Rotten (2018–2019): Season 2, Episode 1 - The Avocado War - full transcript

[Narrator] It's a 21st century
success story like no other.

[Noel Stehly]
We now live in a global society

where we can have avocados
12 months of the year.

Having that makes people eat them,

makes people like them,
makes people love them.

[Jim Shanley]
It was a fatty and indulgent food.

Now, it's literally looked at
as a health food, a superfood,

a food to be eaten every day.

[Narrator]
Each year, more than 11 billion pounds

of avocados are consumed around the world.

The avocado is a financial powerhouse



driving a state-of-the-art
Mexican industry

worth more than two
and a half billion dollars a year.

[Manuel Lucatero] [in Spanish]
I remember we used to sell

a kilo of avocados
for two or two and a half pesos.

And now, we can sell one
for as high as 80 pesos.

[Narrator] But the profits are both
a blessing and a curse to their growers.

[Alejandro Hope] There are any number
of stories about kidnappings

to force the owners
to pay the extortion fee.

This was no longer
a quote-unquote "victimless crime."

This was about extracting money
from local economies.

[Narrator]
The avocado is a money maker

and a magnet for extortion, murder,
and oppression.

[Manuel Naranjo] [in Spanish]
The whole population was scared to death.

And people were afraid,
just waiting to see who would be next.



[Narrator]
In Chile, the avocado thrives,

but only by drinking up
the country's scarce water resources.

[in Spanish] We have been attacked.
We've had death threats since 2017.

And indeed, there's a cartel.

There's a water and avocado cartel.

[Narrator]
It's called "green gold,"

and that means men will do anything
to get their hands on it.

[Narrator]
This is how the village

of Quebrada de Castro gets
just about all of its water.

Brought in by truck.

The villagers use this water for washing,
for cooking, for drinking.

[in Spanish]
Hi, sir. How is it going?

[in Spanish]
Doing well, thank God. Sign here, please.

[man]
Okay, Zoilita, Have a good day.

When do you come back with water again?

Not until next week. Until Monday.

I don't know what happened
with the emergency delivery

you used to get on Thursdays.

-Okay, I'll deal with it.
-Because the tank is almost empty.

Yeah, it's almost empty.

Bye, Zoilita. Have a good day.

Yeah, you too.

[Narrator]
But it wasn't always this way.

Until 2008, the village water came
from a local spring and canal.

That water is no longer there.

[in Spanish] There's no more water
in the rivers or the canals,

so everything got dry.

We don't even have drinking water.

[Narrator] Central Chile is undergoing
several years of drought.

But it's not the drought that stole
the water from Quebrada de Castro.

This village is parched
because of a worldwide feeding frenzy,

the avocado boom.

The fruit is so critical
to Chile's agriculture

that it has taken precedence
over the lives of actual Chileans.

How did this happen?
How did the avocado become so powerful?

The trouble started
in the world's fifth-largest economy,

a far-off place called California.

[Stehly] [in Spanish]
Do you have the kale for Be Wise?

[man]
Be Wise kale.

[in Spanish] Uh, Black Beauty Zucchini,
we need two.

All right, that's it.

[Narrator]
Noel Stehly is a second-generation farmer

in Valley Center, California.

His farm helped start the avocado's climb

from local flavor
to international heavyweight.

[Stehly] [in English]
My father bought here

in the early '60s, about '62,

and moved his farm here from Anaheim
in '64.

He was an orange farmer
turned chicken farmer.

As the housing boom moved
into the flatlands of Anaheim,

my dad needed to move out,

'cause people don't like chickens,
and chickens stink.

Avocados are very fickle.

They like good whether.
They like that 72 degree, humid,

right above the beach in Hawaii.

When it drops below 30 degrees,

avocados, after four hours
at that temperature of under 30,

are damaged.

That's why when you're out here
on the farm,

you'll look at these mountains and go,

"Why don't you plant the flatland?
Why do you plant up these hillsides?"

The answer to that is that
the cold air falls to the valley floor.

[Narrator] Around 95%of American avocados
are grown in California,

which has the right hills
and pockets of exactly the right climate.

Close to two-thirds
of California's avocado acres

have been concentrated
in just two counties.

It is grown under certain
favorable circumstances,

and an exceptionally fine sector for this
has proven to be San Diego County.

Here the conditions seem to be just right

for the production of this fruit
on a large scale.

We have here a special brand of avocado
known as a Fuerte.

These are a very delicious brand
of the avocado.

[Narrator] Farmers detested
the common nickname, alligator pear.

Avocado is derived from "ahuacatl,"

the Aztec word for testicle.

But it's still catchier
than alligator pear.

The business grew slowly but steadily
through the 20th century.

As the national awareness
of healthy foods grew,

the Fuerte avocado
turned out to be nutrient-rich

and full of the sort of ingredients
doctors approved of

like potassium, fiber,
and monounsaturated fats.

[Stehly]
In the 1970s,

avocado production started to grow
in Southern California,

and there was money to be made.

My dad started planting acres, and acres,
and acres of avocados.

[Narrator] Growers promoted
the avocado as a luxury,

an exotic West Coast ingredient
for the sophisticated home chef...

and it worked.

[Stehly]
We had thousands of trees in a nursery

that my brothers, and I,
and my sisters pulled weeds

in those little pots every day

and grafted those trees,

and got them ready
to go out and be planted

on these hillsides as mature trees.

It was just what we did.

You had seven kids,
that was part of your workforce.

That was summer vacation for us.

We got to go on a family trip
in the middle of the summer,

but other than that, we worked every day.

[Narrator]
The 1970s were also the point

when the Fuerte avocado
was overtaken once and for all

by its upstart rival, the Hass.

The Hass had appeared
back in the late 1920s.

A new variant born
by a tree in the backyard

of California postal carrier,
Rudolph Hass.

It was creamier than the Fuerte.

With its thicker, pebbly skin,
it survived the shipping process better.

It had a longer growing season,

and its smaller size meant
consumers finished it faster,

before it could spoil.

[Stehly]
It traveled well. It packed well.

It was a good piece of fruit
with a decent flavor

that people could latch onto,

and it could get to them
in a size that made sense.

[Narrator] The grafts
from Rudolph Hass' so-called mother tree

turbocharged the industry.

[Stehly]
The Reed avocado is my favorite,

but reality is you can get 28 in a box.

A big Hass avocado,
you get 48 of those in a same size box.

So, for the retailer,

having 48 pieces to put out on the table
at a buck and a half

versus 20 pieces at a buck-90,

it just made more sense to have the Hass.

[Narrator] But just as the avocado
was slipping into the mainstream,

a new image problem.

[upbeat music plays]

[Narrator]
In the fat burning, sweat-loving 1980s,

the avocado was suspiciously oily
and creamy.

Fortunately, the industry had just created
the California Avocado Commission,

which took a percentage
of every farmer's income

to protect the avocado's public image.

And protect it, they did.

[Angie Dickinson]
This body needs good nutrition,

including vitamins A, B-1, C, E,

potassium, niacin, iron,

and this body gets them all
in California avocados.

[Stehly]
Hmm, that avocado is healthy.

It's a healthy fruit. It's a healthy fat.

These were studies that were paid for
by avocado growers

and by the Avocado Commission.

[ad narrator]
On United Airlines Flight 22 to New York,

the passengers aren't getting fat at all

on this delicious lunch of filet mignon
and avocado salad.

[Stehly]
The avocado industry grew and grew.

So in the '70s and '80s,
avocados were taking off everywhere here.

Growing on every hillside, everywhere.

[Narrator]
Between 1970 and 1985,

the number of California farm acres
planted with avocados nearly quadrupled.

The value of the state's crop soared

from under $25 million to $162 million.

[Stehly]
There were a lot of doctors, lawyers,

just people that had a job,
didn't want to live in the city

saw an opportunity
to buy a piece of property,

and saw the neighbor had avocados,
and started talking, and found out,

"Well, this is a way I can invest
in my property also,

and it can pay me a little bit back."

Okay. Well, hey, I just wanted
to make sure everything got done right.

Okay.

[Narrator]
Jim Shanley was a commodities trader

in the livestock feed business
until he retired in the early 2000s.

[Shanley]
This is a property that I bought in 1998

specifically for the purpose
of creating a farm

to provide a retirement income.

I had a very successful business career,

and I was doing well enough
that I thought,

"I ought to get a beach house.
You know, this is cool."

And then I had sort of an epiphany

that it would be a couple million dollars
sitting on the beach,

but not really anything
terribly productive except recreation,

and I, furthermore, realized

that the water here is colder
than I want to get into.

So I spend my time looking at the water,
not being in it.

Uh, so, it didn't need to be beachfront.

[Narrator] In 1998, avocado farming
looked like a good investment.

In just over a year,

the value of an acre of avocados surged
by 27%.

And the orchards of San Diego County,
which grows a third of California's crop,

were being plowed under
to make way for new homes.

[Shanley] And so the supply of avocados
looked to be constricted going forward,

and the demand looked to be growing.

That's the type of thing that I look for.

[in Spanish]
Mario, these painted ones...

[Mario] [in Spanish]
Yeah?

It's good.

This one isn't good. It's number three.

Okay.

No good, no money.

[Narrator]
This extraordinary growth had all happened

under the protection
of the US government,

which had guarded California
against its fiercest competitors...

avocados from Mexico.

Mexico is the birthplace of the avocado.

Growing conditions are perfect,

and the Mexican crop had the power
to undercut the entire US avocado sector.

So, for decades,
the US had kept the border closed

to any Mexican avocado imports.

Now it is my privilege to present to you

the President of the United States,
Bill Clinton.

[Narrator]
Until NAFTA.

In 1993, the US, Canada,
and Mexico signed

the North American Free Trade Agreement,

opening their borders
to a new surge of trade.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I'd also like to welcome here
the representatives from Mexico and Canada

and tell them they are,
in fact, welcome here.

They are our partners in the future
that we are trying to make together.

[Shanley]
When the NAFTA negotiations were going on,

and it was clear
that import of avocados from Mexico

was going to become much easier,

most avocado farmers were, uh,
very, very against that development.

We were thinking, "We're gonna get buried.
They produce 10 times,

fifteen times more avocados than we do.
We're gonna get buried."

[Narrator] The American market opened up
gradually to Mexican avocados.

By 2007, Mexico could export avocados
across the US.

And instead of drowning
the American industry,

the new Mexican tide lifted it up.

[Shanley]
Avocados were a seasonal fruit

because we can't raise them
all year in California.

The season doesn't extend that long.

When Mexico came in,
they filled in the rest of the gap,

and it was a year-round product.

[Narrator] Shoppers were thrilled
to suddenly have avocados

in the months
when they'd once gone without.

And in spite of the soaring demand,

the monster supply kept prices down
over time.

So, we consumers were happy
to keep buying more.

In the US alone,

avocado consumption more than doubled
in 10 years.

[Shanley]
Now, we have a year-round market,

and the Mexican production dominates it.

In this year, we'll have somewhere between
2.2 and 2.5 billion pounds of avocados

consumed in the United States.

The California production this year
is just over 300 million.

So we're a small subset of the avocados
consumed in the United States.

[Narrator]
When NAFTA went into effect,

only one state in Mexico was able to meet
all of the US's sanitary requirements,

Michoacán.

[in Spanish]
Good morning.

[Narrator] In return, Michoacán was
the first state in Mexico permitted

to export avocados to the US.

That privilege has transformed the state.

About one out of every five jobs here
is directly related to the avocado trade.

Michoacán produces nearly a third

of all the avocados consumed
around the world.

1.6 million tons a year.

The workers at this cutting-edge plant
in the city of Tancítaro

process over a million avocados a day.

All of them are Hass avocados,

which now comprise 80% of the global crop.

With more and more of the processing gear
fitted specifically for Hass,

that domination will not change
any time soon.

[in Spanish] We're going to go
into the production area.

Here is where
we start the selection process.

We use robotic arms

to empty the avocados
into the sorting machine.

We use machines now.
This machine is top-of-the-line.

Here is where we select the fruit
for the US market.

This is number one quality.

The purpose of these chambers is

to make sure the avocados stay
at the proper temperature

so it can have its proper shelf life.

Then from here, we load the truck

to its final destination.

[Narrator] But the windfall of NAFTA
had a bloody cost.

The avocado turned out to be so profitable
that it became a magnet

for the violence and corruption
that flourished

in the lawless free-for-all
of Mexican organized crime.

Tancítaro is the heart
of Michoacán's avocado industry.

It's also an armed camp,

a city held together by avocado money
and automatic weapons.

Levels of violence
in Tancítaro are very low

compared to the rest of Michoacán.

Levels of crime are very low
compared to the rest of Michoacán.

But there's also the fact

that what you have is
an irregular armed group

running a relatively large
and important municipality in Mexico.

There are elements of a utopia,

there are elements of dystopia
in that story.

[Narrator] NAFTA opened the door
for the Mexican avocado

at a unique moment in Mexican crime.

The old criminal cartels which had thrived
on the drug trade were breaking down.

As they splintered and splintered again,

the avocado would play
a bigger and bigger role

in their dreams of easy money.

In the 1990s, one of the most powerful
gangs in Michoacán was the Gulf Cartel.

Gulf was old school.

It made its money
mostly off of drug trafficking,

and it protected that business
with cash payoffs

to law enforcement
and government officials.

In Michoacán,

agriculture and narco-trafficking
flourished side-by-side.

[Falco Ernst] There was sort of, like,
a live-and-let-live arrangement

between drug traffickers
and civilian populations,

'cause you wouldn't mess
with civilians at the time.

It was part of the code,
the narco code, at the time.

Um, that started changing

through the influx,
to a large degree, of the Zetas

and their organizational culture,

which started preying directly
on local civilian populations.

[Narrator] The Zetas did not start out
as a criminal organization.

They were Army commandos,
elite troops,

many of whom were trained
by French, Israeli, and US advisers.

Until the narco bosses had
the bright idea of hiring them away.

The Gulf Cartel were the pioneers
of recruiting elite soldiers.

Working conditions in the military
have always been poor.

The pay has been poor.

You were faced with a lot of risk.

And then you have
rich narco-traffickers coming up

and offering you five times,
ten times as much money at times,

better working conditions,

support, if you get killed,
for your family.

[Narrator]
It was an effective scheme

until the late '90s,
when the Zetas decided

they would rather form their own cartel.

They began experimenting
with other business models

like extortion and kidnapping.

[Ernst] As part of the mutation
of Mexican organized crime,

you as a criminal organization will not
only look to produce and export drugs,

but you will try to squeeze out
as much money as you can

from locally available resources.

In the case of Michoacán, that became,
obviously, from the avocado industry.

[Hope] Exporting to the US,
that's changed the scale.

And suddenly, you have a group
of agricultural producers

that are selling hundreds
of millions of dollars every year.

[Narrator]
There was new money in Michoacán,

and the gangs smelled it.

They bribed Mexican agricultural officials

to get the names and addresses
of the most successful avocado farmers.

[in Spanish]
Manuel, please do the blessing.

[Manuel reads prayer in Spanish]

[Narrator]
Manuel Lucatero is one of thousands

of small avocado producers in Michoacán.

His family has been growing avocados
for decades.

[in Spanish]
Now we're going to El Jazmin.

That's where we are growing our orchard.

My wife and I have
nine daughters and one son.

We have 11 grandchildren.

So we're building this for them.

[Narrator] Most avocados in Michoacán
are grown on smaller farms,

under 25 acres.

But even when prices are low,

a 25-acre farm can gross
more than $100,000 a year.

We're about five kilometers
from Tancítaro.

In this area, we have 700 avocado trees.

This orchard is
between five and six years old.

For some time, we couldn't take care of it

because of the security situation
in the town.

But now we're back at it.

We're getting rid of the weeds
so we can fertilize.

[Narrative] In 1998, Lucatero was working
for a large-scale avocado grower.

[Lucatero]
On a Monday, I started to work with them,

and on Friday that same week,

I had to go with one of the owners
to check his orchards.

On the way to Tancítaro, two guys came out
with weapons pointing at us.

We drove for about half an hour.

Finally, we got out of the car
and were told to go up a hill.

That's when they told me
it was a kidnapping.

The only thing I could think about
during that time was my family,

my wife, my daughters.

My friend called me
and told me Manuel wasn't coming,

and I said "Why? Did they go somewhere?"

He told me, "No. They've been taken."

I said, "What do you mean? Who took them?"
He said, "They've been kidnapped."

I was very worried,
because it was during the time

that they were cutting fingers off,
ears off, and then asking for money.

There was one moment
when they put a rifle on my back,

and they shot it,
but it didn't have a bullet.

Then they started laughing, saying,
"Don't tell me you're scared."

We were in that situation for nine days.

Later, when they had agreed on a price,
and the ransom was going to be paid,

they kept us there
until they got the money.

[Narrator]
With the ransom paid,

the kidnappers abandoned Lucatero
in the forest.

He walked for hours
until he found a bus home.

It took me about two years
to regain emotional stability.

If a car was coming toward me,
I would freeze.

I didn't know if I should move back
or what to do.

That was very hard.
I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

[Narrator]
Unable to work,

Lucatero sold off
some of his own avocado groves,

just to have money to live on.

In 2006, President Felipe Calderón
decided he would take down the cartels.

He staged what amounted
to a domestic invasion of Michoacán,

his home state.

Up to 20,000 troops occupied
the avocado heartland,

arresting or assassinating cartel bosses.

It didn't work.

The cartels did not die.

They fractured
into smaller criminal gangs.

And with their drug earnings disrupted,

groups like Los Zetas looked to extortion
for a bigger chunk of their income.

They started skimming
their local partners.

They started killing their local partners,

and their local partners
ended up rebelling

and creating their own organization,
La Familia Michoacana.

La Familia Michoacana was born
as a revolt against Los Zetas,

a nationalist revolt.

[Ernst] They said they were true Mexicans,
whereas the Zetas were just killers.

The Familia kicking the Zetas out was seen
as liberation in many parts of Michoacán.

But that soon turned
to another more predatory scheme

of squeezing anything you could
out of the local population.

[Narrator]
And there was always more to squeeze.

Constant promotion in the US
successfully positioned guacamole

as a must-have snack
for Super Bowl parties.

As much as six percent of Mexico's
annual avocado exports to the US

is now eaten with chips
on that single weekend.

This is Scott Baio,

but most amazing of all are
the avocados from Mexico.

They're always in season,
so you can enjoy them all year long.

[Narrator] The Mexican government
estimates that by 2009,

the gangs were squeezing
about $150 million a year

out of the avocado business.

Michoacán State opened
an Office of Kidnappings and Extortion

in the state capitol.

[Lucatero] Even when it wasn't safe,
the exporting never stopped.

The only thing was that for every kilo
of avocados being exported,

a percentage had to be given
to the organized crime.

You had to pay.

That's how we kept working.

[Narrator] In 2010,
La Familia Michoacana fractured again.

The new splinter group called themselves
The Knights Templar.

[Ernst] The number two
of The Knights Templar at the time told me

that one of the most important sources
of income for him

was extortion money
from the avocado industry,

without using the term "extortion,"
of course.

[Hope] They were no longer just
extorting money from avocado growers.

They were no longer just getting
a piece of the action,

but they wanted to control the market.

They started setting quotas for growers.

They started burning warehouses and trucks

to enforce those quotas.

This is an era of expanding production.

So, they wanted to curtail production

so as to prevent prices from collapsing.

They were acting like
the OPEC of avocados.

[Naranjo]
The whole population was scared to death.

And people were afraid, just waiting

to see who would be next,

because there were a lot of kidnappings
and disappearances.

[Narrator]
By 2011,

avocado exports from Michoacán had soared
to almost $800 million.

The cartels began kidnapping relatives
of successful farmers.

I got a call around 1:00 p.m.,

and they told me
they had both my dad and my brother.

They let me talk to him,

and he told me, "It's true.

If you don't pay 10 million pesos,
they'll kill us."

They told me also, "You are going
to abandon this orchard of yours.

If you show up there, we will kill you."

Unfortunately, what happens in our area,

the local police were corrupted.
They were Templars.

If I had made a report,

at that moment
they would have grabbed me and killed me.

We managed to get three million pesos

between committing some fruit
from my dad's orchard,

and another sum was lent to us.

But they wanted the 10 million pesos.

So we had to sell an eight hectare orchard

so we could pay some of the money.

My dad told me
that they were blindfolded the whole time,

that they were tied with duct tape

and with toilet paper in their eyes.

When my dad was released,

his eyes were taped,
and he could barely see.

They released my brother 15 days
after his capture.

But thank God they were released.

And to this day, of the money we borrowed,

I still owe
approximately 1.5 million pesos.

[Ernst] The Knights Templar had become
so dominant over Michoacán

that because of their power,

there had been a lot of abuses
against civilian populations,

including in some areas,
some sexual violence.

It was all kind of spinning
out of control.

[Lucatero] Until we got fed up.
People got very angry.

Some people decided
to grab the bull by the horns.

[Narrator]
It was called the Autodefensas,

Self Protection.

Both Manuel Lucatero
and Manuel Naranjo joined.

[Naranjo] The whole town took part
in the Autodefensas movement at the time.

[Narrator] They erected barricades
on the roads in and out of town.

Every visitor was searched
and interrogated.

[Hope]
The movement started to grow very quickly.

They started
quote-unquote "liberating towns"

from the Templars' control.

[Narrator]
Once again, self-proclaimed good guys

were protecting the avocado fields
from the bad guys.

And once again, it was not entirely clear
just who was who.

The first Autodefensas
that actually came into Tancítaro

and took the community from the Templars

included outright criminal cells.

Then you had legitimate Autodefensas,

really just poor,
civilian population rising up

with, you know, cheap arms
to confront their oppressors.

[Narrator]
Today, Tancítaro seems calm.

In fact, it looks very much like
a typical town working hard

to pursue a successful industry.

But it isn't really.

Tancítaro is a fortress

where avocado profits keep
outside dangers at bay.

Avocado money very much runs Tancítaro.

It completely dominates
socioeconomic political life now.

[all] [in Spanish]
Good morning.

Same orders as every day.

[Ernst] The Autodefensas
do have good political connections

with Federal Government

because of the weight
of the avocado industry,

but they are embedded in what is really
a geo-political clusterfuck,

in the sense that you have
that dissolution out there.

You have a very liquefied,
completely fragmented criminal landscape.

[Hope] The real power is not
the formal government itself.

Growers who style themselves
as just an agricultural body,

but they are the power behind the throne,

and they have their self-defense force.

They are now the police.

They basically control
the local government.

[Ernst] The Autodefensas,

they were officially integrated
into the State Police.

They were given patrol cars,
which rock sort of, like,

the emblems of State power
and State presence,

and they were given official guns
and uniforms,

all of which was to say,
"Okay, this is State rule."

Whereas when you look beneath the surface,

you see a private and autonomous rule.

[producer] [in Spanish]
Did you participate

in the Autodefensas movement
from the beginning?

[in Spanish]
Yes, that's right.

[producer]
Tell me how it was.

Well, honestly, the same as everyone.

I think that all the people who work here
were tired of what was going on,

and when they decided,

we took part, and we're still here.

Is that a good or a bad thing?

Again, in a place where you have
no alternative source for political order,

that might be a good thing
in the short term,

but long term, is it something
that we should aim for?

Should we aim for more Tancítaros?

Not so certain.

The fact
that the Tancítaro experiment exists is...

a testament to failure
of Mexican authorities

to enforce order
through constitutional means.

[greeting in Spanish]

These are the people from the town.

They're guarding,

and our job is to support them.

Are you guys starting or about to leave?

We started at seven in the morning.

[man]
Is it quiet?

Yeah, nothing going on. It's quiet.

[Lucatero]
If there's an alert or anything,

we immediately mobilize to the place,

and we try to control the situation.

When there's situations
where people become enraged

and want to attack,
we try to control them.

We've been very respectful of the law.

We don't do anything out of the norm.

We adjust to what's legal.

[Narrator]
Tancítaro is an island of tranquility,

but only inside its armed perimeter.

Beyond its borders lie 85%
of the avocado acres in Michoacán.

Michoacán is still so violent
that it remains

on the US State Department's list
of Mexican regions not to visit.

[Lucatero] If there is security,
and the big producers are doing well,

then I, as a small producer,
should also do well.

That is the idea and the hope.

I have full confidence that...

that between the authorities
and the civilians,

we can maintain this for many, many years.

[Narrator] After his father's kidnapping,
Manuel Lucatero had to plant new orchards.

A few flowers are trying to blossom.

[Narrator] Avocado trees can take
anywhere from five to 13 years to mature.

Lucatero won't be able to harvest fruit
from these trees for another two years.

For now, he makes his living
building rainwater collection systems

for Michoacán farmers.

This excavation that you see here,

it's a water collection system.

This is the kind of work that I do now.

At the bottom is the exit tube.

And down there, there's a faucet.

So when it's full of water,
we can use it like a sink.

Lately, we've been needing
more and more water.

That's why everybody

is building these now.

[Narrator]
It takes at least 18 gallons of water

to produce a single avocado.

And that's why water is
the next front in the avocado wars.

Zoila Quiroz lives in Petorca Province
in Valparaíso, Chile.

This is the top avocado production zone
in Chile,

but it's suffering
from extreme water shortages.

[Zoila Quiroz] [in Spanish]
I had many trees. I had pear, walnut,

apricot, plum, loquat trees.

Peaches, lots of peaches, many peaches.

We had to bring them on the donkey
and peel them here.

We would peel them at night,

chatting and telling old stories
until the wee hours, peeling peaches.

The river stopped bringing water,

so they dried.

[Narrator]
Access to water in Chile works differently

than anywhere else in the world.

Which is why avocados drink the water
from this valley

while some humans cannot.

Like the avocado boom itself,

the water rights system in Chile
is a US export.

In the 1970s,
a group of Chilean economists studied

at the University of Chicago
with free market guru Milton Friedman.

These economists brought
their ideas back home

and set about getting them made into law.

Augusto Pinochet was running Chile.

Once he gave his blessing,
no one objected.

In 1981, water was privatized.

[Pilar Barria] That economical model
implemented the privatization

of many of our natural resources

with the aim of making it more efficient,

however, with very little regulatory
and supervisory mechanisms from the State.

[Narrator]
Anyone could apply for access to water,

private citizens or corporations.

In reality, wealthy speculators snapped up
the best access from the get-go.

The avocado is not native to Chile,

but the country's geographic isolation

has kept Chile's fruit production
largely disease-free.

That's why US regulators allowed
limited imports of Chilean avocados

ten years before NAFTA opened
the Mexican floodgates.

Through the mid '90s, Chile started
increasing the production and exportations

of avocados to North America,
in particular to the United States.

And you can see that clearly

in a huge increase in the water use rights
requested and granted

in La Ligua and Petorca, which is the area

where we have the largest production
of avocados in the country.

[Rodrigo Mundaca] [in Spanish]
In the 1990s,

a small but important group of politicians
and businessmen came here.

They bought a lot of land on the hills,

and they started avocado orchards
on the hills.

[Narrator] And if the growers wanted
more water than they had the rights to,

they simply took it.

A Chilean government investigation found
dozens of secret channels,

illegally diverting water from rivers
to the big plantations.

That water,
and the early access to US markets,

helped Chilean avocado
production skyrocket

from 50,000 metric tons to 250,000
in only ten years.

Petorca Province has two rivers,

the Petorca River,
on the other side of the valley,

and the Ligua River.

The Petorca River was restricted
because it was dry in 1997,

and the Ligua River was restricted
and dry in 2004.

The agro-business model
has pillaged the land,

and it has denied poor people
something essential, water.

This used to be the bed
of the Ligua River.

The river has completely dried,

and the hills are completely full
of avocados.

Kids used to come here to swim.

This was a place to relax,
a place to have fun.

[Narrator]
Rodrigo Mundaca has received death threats

because of his water rights activism.

[Mundaca]
When we started to fight, it was too late.

We started fighting
when the rivers went dry.

And probably...

we should have started
to defend the water a lot sooner.

[Barria] The impact of the avocado farms
has been large,

has been dramatic in this area,

in particular in Petorca and La Ligua,

because this region produced
more than 60%

of the avocado national production.

All the priority, it's given
to the production of avocados.

[Narrator] But not all avocado production
is a priority.

Some small-time producers
on the valley floors have been shut out.

Pedro Maldonado used to have rights
to get water

to irrigate his small farm
from La Ligua River.

When the river went dry,
he started digging wells.

[in Spanish]
What you see here is my well.

It's 14 meters deep.

Twenty days from now,

this will be completely dry.

There's no more water.

Before, we didn't need to have a well.

Why would we make one?
There was water in the river.

When people started
planting on the hillsides,

people started digging more wells.

And the riverbed got completely dry.

[Narrator] Maldonado cannot afford
to keep digging for his water.

This hose used to carry water.

Today it's all like this...

So ugly, and wilted, and dry.

There's no way back.

It's sad to see everything dead.

[sighs]

This tree...

I planted it myself with a lot of love.

It was my livelihood.

This land was my livelihood.

[tearily]
And when it's taken away from you...

it's sad. It's very sad.

I feel it deep inside.

Look at the land. It's completely dry.

It has no future, and neither do I.

At my age...

At my age, I have no future.

I've never had any other job.

I've worked the land my whole life.

All I have...

What little I have,
the land gave it to me.

Small producers,
if they can't afford to pay for water,

they can't produce,

and then it's easier for them
just to sell their land

to larger producers.

[Enrique Lepeley Jr.]
Irrigation system. You see the drops?

Fresh... and with the nutritions,
fertilizings, that we need.

Gives the optimal quantity of water

and the fertilizers, the nutrition,
for the trees.

[Narrator]
Enrique Lepeley and his family

are big players
in Chile's avocado industry.

They own four avocado ranches
stretching over 1,200 acres

and a stake in the country's
largest packing plant.

In every industry
under the capitalist model,

you need to have a...

scale economy in terms of cost.

Whatever industry you think,

the big guys buy the small guys.

[Narrator]
This Lepeley farm is in Quillota,

the province next door to Petorca.

[in Spanish]
Good morning, guys!

-[men] [in Spanish] Good morning.
-How are you guys?

Is it good?

It's very good. Yes.

[Lepeley] [in English] My father started
in the middle '80s with avocados.

He was invited to a mission
in California in 1984,

and he returned with the idea
to start putting avocados in the hills.

The natural conditions in Chile
are not very well for the avocados

if you plant it in the traditional way.

Flat areas.
What do we have to do to plant here?

We need to bring the water from down
up to here.

[Narrator] Lepeley's ranch uses
an irrigation system developed in Israel

which maximizes water distribution
in arid, hilly areas.

[Lepeley]
Here we are growing avocados

under the very high technology
irrigation system.

We are not wasting the water,

and we grow avocados
because we need to feed the people, okay?

If I don't do, somebody else will do.

You can say the same
for the guys who sell guns, you know.

[laughs] If I don't sell the guns,
some other guy will do.

Okay, but this is a legal business.

[Narrator]
Today, farms like Lepeley's

add up to 75,000 acres of avocados
in Chile.

Almost 90% of that is the Hass.

After Peru, Chile is the largest exporter
of avocados to Europe.

And China, where the middle class has
developed a real taste for avocados,

imports them primarily from Chile.

In the past seven years,

Chinese imports have increased
1,000 times over.

That's the kind of market growth
producers dream about.

I think that it's really, really important
for our country

to keep having production
and exportations,

and being a country
with a good economic growth,

but with a healthy economy.

Not only focusing into that,

but also in our population
and in the ecosystem.

You cannot forget about the ecosystem.

Otherwise, we are lost.

[Narrator] The fight for water
is not limited to Chile.

Farmers in California,

where the global avocado craze
was launched in the 1970s,

fear they may no longer have
a rich enough water supply

to hold on to their piece
of the avocado pie.

Farmers like Noel Stehly will
almost certainly have to yield

more and more of the market they created

to the producers in Mexico and Chile.

But those hillsides over there, the one...
You can see a housetop way over there.

That whole ridge,
that was 200 acres one way

and about 250 acres this way.

So there's roughly 500 acres right there
that's no longer in production.

And that's all due to the water.

I'm talking about the last 14 years

of under-average rainfall
in Southern California.

Or in California in general.

Climate change is having
an effect on our drought.

[newscaster]
...massive historic drought...

[newscaster 2] California should expect
drought-producing conditions

with more frequent regularity.

[Stehly]
We used to get about 90% of our water

from the Sacramento Delta area
up in Northern California,

which was good water.
We called it the sweetwater.

Along came an environmental lawsuit
to save fish about the size of my pinkie,

and the pumps on the Sacramento Delta
were shut down.

So then the majority of our water started
coming from the Colorado River.

That water is not as good.
That's a more salty water.

That's the real booger on growing avocados
is that you got to have good water.

On our property, we do have wells.

The wells are drying up now
because of the drought.

So, a well that my father drilled here
was never under 130 gallons a minute.

For the last four years,
we've been at 30 gallons a minute.

We kept thinking that we were gonna get
a good rainy season.

We were supposed to get an El Niño,

and that would be good rains
and replenish.

It just hasn't happened.

So that's when we literally shut
some areas off,

and now, we're putting the water on
that these trees that we're keeping need,

and they're starting to come back.

Having grown up on this farm,

it's an extremely tough thing
to make that decision

to shut the valve off
and never open it again.

It's making me well up now,
just thinking about it.

Um...

I ran through those groves.

[tearily]
I watered those groves.

I got hit in the back
with hard avocados and hard oranges

from my brothers, and...

they aren't there anymore.

Sorry.

It's not the same farm. It's not.

And...

Sad to say, it probably won't be
for my daughters either.

I hope they have good memories.

[clears throat]

But the reality is...

we can get produce a lot cheaper
from offshore.

And there's good quality stuff coming in
from other areas.

[Narrator] And there are no easy answers
to the problems with avocados.

Tancítaro has brought order
to the pure chaos of earlier days.

But even the homegrown army is vulnerable
to infiltration by criminal elements.

California avocados are free
of cartel influence,

but they guzzle a shrinking water supply.

And in Chile, water is under
the control of the nation's elite.

It's not ethical that North Americans,

that the European economic community
keep purchasing avocados

from those who violate
the human right to water.

It is known perfectly well who they are.

It is completely reproachable today,

that you encourage the violation
of the human right to water.

That you encourage the violation
of the human right to water in Chile

by buying avocados from those
who steal water in our territory.

To just stop eating avocados would deliver
a severe blow to the avocado industry

and thus, a severe blow
to the people on the ground.

So that's not the solution either.

[Narrator] Those who want
to get the blood out of the guacamole

believe that a certification system

like the one used for coffee
could be the answer.

That will require dedication and time.

[Ernst]
It would be a great

if eventually, we could consume
conflict-free avocados,

but we need to set up
a certification system to that end.

That's a very long way off still,

but I think consumer power,
and in this case particularly,

can go a very long way
to induce positive change.