41–50 of 84 posts
After reading, it appears the humble avocado might be better farmed vertically, using hydroponics, in region(s) with sufficient access to fresh water, and somewhere with the rule of law. It appears to be as much of a "resource curse" as the drug trade is/was to Michoacán.
In Cherán, however, there was no such violence. Nor were there any avocados. Thirteen years ago, the town’s residents prevented corrupt officials and a local cartel from illegally cutting down native forests to make way for the crop. A group of locals took loggers hostage while others incinerated their trucks. Soon, townspeople had kicked out the police and local government, cancelled elections, and locked down the w…
Wow that’s some serious A-Team level story
Look at the Autodefensas in Colombia and Michoacán, or the origins of the Taliban in Kandahar's opium belt (Maiwand) in the early 1990s.
Militas are not hallmarks of direct democracy - they are hallmarks of societal and political collapse.
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This is the kind of affirmative action I can fall behind.
"new state apparatus in place. Political parties were banned, and a governing council had been elected..a military force was chartered" Yeah, how does this work? This sounds more like civil war. Admittedly, one side of the war staying to themselves. But, also, break down of any overall government. If Idaho suddenly did this people would freak out, would call it communism, and attack.
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I'm sorry but it objectively reads as incompetence. There's no other way to read it.
danger signals, or what constitutes a dangerous situation, changes from country to country. so if you hop on a jet, drive to some area out and about, it would be easy to be somewhere you are in danger and not realize it. i had a co-worker from another country talk about going somewhere in an american city, and we were all like 'dude you could have died', he shrugged, said it didn't seem bad.
Its interesting that if you are sitting on top of something valuable its great, as long as its not too valuable. At a certain point people are willing to kill and cheat for something really valuable, and then if you are sitting on top of it, you're fucked.
Something is missing in your theory. Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, etc. are sitting on something really valuable.
As a Spaniard, I know México used to do it fine 50, 60, 100 years ago. Ditto with Argentina, albeit the level of violence and social issues are nowhere close to México. What happened?
I also live in Spain, but my partner is Mexican and I know a number of argentines including one who just spent months travelling in latin america. She travelled mostly alone, spent many nights sleeping in a van on her own in Mexico and said she felt much safer than in the Buenos Aires area where she used to live before moving to Spain. And Buenos Aires is considered a safe city. Last time I was in Mexico I never felt…
In summary every one of these trips has been a positive experience with nary a rotten situation, although one has to be careful on the further reaches of the Metro de la Ciudad de México. Even then, behavior matters, and I've extricated us from a possibly escalatory situation by just acting like a native, no problemo. Even done the early Sunday traffic ticket (in Guaymas) with a few hours cooling our heels at (not in) the police station before la mordita set us free. We were finally brought before el jefe, and had to listen to an impenetrable Sonoran dialect harangue (I couldn't pick out the numbers!). When he paused for a while, I respectfully fanned $150US or so of pesos in front of him, he picks the fine. About $80US. Not rotten though. Rotten is when you find yourself adjacent to near future health issues.
I read various Mexico news sites in Spanish and the facts are if you are a low status Mexicano not living close to a city center it seems occasionally quite gruesome. In the US our family has explored the deepest wildernesses by ourselves all over the country, and never had a problem[1]. In México I wouldn't dare do such a thing. I also wouldn't travel at night outside of the nice areas of city centers.
If you want to learn more about what it's like for the low status Mexicanos working extraordinarly hard to make a living in the rural areas of Mexico, I highly recommend the recent (poorly edited and overly verbose) book "Searching For Modern Mexico". He has a section focusing on the avocado industry situation, which is just awful. My heart goes out to those people.
We're all converging in Tijuana soon to spend a while in Ensenada, including snorkeling south of Ensenada not that far from where those poor surfers had the ultimate rotten experience. => give up the vehicle, walk out.
We love Mexico.
[1] Uh... well there was that one time decades ago when we were hiking on a remote trail in the N. Georgia mountains and we got held up at gunpoint by a bandido in flip flops(!). I gave him the $2 in my wallet and we hiked back out of there pronto!.
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You don't need feed crops for meat. Historically people used marginal land where crops don't grow to graze animals. (And there is a lot of marginal land, even with modern fertilizers.) Anything else makes no economic sense.
Reality is that more than 99 percent of US meat production facilities are factory farms.
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"new state apparatus in place. Political parties were banned, and a governing council had been elected..a military force was chartered" Yeah, how does this work? This sounds more like civil war. Admittedly, one side of the war staying to themselves. But, also, break down of any overall government. If Idaho suddenly did this people would freak out, would call it communism, and attack.
> If Idaho suddenly did this people would freak out, would call it communism, and attack. Well, of course. People would start taking control of their own lives, and we don't want that. What would come next? The right to control their own body? How ludicrous. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/04/23/1246611...
Texas could secede and enslave Mexicans and remove women's rights. That would be 'taking control' as they desire it.
California could secede and give everyone free pot and mandatory beach days. That would be their 'taking control' as they desire it.
If everyone is allowed to do their own thing, all states go their own way, all counties, all people. It's just anarchy.
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> If Idaho suddenly did this people would freak out, would call it communism, and attack. Well, of course. People would start taking control of their own lives, and we don't want that. What would come next? The right to control their own body? How ludicrous. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/04/23/1246611...
You can make that argument in both directions. Better be careful what you are arguing for. The same arguments for 'States' to have the right to legalize pot is the same arguments the South uses for slavery. Texas could secede and enslave Mexicans and remove women's rights. That would be 'taking control' as they desire it. California could secede and give everyone free pot and mandatory beach days. That would be their…