In Mexico, avocados, deforestation, drug gangs go together

By MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press

CHERAN, Mexico (AP) — Regular citizens have taken the fight against illegal logging into their own hands in the pine-covered mountains of western Mexico. Over the last decade they have seen illegal logging clear the hillsides for plantations of water hungry avocado trees; where there are avocados, the water dries up and drug cartels soon follow. In the Indigenous township of Cheran, in Michoacan state, the fight has been so successful it’s as if a line had been drawn across the mountains _ avocados and cleared land on one side, pine forest on the other. But it required a political revolt in which Cheran’s townspeople declared themselves autonomous and formed their own government.