In November 2025, Mexico City's main square filled with protesters decrying the nation's relentless violence, a rally sparked by the assassination of Michoacán mayor Carlos Manzo. This public outcry underscores a deeper crisis unfolding in the heart of Mexico's lucrative avocado industry.
A Childhood Paradise Under Threat
Claudia Ignacio Álvarez, a Purépecha human rights defender from San Andrés Tziróndaro in Michoacán, describes a childhood defined by the waters of Lake Pátzcuaro, surrounding forests, and traditional music. Today, that way of life is imperilled. While Michoacán's avocados and berries are marketed globally as symbols of healthy living, the local reality is one of land dispossession, environmental ruin, and systemic violence.
Agribusiness firms now rent land legally designated as communal, land meant to sustain local communities, not fuel export profits. To irrigate vast plantations, pipes extract water directly from Lake Pátzcuaro. During a severe drought last year, this extraction contributed to the lake nearly disappearing, destroying fish stocks and leaving a historic fishing community without its primary food source.
The High Cost of 'Green Gold'
The environmental damage extends to the forests. Avocado orchards, which consume enormous volumes of water, replace diverse ecosystems. Forest fires, often deliberately set, clear land for rapid conversion to plantations. Community resistance to this destruction has come at a terrible price, leading to threats, killings, and disappearances.
Indigenous communities find themselves trapped between corporate interests, organised crime, and a state that fails to protect them. Claudia Ignacio Álvarez herself has not been immune, living in forced displacement and returning to her community only briefly and under constant alert. The violence is both physical and psychological, designed to fragment resistance and erode hope.
A Global Responsibility
According to Global Witness, at least 36 defenders were attacked in Mexico between 2023 and 2024, most of them Indigenous. Defending the land, Álvarez stresses, is not an abstract cause but a fight for memory, survival, and dignity. She issues a stark warning: if the international community continues to enjoy the benefits of cheap avocados while ignoring the brutal costs of extraction, the cycle of violence in regions like Michoacán will never end.
The protests in Mexico City serve as a powerful reminder that the true cost of this 'green gold' is measured in stolen livelihoods, dried-up lakes, and lost lives.
