Blood Avocados? Trade Liberalization and Cartel Violence in Mexico

Several prominent studies predict that expanding markets in areas of low state capacity may decrease organized crime due to the opportunity cost mechanism, holding that booms in licit markets shift labor away from illicit markets. We posit an additional mechanism to explain the decrease in criminal violence—an influx in capital allows market actors to invest in self-defense forces to combat criminal incursions. We test this logic using the case of the Mexican avocado industry with a staggered difference-in-differences design and find that trade liberalization throughout the 2010s had a significant negative effect on cartel-related homicides compared to other violence-prone areas. Robust qualitative evidence highlighting the emergence of self-defense groups to deter criminal actors in the avocado industry supports the vigilante mechanism. This article thus contributes to the literature on the consequences of trade liberalization on organized crime by using a unique empirical case to test a novel mechanism.