Criminals set fire to an Oxxo store in Michoacán this Sunday. With kind approval
Violence is on the rise in Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente, a circular situation that comes and goes and rarely stops. This Sunday, criminals blocked roads in the region, burned businesses and set vehicles on fire, actions that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday described as advertising and propaganda. Michoacán is one of the states in the country that has recorded the highest number of murders in years.
The state’s criminal geography is well known, particularly that of Tierra Caliente. Small towns like Apatzingán, Buenavista Tomatlán, Aguililla, La Ruana or, a little further away, Uruapan suffer from the onslaught of criminal cells that build and destroy alliances at lightning speed. To fund their wars, crime parasitizes prosperous local agricultural activity, centered on avocados, lemons, and to a lesser extent tomatoes and other vegetables.
In a war environment like this, casualties come from all sides. Less than two months ago, armed men took the life of social leader Hipólito Mora in La Ruana, between Apatzingán and Buenavista. Ten years ago, Mora became one of the leaders of the Michoacán Self-Defense Groups, a social movement trying to counter organized crime, which was already thriving in the region.
The movement failed, was infiltrated by the very crime it fought, was suppressed by the federal government, and then found itself in the hands of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). Mora and other leaders have been exposed, empowered by media exposure, and stripped of the structure that led them to believe life could be different. Criminals had attacked him three times in the past few months. They succeeded the third time.
His brother Lupe Mora reported his death to one of the local mafias, Los Viagras, heirs to a mythical, foundational brand, Los Caballeros Templarios. Until a few years ago, Los Viagras was part of a kind of federation of mafia cells with strong local roots, the Cárteles Unidos, which fought with a group that was better known, at least in the press, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG). In the absence of interviews with the leaders of the clash, local residents then pointed to the lemon fields as key loot for the groups.
The lemon now also plays the main role in combat. In reports published in local media in recent weeks, residents of Tierra Caliente have denounced the ongoing extortion of lemon producers and packers in the triangle of Aguililla, Apatzingán and Buenavista. Reforma reported Monday that criminals are charging between two and three pesos per kilo of lemons in an area where annual production reaches 500,000 tons.
Doubts suggest that blackmail against avocado producers plays a part in this equation. As veterans of thousands of wars, aware of the criminal dynamics, avocado businessmen are powerful, primarily due to the high prices of the fruit in the market. Until last year, Michoacán had a monopoly on avocado exports to the United States, a multimillion-dollar business based in Uruapan, an area slightly colder than Tierra Caliente. Michoacán now shares the business with Jalisco.
It is also difficult to say what the actions observed in the region on Sunday mean and what connection, if any, they have to extortion. Criminals blocked the highway between Apatzingán and Aguililla in the morning, a common situation two years ago. The groups then in conflict, Cárteles Unidos and CJNG, fought the area and even dug trenches in the middle of the range. In Apatzingán, criminals burned down a shop and a truck.
Burnt vehicles also turned up in Buenavista and Uruapan, and in the latter community, criminals also burned down a store. Throughout the day, Michoacán police announced operations and eventually a return to normal. No attacks against lemon producers, packers or transporters were recorded this Sunday, something that has been observed in the region in recent weeks.
In his morning press conference, López Obrador said: “Michoacán is already being addressed. It was more of an act than any advertising and propaganda. Hijacking and burning of vehicles, two store fires and that’s it. Fortunately, there is no violence in terms of loss of life.”
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