Report
Security operations to protect avocado production reshape criminal risks across Michoacán
The state’s response to criminal groups’ extortion of Mexico’s agricultural economy is likely to push criminal groups to adapt their tactics and areas of operation.
Executive summary
Competition over extortion-generated revenue from Mexico’s agricultural sector has resulted in a spread of violence throughout Michoacán state’s lime- and avocado-producing municipalities in recent years. Criminal groups’ growing reliance on remote violence to secure territorial control, including improvised landmines, has brought new threats to rural workers and the agricultural sector. In early August, the United States’ temporary suspension of avocado inspections, which disrupted exports, escalated the issue to a major economic concern for the state and prompted the deployment of 1,557 federal troops to Michoacán.
Heightened security operations in the region and the risk that violence could again disrupt avocado exports to the US, thus affecting criminal revenues, are likely to reduce violence levels in core avocado-producing municipalities. However, the criminal capture of agricultural revenues is unlikely to cease. To mitigate economic losses and secure territorial control amid a reinforced security presence, criminal groups are likely to rely less on overt forms of violence and more on targeted and remote warfare techniques to maintain control over legal economies. Growing securitization of the avocado industry is likely to further displace violence into less-protected areas and sectors, including the lime industry, which is under persistent pressure, as well as other rural economies such as logging.
Growing criminal pressure on Michoacán’s avocado and lime economies prompts a heightened security response
On 5 August, the US announced a temporary suspension of avocado inspections in Mexico’s Michoacán state due to US security concerns. This disrupted avocado exports to the US, which receives 80% of Mexico’s avocado production, and prompted Mexico’s federal authorities to deploy over 1,500 military and National Guard personnel to reinforce security in the state. Although inspections and exports resumed on 13 August, the incident exposed criminal groups’ growing penetration of agricultural industries in Michoacán through extortion and rent extraction.
Criminal groups’ penetration of legal economies in Michoacán has been increasing since 2023, particularly within the avocado and lime supply chains. It involves major contenders such as the CJNG and the Carteles Unidos alliance, as well as local criminal organizations such as Blancos de Troyas, and adds to long-standing disputes over drug production, trafficking corridors, and other revenue-generating activities in the state. Violent escalation over the control of resources has been particularly pronounced in the lime-producing areas of Tierra Caliente, particularly in the municipalities of Apatzingán, Buenavista, and Parácuaro (see map below). Violence levels in these municipalities have quadrupled between 2022 and 2023 and have persisted at high levels ever since. Similarly, criminal rent extraction from avocado producers — which entails imposing extortion payments on farmers, packers, and transporters, and threatening violence to enforce payments — has driven a recent spread in violence across several avocado-producing municipalities in 2025 and the first half of 2026, namely Cotija, Erongarícuaro, Madero, Tacámbaro, Tingambato, Tingüindín, and Turicato.
The spread of this conflict has come with more destructive warfare tactics, including explosive-laden drones and improvised landmines to restrict access to contested rural areas. Michoacán records the highest number of these incidents nationwide. The growing use of IEDs, in particular, has added a direct threat to rural workers and agriculture production and transport.
The current deployment to respond to criminal organizations’ targeting of the agricultural industry follows a regular pattern of the state’s response in Michoacán. Deployments of military and federal forces, along with an uptick in law enforcement operations in 2024, were followed by an intensification of operations in 2025 under President Claudia Sheinbaum’s security strategy, with clashes between criminal groups and security forces doubling compared to the previous year. The government launched Plan Michoacán for Peace and Justice in November 2025 in response to the killing of Uruapan mayor Carlos Manzo. It is a security initiative involving the deployment of federal forces, especially in areas of lime and avocado production; increased intelligence activities; and economic and educational incentives to reduce violence. Yet, thus far in 2026, the reduction of violence in key lime-producing municipalities has been limited: Violence levels have decreased in Buenavista but surged in Apatzingán in June and July.
Outlook: Security pressure on the avocado sector risks displacing criminal competition across new municipalities and sectors
Throughout the remainder of 2026, a reinforced federal presence across the state and at packing facilities, as well as the risk that violence could again disrupt avocado exports to the US, in turn affecting criminal rent on the product, are likely to incentivize criminal groups to limit violence targeting the industry, which would drive a decline in violence in avocado-producing municipalities.
However, a decline is more likely to reflect criminal groups’ adaptation in the form of displacing into less protected areas and resorting to less overt forms of violence rather than the elimination of criminal activities. Criminal groups are likely to increasingly rely on forced disappearances, which have reached record levels in 2026, and further deploy explosive-laden drones and improvised landmines to secure their territory rather than clashing with opponents overtly, worsening the risks for agricultural workers. Still, the risk of episodic outbursts of violence persists as criminal groups are also likely to continue deploying roadblocks across rural municipalities — as seen immediately after El Mencho’s killing in February 2026 and recently on 19 August following the arrests of members of CJNG’s Los Guerreros faction — to disrupt law enforcement operations or delay intervention during clashes with rival groups.
Increased security measures are also likely to shift violence to less-protected municipalities and sectors, away from the west-central municipalities where the latest federal forces’ deployments are concentrated, toward avocado-producing municipalities in south-central Michoacán. This includes Turicato, Tacámbaro, Salvador Escalante, Patzcuaro, and Erongarícuaro, where, thus far in 2026, ACLED records an uptick in violence. In addition, prioritizing security efforts around the avocado industry, which is essential to US-Mexico trade, increases the risk of shifting criminality to other revenue-generating sectors. This includes the lime industry, where extortion incentives will persist, as well as other rural economies, such as logging, as suggested by the recent criminal incursions into the Purépuecha Plateau in May 2026.
Over the coming year, the displacement of violence will feed into ongoing and new competition between criminal actors, fostered by Michoacán’s highly fragmented criminal landscape, uncertainty over the CJNG’s leadership, and power vacuums that will likely be created by federal attempts to disrupt the local extortion network.
Visuals produced by Ana Marco.
