Caliber 60

Ola Latino USA listener, it's mariaino Hosa today. We're going to share an episode of Caliber sixty. It's a podcast by our colleagues over at Texas Public Radio. The limited series with episodes in both English and Spanish, as hosted by Mexican journalists Stefania Gurbi and Argentine photojournalist Doya Sarno Jordan. Caliber sixty dives into how the trafficking of illegal arms from the United States to Mexico impacts on the displacement

This podcast was supported by the Pulitzer.

Cent She is as Nero.

When Ninda makes mole, the traditional Mexican dish that combines over forty ingredients, she doesn't need a recipe. She remembers every step by heart.

Will not slept on muchos, condiment tabli, calamia.

Chili, cinnamon, peppers, cloves, and sometimes even chocolate. Recalling these ingredients reminds her of home. Simmering pots fill her kitchen. She smiles. She recounts the natural beauty of her home in Mexico, the one she was forced to leave.

Cerro and Precioso.

Xtao, Michok and is now a place she can visit only in memory.

The smell of fresh tortillas wafts off the camal. She offers the option of corner flour to go with them.

Joe and.

Last see nixt She had a view of rolling hills full of trees, a laundry business space for her family. Now she's living in a rented room that she shares with her three children.

Linaver calls a yellow landscape covered by milpas or cornfields. Now it's placed by infinite rows of avocado trees espur ja maotracosa.

And the reason is simple. These are communities who sole income relies on agriculture. Their land has the perfect conditions to grow a product that is in very high demand.

I eat avocados probably four times a week.

Avocado is amazing. It's probably my favorite vegetable.

Is that a tree?

I didn't even else it's the wash.

In nineteen eighty five, Americans ate four hundred and thirty six million pounds of avocados per year. By twenty twenty, that number exploded to two point seven billion. I mean there are even avocado bars in New York. You know.

Last year I was in New York and I saw avocados being sold in the Lower East Side for four dollars in avocado.

We all love our sorodo avocado toast with poachticks or spicy wakamola while watching the game.

Remember this year's Super bowlart the one We're an affairs place. Even the Garden of Eden and New York City is now the big avocado and then the catchy avocados from Mexico. How are avocados and one of the most expensive ad placements in the world.

Well, that's easy. This is a three billion dollar business driven by a voracious demand from the US, and the main producer is Linda's home, the Mexican state of Michua Kan.

And Tremas mirawanke.

Mass plantaw Nawakate.

So for people in Mitcha Kan, changing their crops to avocados meant having more income, living in a better house, and finding a livelihood that could give them new opportunities in the agricultural business, but.

New money doesn't go unnoticed.

The weekend, the US temporarily banned Mexican avocados due to a security threat. I thre at highlighting the criminal element that continues to afflict the avocado market.

Avocado imports came to a screeching hold right before the twenty twenty two Super Bowl, and the rotten underbelly of this industry was exposed in the United States.

But this story is way bigger than avocados.

It's about the complicated relationship between the violence guns perpetuate and the people that are being forced out of Mexico because of it.

The story will take you from the beautiful avocado fields Emichakan, Mexico, to wineries in Napa, California.

To the Nera Convention and the migrant shelters in Tijuana, to.

The homes of families who've experienced grief on both sides of this endless war on drugs.

I'm Toya Sarno Jordan.

And I'm Stephaniacorpi.

This is episode one of Caliber sixty.

Pistao. Linda's quiet hometown in Michigan had remained relatively calm at the time when other parts of Mexico had become battlefields for organized crime.

And lay huge until Alaska.

Yes, before streets were paved, kids had fun playing outside on dirt roads. Neighbors organized parties, and like in any small town, everyone was invited.

SAA.

You'd chat with any what you'd meet. Everyone knew everything about everyone. That's why the arrival of unfamiliar men didn't go unnoticed.

They weren't from around town ni nis. They never said where they came from or share their names.

The first time Linda saw weapons in Nistado, they were hanging off the shoulders of these men who drove by in SUVs. As weeks went by, these appearances became more frequent and the SUVs multiplied.

So did the guns and semana iran guatre, communitas, yamas, genas de ombres armaos.

By the third week, there were four trucks filled with more men. They stopped occasionally to buy things at the store and continued on their way.

But the real problems began when they decided to stay.

And those sim Al Principioira Berque Casa Stavasola.

They started squatting in abandoned houses, many left behind by people who migrated to the US. But once all the empty houses were taken, they began forcing families out of their own homess. At gunpoint, people were cast to the street. How do you say no to an armed group of men?

In Nanoche Domavan and in Persona and Lassos Albiento.

Linda recalls that these men often got drunk and gunshots could be heard throughout the evening.

The still Knights of Victo had ended. But why Cartels across the country are fighting for the lucrative drug traffic and routes into the United States.

So the latest figures are around thirty nine dead. Now this is you said.

This is an area right on the border of Michoka.

The average American now eats seven pounds of avocados a year.

The demand has made a lot of farmers in Mexico rich, but it's also drawn the attention of organized crime.

Avocados the crop that brought money and abundance tweaks that has got the eye of the Nartico group Los Viagras. Yes, like the little blue pill, all narticles are after one thing, money, regardless of where it's coming from.

In a Raniolonico, Cassian rapidiles quotas, alas, personas, quetin and su.

Linda explains that Los Pviira's began charging avocado farmers a fee when the could costume their lives if they failed to pay. Extorting avocado farmers was Los Vieira's way into the industry and into new territory.

Sadly, this is nothing new in Michokan.

Borgue deecho, joponescucha, loslaso cito, Jossia is to solampas and peliculas.

This only happens in movies, Linda thought to herself when news of violence in nearby t began to build fear in Nikstado.

Many towns in Michokan were invaded years before the Kikstado when the infamous Mexican drug war began back in two thousand and six. Peace died a long time ago in Michokan.

And American guns are fueling this violence. You're listening to caliber sixty. Stay with us, Welcome back to caliber sixty. The size of avocados is measured by caliber, just like ammunition, and this story is about America's obsession with both.

For decades, the US and Mexico have.

Been in constant negotiations over how to deal with migrants, drugs, and guns funds moving across the border.

One of the flows that has been widely identified is that while drugs flow north, money and weapons comes out.

That's Cecilia for Fan Mendez, a security expert at U See, San Diego and co founder of Mexico Violence, a think tank that researches violence trends in Mexico.

So increasingly, what we're seeing in Mexico is people being violently displaced from their communities from groups that are actually heavily armed.

She adds that these displays of weapons helped create a perception of power building fear within the community, like this video released by one of the most powerful groups, Cartel Halisco.

The video shows several dozen uniformed men armed with military grade weapons, including fifty caliber sniper rifles, alongside a convoy of armored vehicles.

When you go to the forensic cloud where there's been up to one thousand dead bodies, just bodies everywhere. Right in the next room is the women and children looking for their disappeared. You know, you could smell them, for goodness sake.

That's Smothy Sloane, ATF's former attache in Mexico City. He's seen up close the deaths these weapons and drugs are causing.

Realistically, at least eighty percent of the firearms in Mexico co for the United States.

That's right.

By tracing these weapons found in shootings in Mexico, Sloan and his team were able to estimate that around eighty percent of all firearms in the country come from the United States.

In all of Mexico there is only one legal gun store. Somehow, the country is still littered with high powered weapons, mostly smuggled from the United States. Now, the Mexican government is taking an unprecedented step suing arms manufacturers in US federal court.

In twenty twenty one, the Mexican government suit eleven American gun manufacturers like cold Smith and Wesson and Bereta. Here's Alejandro Clorio, Mexico's lead attorney in the lawsuit.

The gun industry the big manufacturers that were suing are on notice and are aware that their products are sold to cartels to criminals, and they have done nothing to change this.

The lawsuit six ten billion dollars for the negligence that has let millions of guns slip across the border and We're not just talking about pistols.

Let's remember that in Mexico we have civilians committing crimes with military style weapons, weapons that shouldn't be in the hands of civilians.

Celario is right.

In March twenty twenty two, the Mexican Army seized a historic amount of high powered weapons and ammunition, including six fifty caliber weapons, one hundred and thirty long guns, and three million.

Rounds of high caliber ammunition.

And as mentioned in the previous news club, there's only one legal gun store in the country compared to the over fifty two thousand in the US.

Celaria believes the Mexican government is doing the best they can to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

The governments have been doing their job, but what about the corporations.

The lawsuit has been criticized for being politically motivated, but something needs to be done. More and more military grade weapons are being found in crime scenes in Mexico. Now the concern isn't just how many, but how big.

Viral videos from the twenty twenty three capture of a chapel's son a video Guzman, shown narcos firing at military helicopters and airplanes with fifty caliber machine guns.

In other words, these are civilians trying to shoot down Mexican military helicopters with US military weapons. Violence keeps reaching new levels in Mexico.

Left with no protection from authorities, grassroots groups sprouted in mech Gan and back in Nixtao. That glimmer of hope was called Pueblos or United Towns.

Yo Lads, Nava Mahina and Costa Cali and vinoss Alvarnos.

Linda was excited that someone finally came to rescue them from the hold of the narco group Los Viagras. In twenty twenty, the vigilante band of farmers Pueblos formed to defend the avocado crops from narco control in Nizioco.

More Momento, the defenser territorial.

Idni Alvarez, a sociologists and researcher from the Corregio and Mexico, explains that these self defense groups emerged as a means to defend their territory. The self defense groups like not only fight with weapons, but with politics.

The clarato to defenstrate politica.

Small towns supported by self defense groups suddenly had political average and the attention of local governments for a community held hostage by narcos, this might be the only option.

Pos secretly approached Eto, offering their help to fight off the narcos.

Leo Priami sequs No.

Linda didn't want her children around weapons, but under the grip of narco control, Etto had no choice but to join Pueblos.

A few months later, the true motivations came to life. More of this on the next episode of Caliber sixty, Papastan and Cielo What can.

I tell his son? Your father is in heaven?

Caliber sixty is.

Reported and produced by Stefania Korbi and me Toya Sarno Jordan. Producer Jacob Prosardi created all the sound design and original scoring.

For this podcast.

Audio editing by Bennett Smith. Our editor is vet men Abides, Associate editor of TPR and TPR and Ossias and Then Katz is tpr's vice president of News and our executive producer.

This is a production of Texas Public Radio with support from the Pulitzer Center and the Catena Foundation.

Until next time,