mora’s murder sparked national condemnation, followed by a renewed flare-up of extortion and acts of terror against lime and avocado farmers.
Despite the risks, Mora’s younger brother, Guadalupe, has returned home after nearly half a century in California to continue the fight against the cartels, seek justice for his sibling’s murder, and tend his own lime orchards.
“Hipolito has been murdered since he raised his voice. He talked about how organized crime was once again taking over the entire economy,” said Guadalupe, 64. “Now I’m speaking out.”
He knows the danger he faces, but says. ‘I am willing to risk my life for this just cause. There is no other way.’
The life of a lime farmer in this country is soaked in blood.