Coca flourishes in Mexico in the shadow of synthetic drugs

a helicopter from mexican army fly over the verdant mountains of the state of Guerrero where the military discovered a coca cultivation, an unusual discovery just a few years ago that reveals how cartels they adapt to changes in the millionaire drug trafficking business.

For years, plantations of marijuana and poppy ―raw material for heroin― were the livelihood of thousands of poor peasants in Guerrerosouth of Mexico, key to drug trafficking due to its agricultural vocation and access to Pacific ports such as Acapulco.

But the irruption of the mortal fentanyl provoked a drop in opium gum prices which is obtained from the poppy, as the United States began to focus its efforts against this synthetic drug 50 times more powerful than heroin and the cause of tens of thousands of deaths per year.

This has led traffickers to experiment with the coca leaf, the cultivation of which is historically concentrated in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. The latter country supplies two-thirds of cocaine, with a global volume that reached two thousand tons in 2021, according to experts.

There cocaine also remains extremely profitable: the price of a kilo can range from a thousand dollars in its place of origin to 38 thousand dollars in Europe.

With information from AFP