Avocados and marijuana in the Sierra Madre

The small aircraft touches down in a tiny dirt track airstrip, hidden in the folds of the surrounding mountains. A crowd of men wait for us in pickup trucks. They are heavy set, clad in jeans and trucker hats. Strong hands grasp ours in greeting before we all clamber onto the pickups, and the strange convoy sets off. Our destination is a three hour ride away over a dirt road, weaving around the edges of giant canyons and plunging through clear mountain streams.

We are in the Sierra Madre, the ‘Mother Mountains’ of Northern Mexico. In a country currently struggling against a wave of drug led violence, these rugged lands have long been the apex of all that is wild, violent and illegal.

Here, blood feuds regularly erupt that can wipe out entire families. It’s not an uncommon sight to see farmers work with rifles swung on to their shoulders. Many of them are employed in producing the only crops that really pay here: marijuana and heroin poppies.

The cash cow of the Sierra Madre

Strangers are not welcome here. We arrive with Martin Solis, a man born in these mountains and who has twice been mayor in neighbouring town Guachochi. Now, he works for the Chihuahua state government. Slim, ruddy and sporting a Stetson hat, he greets a dark eyed, softly spoken man as we ease our way off the plane.

This man is Lico. He is the leader of the community, both in their legal and illegal activities, Solis tells us. Lico speaks softly, but carries an air of command. The land we are travelling in is all his, and the men perched in, and on, the other pickup trucks are all his relations.

After rumbling past boulders and up steep pothole ridden slopes for most of the morning, we finally arrive at an expanse of emerald green. The convoy lurches to a stop and we climb gingerly down, to be assaulted by the powerful aroma of thousands of marijuana plants.

In 2009, the US State Department estimated that around 12,000 hectares of marijuana were grown in Mexico, a 35 per cent increase on the year before. Much of it was cultivated here in the Sierra Madre. Farmers have been harvesting “the crops that pay” for four decades, seemingly impervious to repeated Mexican army campaigns to slash and burn the small parcels of marijuana that cover the mountains.

As we clamber amongst the chest high cannabis plants, Solis, the State government representative, watches on impassively from the sidelines. It’s difficult for the government to deny the existence of the main cash crop in this region, and it’s proved just as difficult to eradicate it.

However, recently the Chihuahua State Government has had a different idea to wean farmers away from their biggest cash crop.

Enter avocados

A series of factors have been driving marijuana prices down in the Sierra Madre, Solis says. The upsurge in marijuana production in California has reduced demand here. Drug gangs fighting over supply routes from the Sierra Madre have exacerbated problems. Whilst the battle continues, the farmers say it’s difficult to move crops, and this year’s harvest remains in the warehouse.

With the downturn in fortunes for marijuana growers, the state government spotted an opportunity. In January of this year, Solis was placed in charge of a programme to offer farmers the resources and support to grow alternative crops.

Avocados were chosen for the scheme. They grow well in the Sierra Madre soil and are currently fetching a high price, due in itself to a shortage from avocado farmers in the southern state of Michoacan, who are encountering problems with drug gangs.

Since the start of the programme, Solis has helped farmers plant 80,000 avocado trees in 200 hectares across the Sierra Madre. The state government provides the plants, along with fences and irrigation technology.

It has appeared to meet with early success; farmers in eight of the Sierra Madre’s 17 municipalities have joined in, but Solis is pragmatic about their reasons.

“We arrived just at the moment when growing drugs stopped being good business and people wanted something that gave them a better income. That’s why farmers are entering the scheme, not because of any social conscience, but because they want more money.”

Debating the future

We finally arrive to what he wants to show us, fields with sprouts of avocado crops growing a few hundred metres down from the marijuana plantations.

The avocado trees are flourishing in Don Manuel Loera’s plot of land. He shows us around, inspecting the plants with his large, work-stained hands. Speaking deeply from beneath an impressive moustache, he says that he had grown marijuana all his life but was tired of always looking over his shoulder.

“I wanted to grow something legal, to not be always looking out for the law.”

However, experts in drug policy remain sceptical as to whether the programme could eventually replace drug growth in the mountains. Edgardo Buscaglia, an international security expert, says there is little the government can do to affect trade.

“Even when considering that marijuana is just a minuscule proportion of total annual gross income for the Sinaloa organisation and other Mexican organised crime groups, one can say with confidence that international market forces have much more power to determine the relative attraction to farmers of marijuana growing than anything that the Mexican government could do locally regarding eradication or substitution programmes.”

However Alejandro Madrazo Lajous, a Mexican lawyer working on drug law reform, says that at least the programme marks a new direction for official policy.

“It is good that states take their own initiatives and break rank from simply following the federal government’s failed policy of repression as the first and last measure, to which President Calderon has stubbornly stuck to. A lot of state violence is directed towards producers of the crops, who are often the poorest in the supply chain, and it’s great if this means a change of approach. This programme is not going to solve the problem, but it shows a shifting of attitudes, which should be encouraged.”

The hopes of Martin Solis are more modest. He says the programme is designed to give farmers who depend solely on drug crops another option. Whether they take it is up to them.

As we head back to the tiny air strip, Lico and the rest of the convoy break out bottles of lechugilla, the bootlegged liquor famous in this region. Hurtling round the mountain curves, our increasingly boisterous escort becomes more enthusiastic about the avocado programme than ever.

Still, it will not be an overnight solution. It takes two years for the first crops to ripen, but even then, farmers such as 24 year-old Edmundo Loera, who currently grows marijuana, remain optimistic that a change could be afoot.

“My children won’t have to do what I do here if the avocado scheme takes off.”

Whether that enthusiasm is enough to break the habits of a lifetime for those in this hard and remote corner of Mexico is the real test of the programme.

This article was first published on Aljazeera English here.

Follow John Holman on Twitter: @mexicorrespond

Breaking the Waves: A Grey whale story

Silence reigns over San Ignacio lagoon in North Mexico. The only sound is the hum of an idling motor in the launch that has brought the half-dozen tourists to the centre of the lake. They grip the side of the boat, straining to see movement in the depths below or squint off into the middle distance with cameras held in eager hands. It is a tense, expectant still, broken only by the occasional excited squawk of a false alarm.

Suddenly a huge flipper rises into the air, flails around and slips back into the icy waters of the lagoon. Seconds later another appears, before the water is alive with a windmill of giant flailing extremities. As the tourists coo and point, three huge bodies briefly rise to the surface before disappearing from view as the complex gyrations continue.

This is the mating of the grey whale, taking place in the most public of bedrooms. They travel up to 10,000km each year to enact the ritual, beginning the long swim in the icy waters of the Bering, Beaufort and Chukchi seas between Russia and Alaska before heading here, to the balmier water of the Northern Mexico Bajan California peninsula. It is the longest migration of any mammal in the world.

photo by Dr. Jorge Urbano

A tricky proposition

An adult whale is between 10-11 metres long and weighs 35 tons, a size that can make mating a tricky proposition. The act is necessarily a ménage a trois, in which two male whales stabilise the body of the female between them. All three of them float belly up and, whilst one of the males mates with the female, the other acts as a stabiliser. Although many males may mate with a female, the ultimate father of her calf will be the one who has left the largest amount of sperm the deepest within her.

Grey whale expert Dr Jorge Urban has spent his life watching the giant mammals. He says that this year there are four times the normal number of whales in the lagoon. He puts the increase down to them eating particularly well in the northern feeding grounds and this year’’s particularly cold seas.

In the four months between the end of the year and April, the lagoon is a hive of breeding, birthing and suckling. Mothers and their calves emerge from the water side by side, whilst other whales jump and play in the water.

The Devil Fish

The old whale hunters had a special respect for the grey whale, which fought them so ferociously that it was given the name “Devil Fish”. Its struggles could not prevent it from nearing the brink of extinction. A ban on hunting and a vigorous effort to protect them has helped numbers up to around 25,000 worldwide.

Mexico has played a special part of this, providing the first whale sanctuaries in the world, says Dr Lorenzo Rojas, Mexico’s representative on the World Whale Commission. Each year marine biologists and whale watchers descend upon the Baja California peninsula.

The tourists wear an almost uniform expression of enthusiastic incredulity. They come from all over the globe for a glimpse of the whales. Ciuliana Zoboli and her family are on vacation from Italy. Still in her life jacket, she enthuses about these almost prehistoric looking creatures.

“It’s a magnificent thing because we’re making contact with the natural world, with the sea. You can hear the sounds of the whales breathing and that immerses you in nature.”

The whales in turn seem to appreciate the attention. Playing around the tourist boats they often pop up alongside for tourists to run their hands over their warm, rubbery skin. The “Devil Fish” persona has been replaced by a curiosity for humans that may be due to the fact that the whale hugs the coastline closely in its migration, seeing oil rigs, pleasure boats and shipping along the way.

From being the scourge of whale hunters, the grey whale is now commonly acknowledged by experts as the friendliest whale to humans in the sea.

photo by Dr. Jorge Urbano

The legend of Pachico

This friendly reputation did not stop fisherman in San Ignacio viewing them with suspicion for years, fearing these huge, almost prehistoric-looking beasts. The first fisherman to overcome his trepidation and touch a whale, Pachico Mayoral, has grown into a legendary figure around the lagoon.

Since his daring feat the fishermen have realised the benefits the whales offer them, taking tourists out to see the whales and establishing camps around the side of the lagoon to put them up. Mayoral himself established one of the first of them, which is still going strong today.

But the benefits that tourism has brought has been mixed with a strong spirit of conservation. As fisherman Alejandro Gallegos says: “If we don”t take care of the whales our families won’t have food on the table. We have to take care of them so that our descendants can live and work the same way.”

Only a certain number of boats are allowed out on the lake at any given time as the community seeks to limit human interference in the lives of the giant mammals. Whale-watching camps are purposefully as basic as possible in an attempt to merge rather than superimpose on nature.

The lost population

Around 130 grey whales never make the journey to Mexico’s lagoons. This small group of West Pacific Grey Whales remains a mystery even to their most fervent scientific admirers. They feed in the seas off Sakhalin in Eastern Russia, but from there, the group’s migration route is a mystery.

No one knows where their breeding grounds lie, although they are thought to be somewhere between the coasts of Korea and China. The groups numbers are so low that scientists worry that they may not be around for too much longer.

For the 25,000 grey whales that head to Baja California, the future looks brighter. The sun begins to set on lagoon San Ignacio. The last whale-watching boat has come in and the silence is punctuated only by the soft explosion of spray as huge barnacled backs rise to the surface then sink back down.

Luxuriating beneath the tranquil waters of the lagoon, these huge beasts contemplate another long journey north.

Cholera Stricken Haiti Waiting on Hurricane Tomas

More than 1 million Haitians displaced in temporary camps are bracing themselves for tropical storm Tomas, wheeling it’s way past Jaimaca and predicted to swing round into a full hurricane when it hits Haiti early this Friday.

NGOs and the UN admit that they will struggle to cope if the hurricane hits Haiti on Friday as expected. Resources are already stretched thin by the ongoing outbreak of cholera that has so far claimed 442 lives and infected 6 700 people. The floods which a hurricane would bring would make for ideal breeding grounds for cholera, which is a waterbourne disease.

Mexicorrespondent’s John Holman travelled with correspondent Craig Mauro and camerawoman Cinthya Chavez to tent camp Corail, outside of the capital Port Au  Prince, to look at the possible effect of the hurricane on those most vulnerable, in a report for Al Jazeera English. Click the headline to see it.

Church Authorities Hide Peadophile Priests in Mexico

You can also read this article at Al jazeera English website here.

14/04/10 Mexico City- Alberto Athie, a former Mexican priest, took the difficult decision to leave the Roman Catholic Church following his investigations into a high-profile paedophile priest.

He holds up the letter he wrote 13 years ago to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. It details senior Mexican priest Marcial Maciel’s sexual abuse of young boys.

As the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Maciel was one of the most influential of world Catholic figures before his death in 2008.

When Athie tried to deliver the letter to the Vatican, he was told that Cardinal Ratzinger was too busy to see him. Ratzinger’s staff told him to show no one else the contents of the correspondence.

In his relentless efforts to get the Vatican to investigate the sex abuse cases, Athie persuaded his friend, Mexican Bishop Carlos Talavera, to take the letter to Ratzinger. Talavera later informed him of Ratzinger’s response:

“I am sorry but this case cannot be investigated because Father Maciel is a great friend of the Holy Father and has done much good for the church. I am sorry but it isn’t prudent.”

A charismatic figure, Maciel brought priests and other material benefits to the church and was repeatedly honoured, despite allegations of child abuse and drug addiction.

He enjoyed a close relationship with Pope John Paul II, who described him in 1994 as a model for the young.

However after years of dodging complaints, Maciel was finally investigated by the Vatican in 2004. Two years later Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, banished Maciel from the ministry – nine years after the initial complaint.

It later emerged that Maciel had abused victims during four decades and fathered three children. Two of his sons say Maciel also sexually abused them.

On the move

Athie maintains that the Marciel was not the only paedophile priest in Mexico that the Vatican decided to ignore. He claims that the church has a long history of moving priests accused of sexual abuse from one parish to another to avoid controversy.

He says that the strategy has helped church leaders keep one step ahead of complaints, and has allowed them to continue abusing new victims.

Maciel allegedly abused some 200 young seminarians and children over four decades

Cardinal Norberto Rivera, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, recently declared that “the Archdiocese of Mexico will not defend or tolerate delinquents, but will make sure that the civil authorities act with the full force of the law”.

However, Rivera himself wrote a letter of good conduct allowing Nicolas Aguilar, accused of being one of the most notorious child abusers in the Mexican priesthood, to escape to the United States.

Aguilar has repeatedly found new places to continue working as a priest, on a journey of abuse that took him from Mexico City to Los Angeles, and then to Puebla, where he was still preaching in small villages in 2006, despite 19 legal complaints of lewd acts committed against US minors.

While Aguilar was protected from prosecution, one of his victims was treated quite differently.

Joaquin Mendez says he was a 13-year-old altar boy when Aguilar raped him. He went to the home of the local bishop to complain, but got no support.

“They put me in a room in the district Chapultepec to the side of the bishop’s house. There were four priests in the room with me. They led out my father and mother. They sat me down and interrogated me. They went out and told my father that it wasn’t clear what had happened to me and that they weren’t going to do anything.”

Athie believes the pope is the only person who can restore the church’s moral credibility, though he is the same man who ignored his pleas for justice 13 years ago.

“What will Ratzinger do? Will he deny this and delegitimize the complaints of society, regarding them as gossip and taunts without reason, as he is trying to do, or will he take the responsibility as head of the church and make sure that this never happens? This is his dilemma.”

It’s a dilemma that appears to becoming increasingly complicated as new cases of sexual abuses perpetrated by priests continue to emerge.

Drought Threatens Mexican Farmers

You can also read this story on the Al Jazeera English website here.

Sotero Palencia holds the withered corncob in his hand. It is all that’s left of his crop for this year and the result of the harshest Mexican drought inover six decades. Gesturing to the rest of the withered maize plants in the field, he tells us that what he has grown will only be sufficient to feed his few farm animals, not enough for his family to trade, or even eat.

His story is typical of the rural parts of San Luis Potosi, in the North West of the country. In Temascalito, Sotero’s village, many farmers didn’t even sow the fields for fear of wasting the seed.

313 000 hectares of crops were lost throughout the country in the months of July and August, according to Alberto Cardenas, the Secretary of Agriculture.  As a result, many small scale farmers have now left their communities to search for work. For farmers like Sotero this has proved a fruitless pursuit.

“You just get told ‘No we’re already full up, come back tomorrow, come back next week’.  You wander around spending the last cent you have in transport and come back with your family waiting for you and you have nothing.”

In the past the community could rely on money from relatives in the US during difficult times. Now, with the crisis North of the border, this has dried up and they are left with no source of income. State and Federal authorities have arrived to help as Gerardo Mendez, a government contract worker, explains.

“We are implementing state and federal government programs that include reforestisation, planting shrubs for grazing animals and creating more places to store water.”

Despite these plans, locals claim that the government will not address the principal water problems they face. In Temascalito the two local reservoirs are so full of soil that, even when it rains, not enough water can be stored for the needs of local families.  According to Beatriz Benavente, State Congresswoman, this is indicative of a government which has not prioritized rural areas.

“The former government of San luis Potosi was more concerned with dealing with business, generating an ornamental type of infrastucture with museums and convention centres. That resource never arrived at the countryside. I think if it had got there, we would have been able to save the crops of many small farmers.”

Now the drought has robbed them of their crops, many young men are leaving rural areas for the city or even for the US, aggravating an already existent rural exodus which has left rural Mexico with 50% of its inhabitants over 50 years old., according to figures from the Secretary of Agriculture. With Winter fast arriving and no food or jobs, the future of entire rural communities seems to be at stake.

Danger on The Tracks; Passing Migrants Prey to Mexican Gangs and Police

You can see this article on the Al Jazeera english website here.

Susanah squats down by the side of the train tracks in Tultitlan , Central Mexico. The 32 year old Honduran is one of the many central Americans passing through Mexico on freight trains to get to the US. However, the trip has become an increasingly dangerous journey.

“There are police that want to rob you. They take you and say, get out everything you’ve got. Because it happened to me in Orizaba, they took everything from me. ”

It is not only the police that seek to take advantage of the undocumented, and thus invisible population traveling through Mexico. Influential Mexican newspaper “El Universal” says that there is increasing sex trafficking by drug linked gangs who are taking advantage of the Guatemalan and Honduran women and children passing through. Frequently they are hauled off the trains and sold for as little as 40 dollars into sex slavery. At present there are 20 000 prostitutes from central America in Mexican brothels according to this Mexican daily. Susan says that the young girls are especially at risk.

“There are girls that travel of 15, 16 years old, and those are the ones most at danger of being abused.”

Even the Mexicans migrants contract to guide them or “Polleros” are not to be trusted. Many turn their charges over to be kidnapped by gangs who then beat them to obtain phone numbers of family in the states. Once they have the numbers they call these relatives to extract a ransom.

Mexican police are the last people the migrants can turn to for help as Javier Melendez, of the Commision for Human Rights in the state of Mexico, underlines.

“The migrants can be subject to extorsion by the police, the robbery of their things, beatings and other things, probably even kidnappings, which would be the worst case scenario.”

For a nation with a long history of migration, it seems surprising to many that Mexico should be so unforgiving to those traveling with the same objective. Paty Camarena is a local volunteer who provides food for the central American migrants.

“I love my country but there is a double moral standard here. We should learn how to treat our migrating neighbours to the South so that our neighbor to the North treats us with respect and produce more guarantees that reform migration as well.”

The growing antipathy towards migrants seems due to the many who do not complete their journey to the states and stay in Mexico. The economic crisis has fuelled this phenomenon as relatives in the US suddenly stop sending the money that migrants need to continue their journey North.

The mayor of Tultitlan, Marco Antonio Calzada Arroyo, says they then frequently turn to illegal activities to survive.

“Now they have become mixed with people from organized crime. With gangs that recruit them and get them to rob or commit crimes.”

He did not, however, produce any figures to back up this statement.

Grupo Beta, a government agency set up by the Mexican government to help migrants, has recorded a total of 75 migrants injured whilst crossing the country. The real number seems to be much higher, as Mexico presents increasingly hostile territory for those passing through.