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Mexico City — Mexico is sending 1,500 more troops to the embattled state of Michoacán after the U.S. announced this week that it temporarily stopped inspecting avocados there over security concerns, disrupting exports of the fruit.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that her government was doing everything in its power to improve security in Michoacán, where warring criminal groups have battled for years for a piece of the lucrative avocado trade.
Many growers, packers and transporters of the fruit are forced to pay hefty taxes to organized crime — or risk becoming victims of violence. Some criminal groups even have planted their own avocado groves.
American inspectors in Michoacán, who monitor plantations and packing plants to ensure the fruit is pest-free, occasionally have found themselves in the cross-hairs.
In 2024, the U.S. suspended all avocado imports from the state after two U.S. Department of Agriculture employees were kidnapped and assaulted by assailants in Michoacán.
The scheme, known as huachicol fiscal, is the second-largest source of revenue for cartels, after drug trafficking.
The U.S. took the same precaution two years earlier, when an inspector received a threatening phone call. In each case, the U.S. resumed inspections and imports of the fruit within a few days.
But even a brief pause in shipments threatens the economy in Michoacán, where 200,000 people work in the avocado trade. It also could affect consumer prices of the fruit in the U.S., which receives 90% of its avocados from Mexico.
This time, the U.S. did not say whether a specific incident prompted it to suspend inspections in Michoacán. A State Department statement blamed a “threat to U.S. interests.”
Michoacán’s governor said in a statement that the U.S. action was a “preventive” measure after recent high-profile arrests by the Mexican government of criminals accused of extortion.
A crusading Mexican mayor who battled cartels like a vigilante hero was assassinated, thrusting his widow into the fight he died leading.
But Juan Carlos Venegas, a representative of the state’s avocado industry, said in an interview with Radio Fórmula that he believed Mexican authorities were downplaying the security threat.
He said avocado growers have been begging the government for years to do more to address extortion.