Research

INTRODUCTION

Landscapes where illegal crops are grown in Mexico have experienced spatially and temporally varying degrees of violence. Contrary to common assumptions about the relationship between illegality and violence, only some of these marijuana and opium poppy cultivation landscapes have experienced persistently high levels of homicides; others have not, despite similar levels of production (Frissard Martínez 2021a). Although a violence-inducing effect of cultivation was found using national level statistics (Herrera 2019), fieldwork from sites across the country has yielded widely varied, sometimes contradictory results (e.g., Le Cour Grandmaison et al. 2019, Ley et al. 2019, Morris 2020a, Álvarez-Rodríguez 2021a, Tamariz 2022). For example, a peasant town in the southern highlands experienced a decades-long history of relatively peaceful poppy cultivation until its economic decline and the dramatic increase of homicides, kidnappings, and disappeared people (De Dios Palma 2020).

Despite the varying levels of violence, and the tenuous links between illegal crop cultivation and that violence, a multi-faceted process of state and non-state militarization has been common in these landscapes. Through crop destruction campaigns and as a part of broader anti-narcotic policies, the Mexican army has been deployed in all main marijuana and poppy cultivation areas since the 1920s (Toro 1995, Astorga 2016, Pérez-Ricart 2020). “Eradication” incursions occur one or more times a year, and in some locations, the army has been almost permanently deployed. Concurrently, the police have patrolled these landscapes and conducted interdiction raids and arrests (Humphrey 2003, Smith 2013, Morris 2020b; Lizárraga Hernández and Lizárraga Morales 2006, unpublished manuscript). Militarization has also involved heavily armed drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) that may not only be in charge of drug transportation and trade but also can control the production of these and other commodities (Maldonado-Aranda 2013). Moreover, communal self-defense militias have been created by peasant illegal-crop growers and local authorities (Ley et al. 2019, Álvarez-Rodríguez 2021a,b). Firearms (many of them high caliber) have proliferated as a consequence of the interactions within and between these multiple actors (Humphrey 2003, Le Cour Grandmaison et al. 2019, Tamariz 2021).

In this paper, we contribute to the literature on the drug crop eradication-violence nexus with an analysis of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where marijuana and opium poppy have been cultivated since at least the 1960s (Astorga 2016, Tamariz 2022) and where non-partisan local governments rule three-quarters of its 570 municipalities (IEEPCO 2018). This context in Oaxaca enables us to focus on the role of peasant communities’ local traditional resource governance and conflict management institutions in fostering cooperation and mitigating violent conflict both within the community and with external actors (i.e., the military and DTOs). This paper’s focus on the collective action of Oaxacan peasant communities in the context of drug cultivation is designed to complement the existing literature that has recognized individual and household-level decisions and behavior (e.g., Steinberg et al. 2004, Goodhand 2005, Mansfield 2016, Morris 2020b, Gutiérrez 2020).

To undertake the above, we engage with collective action theory and integrated concepts from social-ecological systems and political ecology. This dual approach (Zimmerer et al. 2020, 2022) offers a promising framework for analyzing the multi-scalar processes and potential of both cooperation and conflict enmeshing violence (Ratner et al. 2013, 2017, Fischer et al. 2018). Studies on collective action, defined as shared practices of resource governance, and on the commons, more generally, have helped theorize the institutional intricacies and dynamics that lead to cooperation at the local scale (Agrawal 2001, Ostrom 2007, 2010, Poteete et al. 2010). Meanwhile, political ecology has offered key conceptual tools to the analysis of resource-related conflict and surrounding political-economic contexts. Indeed, violence is “a site-specific phenomenon rooted in local histories and social relations yet connected to larger processes of material transformation and power relations” (Peluso and Watts 2001:5).

This study’s multi-method approach combines statistical analysis of secondary data on crop production and homicides with a qualitative analysis of interviews in state prisons. Our study yields three main findings. First, illegal crops and homicides have a statistically significant but substantially small non-linear association in Oaxaca. Homicides tend to increase at low and medium levels of marijuana and poppy cultivation, but then plateau and decrease as production reaches the highest levels observed in our data. Second, the small effects of this highly militarized enterprise on physical violence may be partly due to the predominance of pre-existent collective action institutions for the management of resources, risks, and conflicts, which were mobilized and prevented the violent transformation of local relations of production and power. Third and relatedly, these institutions do not guarantee cooperation (as opposed to conflict) within the community and with external actors. Cooperation additionally requires the salience of illegal crop production in the community: it must be economically relevant for and morally sanctioned by its members. It is therefore the places where illegal cultivation is most entrenched that collective action institutions may be most effective at preventing violence.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Smallholders growing illegal crops in several regions of the world have resorted to multiple strategies to manage the risks associated with participating in this criminalized activity, as shown by scholarly work in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Mexico (Thoumi 2003, Steinberg et al 2004, Goodhand 2005, Steinberg and Taylor 2007, Mansfield 2016, Ingalls and Mansfield 2017, Morris 2020, Gutiérrez 2020). Mostly through ethnographic work, this literature has emphasized peasants’ agency and related ability to defend their territory and conserve traditional livelihoods and lifestyles, for example, through successful negotiations and/or sometimes violent confrontations with state and non-state external actors (e.g., Le Cour Grandmaison et al. 2019, Morris 2020a,b, Álvarez-Rodríguez 2021a,b, and Zimmerer et al. 2022). Concurrent strategies involve livelihood and agricultural diversification, such as intercropping illegal and food crops to reduce exposure (Thoumi 2003, Steinberg 2004, Steinberg and Taylor 2007, García-Yi 2015, Tamariz 2022).

This literature is mostly focused on individual and household decisions and behavior. In this paper, we complement said work by rather taking a community level perspective, through a combination of collective action theory and integrated concepts from social-ecological systems and political ecology.

Collective action in resource and conflict management

The reasons to cooperate or engage in conflict for access to and control over natural resources have been extensively debated and theorized over recent decades (Agrawal 2001, Ostrom 2007, 2010, Poteete et al. 2010). Common-property theory (Ostrom 1990) has analyzed why resources are effectively managed through self-organized cooperation in some cases but not in others. The concept of collective action, which is at the center of this question, refers to a concerted group effort reflecting shared interests and goals for the creation, operation, monitoring, and sanctioning of rules for resource access and control. Collective action may foster and be fostered by the social cohesion of the group (also known as bonding) and can help coordinate and collaborate with external groups (bridging; Woolcock 2001, Pretty 2003). It is voluntary as opposed to strictly hired or coercively enforced contributions (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2004) while in numerous cases it is socioculturally obligatory (Di Gregorio et al. 2008).

Among the common demographic and sociocultural characteristics enabling collective action to emerge and endure are the size of the group, how well the group is defined or bounded, and its homogeneity of interests, endowments, and identity (Baland and Platteau 1999, Agrawal 2001, Ostrom 1999, 2007, 2010). Spatial circumscription of resource systems, salience within the community’s livelihoods, and the dependency on resources for basic income stand out as influential conditions as well. Moreover, face-to-face communication has proven to be a “moral suasion to act for the benefit of the group [and] enhances a sense of solidarity and the likelihood to keep promises” (Ostrom 2007:191). Also relevant is the participants’ degrees of autonomy from external actors in defining and changing their own rules, and their previous experience as collective actors. Memory is in fact critical for constituting the reputation of a participant, a rule, or an institution, which in turn builds the necessary trust for present and future reciprocity (Folke et al. 2003, 2005, Folke 2006, Ostrom 2007).

Historically, collective action for resource management enables mitigation and coping with environmental, economic, and political risks (Di Gregorio et al. 2008) whereby “the ability of societies to adapt is determined, in part, by the ability to act collectively” (Adger 2003:387). Whether a one-time event, a process, or an institution (Mwangi and Markelova 2009), through traditional means or “social innovation” (Rodima-Taylor 2012), collective action has helped to spread, share, or smooth risks, particularly among the most vulnerable. Common-pooling of labor, money, and other resources has helped these populations to collectively face policy shifts, environmental shocks, and market fluctuations (Tompkins and Adger 2004, Mwangi and Markelova 2009, Ireland and Thomalla 2011, Rodima-Taylor 2012, Charnley et al. 2020). These institutions have also prevented conflict over access and control of resources from escalating violently (Ratner et al. 2013). In this sense, natural resource management is a form of conflict management (Castro and Nielsen 2003; Sanginga et al. 2007). As described below, conflict management within our case study is embedded in a social-ecological system in which collective action, resource governance, and the cultivated plants constantly interact.

The political ecology of violent conflict

Although social-ecological systems (SES, in the sense of Ostrom 2009) is focused on institutional intricacies and dynamics of resource governance at the local scale (addressed above), political ecology (PE) provides a framework of the interplay between local and extra-local relations of production, power, and associated subjectivities that incorporates violence in its multiple expressions (Peluso and Watts 2001, Bohle and Fünfgeld 2007, Le Billon 2015, Le Billon and Duffy 2018). These synergies of SES with PE are a focus of studies examining resource management in contexts of development and change that often incorporate cooperation as well as conflict (Mutersbaugh 2002, Robbins 2004, Ratner et al. 2013, 2017, Turner 2017, Fischer et al. 2018, Zimmerer et al. 2020, 2022).

Rejecting environmental determinism and neo-Malthusian approaches, PE recognizes resource scarcity as a potential trigger but not the cause of armed confrontations and war (Peluso and Watts 2001). Asymmetrical power relations and broader causes of poverty drive the unequal and often conflicting distribution of resource access and control, which are further embedded in the locally and historically specific political economy that is dominant across spatial scales. When the structural origins of scarcity are thus acknowledged, resource-related conflicts cannot be simply attributed to allegedly inherent propensities that mechanically lead to competition, scarcity, and conflict in the absence of appropriate local institutions (Turner 2004).

Importantly, PE also rejects environmentally deterministic perspectives that suggest resource abundance (in addition to scarcity) can lead to violent conflict. Societies dependent upon abundant resources are frequently labelled as enduring a “resource curse” (Ross 1999, 2004, Le Billon 2001, 2013) or a “vulnerability to conflicts by undermining the quality of institutions, exposing societies to economic shocks, and exacerbating tensions over the distribution of resource rents and more generally the costs and benefits of dominant resource sectors” (Le Billon 2015:600). PE also rejects this form of determinism. What appears as “predation-proneness” related to resource dependence may instead reflect underlying governance of capitalist forces and state-level institutions that violently reconfigure local identities and subvert customary forms of authority and rule (Watts 2004).

PE thus recognizes social mediation as a necessary focus of explanations of resource-related conflicts, a focus that resists the tendency to pathologize resource-producing regions, social groups, and their conduct and practices (Le Billon 2015). Such pathologization is symptomatic of a colonialist approach that associates violent conflict with communities that are portrayed as backward and immersed in poverty, underdevelopment, isolation, and statelessness. PE, on the contrary, emphasizes the violent character of the transition to capitalism, its logic of “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey 2003), and of the mutually constitutive process of modern state formation and current colonialities (Thomson 2011, Ballvé 2012, 2020).

This study adopts the above conceptual orientation and insights in examining the relationships among illegal crop cultivation, institutions, and violence in Oaxaca. Following a PE perspective, we interrogate the conditions in which resource-related violence either emerges and is fueled or, alternatively, is subjected to preventive and limiting measures.

CASE STUDY: OAXACA

Historically among the largest marijuana and poppy cultivation states in Mexico (Astorga 2016, Resa-Nestares 2016, Tamariz 2022),^[1] Oaxaca also stands out in its predominance of local traditional governments and the communal management of resources. It is, therefore, a uniquely well-suited site for investigating how local governance institutions may shape conflicts associated with illegal crop cultivation.

Local traditional resource governance

Oaxaca has a unique binary political system at the municipality level, which is key for understanding the relations of production, the distribution of power, and the management of natural resources. On the one hand, around one quarter of Oaxacan municipalities use a political party system. The other three quarters have a non-partisan regime, commonly known as Usos y costumbres (UyC), in which a form of local participatory democracy based on customary law defines municipality elections and governance. UyC is a hybrid byproduct of centuries of adaptation of pre-Columbian, colonial, and national institutions (Durand-Ponte 2007, Hernández-Díaz 2007, Recondo 2007).^[2]

Although there is considerable variation in how the system is practiced among UyC municipalities, a number of common characteristics are found. The General Assembly is one of its fundamental institutions. All of those who have the right to participate in the Assembly gather, discuss, and vote periodically for the election of local authorities. They also meet to deliberate publicly on specific community issues. Participants are usually men (adult or married) who are originally from the municipality. They represent their household and have the exclusive right to be elected as local authorities (cargos), often without remuneration. Cargos are hierarchical, as they are ordered in ascending levels of responsibility, authority, and prestige. Although not always followed, people hold these governmental positions in a progressive way throughout their lives, earning access to higher ranks out of reputed experience. In addition to the Assembly and cargos, the right to “community citizenship” depends on carrying out collective unpaid work (tequio) and giving monetary contributions for community projects and festivities. Tequio and monetary contributions are known as servicios. Participating in the Assembly, holding cargos, and giving servicios is not voluntary, which is why some call this an obligatory democracy (Durand-Ponte 2007, Hernández-Díaz 2007).

There are different kinds of civil, religious, and agrarian cargos. The latter are harbored in the Common Property Commissary (Comisariado), which oversees land and natural resource management. Its members are elected in the Assembly by those holding common property rights, and its main function is to execute the decisions made in the Assembly with regards to titling and the distribution of land. It is also responsible for resolving intra- and inter-community land boundary conflicts.

Common property and the Comisariado have had a fundamental role in local resource management. Common property covers 74% of the territory in Oaxaca, with only 7% of the land privately owned (López-Bárcenas 2009). Most Oaxacan common property land is a colonial legacy (i.e., a tenure given to indigenous communities during the Spanish rule in the 16th through 19th centuries) known as communidades agrarias (77%). The rest are ejidos (23%), which were created in the post-revolutionary period through a massive land distribution policy (mostly in the 1920s–1970s; Bray et al. 2006, Rentería-Garita 2011). The right to use common property land is dominantly inherited (Barnes 2009) but also requires that the holder or his/her family work the land, are involved in servicios, and, if applicable, in cargos and the Assembly as well (Rentería-Garita 2011). Therefore, in UyC municipalities common property rights are closely linked to ongoing local political participation.

Growing food and illegal crops under neoliberalism

In 1992, an agrarian reform took place that halted land distribution and legalized the privatization of common land in Mexico. Before this reform was enacted, common property holders could exclude others from the management of their land but had no alienation rights. Since 1992, the Mexican Constitution and its Agrarian Law authorize commoners to sell part or all of the comunidad or ejido when so approved by their Assembly. The reform took place as part of a neoliberal shift in the agricultural sector and the economy more generally, which also involved the liberalization of trade (prominently with the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]), the shutdown or sale of public companies working on agricultural trade and processing, and a drastic reduction and elimination of subsidies for smallholder farmers (de Janvry et al. 1997, Fox and Haight 2011, Eakin et al. 2018).

The consequences of the neoliberal project on the Mexican agrarian system have been widely discussed and contested (Dyer and Yúnez-Naude 2003, Yúnez-Naude and Barceinas-Paredes 2004, Sweeney et al. 2013, Eakin et al. 2014a, 2018, Dyer et al. 2018). The expected massive conversion from common to private property has not occurred (Barnes 2009, Yúnez-Naude and Barceinas-Paredes 2004, Rentería-Garita 2011, de Ita 2019); trade liberalization and the subsequent importation of maize (almost entirely used for the livestock industries) has not replaced domestic production (Dyer and Yúnez-Naude 2003, Lederman et al. 2005, Sweeney et al. 2013, Eakin et al. 2014b); and the process of de-peasantization (a deliberate goal of neoliberal productivism) has not taken place in Oaxaca, according to official demographic data (INEGI 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020).

Perhaps most surprisingly, the persistence of common property, maize production, and the peasantry under neoliberalism in Oaxaca has taken place amidst increased rural impoverishment and out-migration (Alvarado-Juárez 2008). The 1992 agrarian reform and NAFTA may not have had substantial direct impacts on the existence of these forms of production, but the withdrawal of state subsidies for smallholders caused considerable socioeconomic stress. Most farmers in Oaxaca are smallholders and therefore had rarely benefited from agrarian policies, which focused on large-scale producers (Fox and Haight 2011, Appendini 2014, Eakin et al. 2014b, Eakin et al. 2015). Smallholders in Oaxaca and other regions of Mexico often resort to domestic and international out-migration to cope with economic hardship. Growing and selling illegal crops has been an alternative pathway to get money, specifically in the western and southern highlands of the country. Individuals are commonly faced with the choice of leaving one’s hometown and family or staying and growing drugs; many have resorted to alternate between one and the other (McDonald 2005, Tamariz 2022, Tamariz et al. 2023).

For decades, marijuana and poppy have been the most profitable crops available, given their criminalized character and the declining prices of other (legal) cash crops during the period of liberalization (Humphrey 2003, Maldonado-Aranda 2010, 2013, Santacruz-De León and Palacio-Muñoz 2014, Herrera 2019, Le Cour Grandmaison et al. 2019).^[3] Unsurprisingly, national and international maize prices have been negatively correlated with illegal crop production in Mexico (Dube et al. 2016). Importantly, the production of crops has occurred in a context where government-led “eradication” programs have been common. However, the intensity of these efforts has varied, in part because the state has interwoven anti-narcotic policies with other interventions including counterinsurgency programs (Smith 2013, Aviña 2014, Santacruz-De León and Palacio-Muñóz 2014; Lizárraga Hernández and Lizárraga Morales 2006, unpublished manuscript), efforts to control resource rich and geo-strategically important areas (Paley 2014, 2015, Fazio 2016), and the management of post-election conflicts (Maldonado-Aranda 2013, Meyer 2015). In the name of the war on drugs, the state has historically used the army and other coercive agents as a tool for space control and state formation (Smith 2013, Bezares 2018, Pérez-Ricart 2021).

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES, METHODS, AND MATERIALS

The goals of this study were to assess the relationship between illegal crop cultivation and violence and to understand whether and how this relationship is influenced by local institutions. In particular, we interrogated the potential role of peasant communities’ local traditional resource governance and conflict management institutions in fostering cooperation and mitigating violent conflict within communities and vis-à-vis external actors (i.e., the military and DTOs). We addressed these goals through two complementary analyses. The first was a broad overview provided by a statistical analysis of the relationship between illegal crop cultivation, peasant agriculture, and physical violence with municipality-level data for the whole state of Oaxaca. The second was a detailed, in-depth qualitative analysis of 76 structured and semi-structured interviews. We used the former method to capture general patterns across the state, and the latter to understand the processes behind these patterns and to identify the counterexamples masked by statistical averages.

Statistical analysis

We conducted a statistical analysis of the association between illegal crop cultivation and both homicides and maize production. We drew on multiple sources (see Table 1) to create a municipality-level dataset for each year from 2003 through 2018 (detailed below), which contained a total of 9024 municipality-level observations (564 municipalities over 16 years). This period represents the longest time frame for which all variables are available and that does not extend beyond the year of primary data collection (2018).^[4]

The independent variable in this analysis is illegal crop cultivation, which we proxy with data on illegal-crop destruction by the Mexican army (sometimes known as “eradication” data). We used eradication data (i.e., number of hectares of cannabis and opium poppy destroyed per municipality, per year) from a database from SEDENA requested by the authors through the National Institute of Transparency, Information Access, and Protection of Personal Data (INAI; request #700085718). Official eradication data have been used in both the scholarly and policy literatures as an indicator of illegal crop cultivation (e.g., UNODC 2000–2020, Medel and Lu 2015, Dube et al. 2016, Resa-Nestares 2016). However, it is important to note that inconsistencies have been found between case study fieldwork and eradication data (Frissard Martínez 2021b), and that eradication efforts may be systematically targeted to more or less violent areas. Keeping these limitations in mind, we still consider these eradication statistics the best available proxy for national and regional analyses of Mexico (where satellite imagery on illegal crops is not publicly available from the government).

The dependent variable in the first model is homicides, which constitutes a reliable indicator of physical violence in Oaxaca. Unless the corpse was purposely hidden (for example, in clandestine graves), practically all homicides are registered by local authorities. Monthly registers are then compiled by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). Other acts of physical violence, such as beatings, rape, or forced displacement, are less frequently reported than homicides (Rubio 2014, CMDPDH 2019). As a result, they are difficult to accurately measure with secondary data and therefore excluded from the analysis.

Homicides in rural Oaxaca are a consequence of a diversity of interactive factors, some of them historically grounded, such as land boundary conflicts between municipalities (Villavicencio 2013). Therefore, we do not assume that homicides in these municipalities are all directly nor indirectly related to eradication. Rather, in a context of complex processes of physical violence, our first model makes use of panel data to explore general patterns in the association between these two factors: eradication and homicides.

We used all homicides, not “drug war deaths” as in previous research in Mexico (Atuesta et al. 2016, Atuesta and Ponce 2017, Herrera 2019), because the latter is restricted to organized crime-related events. Importantly, that measure excludes homicides that are indirectly related to the coercive criminalization of anti-narcotic policies. For example, deadly intra-community conflicts associated with illegal crops may arise with no involvement of criminal organizations whatsoever. Also, we have excluded “drug war deaths” from our analysis because, as described below, we found no evidence showing deadly conflicts associated with criminal organizations in the context of illegal crop cultivation or eradication.

The dependent variable in the second model is the area sown for rainfed “maize grain” during the rainy season (the spring/summer cycle; SIAP 2021). Rainfed maize cultivation is a key indicator of peasant agriculture in Oaxaca. A vast majority of both maize and illegal crops in Oaxaca are grown by smallholders (Tamariz 2022, Tamariz et al 2023) and virtually all smallholders grow maize, the main staple crop in the whole country.^[5] If illegal crop cultivation has null or positive effects on maize cultivation, it would suggest a general tendency toward a coexistence or complementarity between maize and illegal crops. Conversely, a negative effect would suggest the displacement of maize and related traditional peasant livelihoods by illegal crop cultivation.

Our statistical models included controls for multiple factors that may be associated with both illegal crop cultivation and the outcome variables of interest. We controlled for population size given differences in agricultural production across the rural-urban continuum and to account for the greater population at risk of homicide in municipalities with larger populations. We also included altitude as a control variable because it is highly correlated with temperature, which is a basic environmental factor affecting agriculture. Finally, we accounted for the effects of environmental variability on agriculture by controlling for annual maize yield (i.e., t/ha). Doing so allowed us to isolate the effects of our focal variables from changes in agriculture and violence driven by environmental shocks that reduce yields. We also controlled for year to account for common time trends and, in some specifications (see below), included municipality fixed effects to account for all time-invariant municipality-level characteristics.^[6]

Given the multiplicity of factors that determine agricultural production and physical violence, combined with limitations to the number of variables that can be observed and the potentially dynamic relationship between illegal crops and violence, we refrained from making strong causal claims based on this analysis alone. We instead interpreted the statistical associations we detected with findings from a qualitative analysis described below. As we will see, the quantitative analysis suggests an association (not a causation) between those two factors, an association that is then supported and explained by our qualitative data.

We measured the effects of illegal crop cultivation on homicides and maize by fitting a series of linear regression models. Homicides and the area of maize sown were, respectively, modeled as a function of the number of hectares of both marijuana and poppy destroyed by the army, controlling for the municipality population, its average altitude maize yield, and the year. We included a quadratic term for illegal crop production to allow for potentially non-linear effects of illegal crop production on the outcomes of interest. For a more conservative approach, we included fixed effects for municipality in a second round of models.

Research interviews conducted in prisons

The second component of this study involved conducting interviews with individuals who were involved in or had experiences related to illegal crop production. For security reasons, we carried out interviews in prisons, which poses lower risks for data generation than conducting research in communities where illegal crops are grown. The controlled environment in a prison offers a researcher less exposure and chances of being physically harmed when asking about an illegal enterprise. Additionally, interviews give prisoners the opportunity to explain their behaviors from their perspective and are therefore often willing and sometimes even eager to participate (Copes and Hochstetler 2011, Lučić-Ćatić 2011). We found a high level of participation to the case in this research.^[7]

The first author carried out 76 structured and semi-structured interviews in four state prisons in Oaxaca in a period of seven months in 2018 (August–December) and 2019 (January, February, and July). One of these is the female prison of the state. We interviewed 68 smallholder farmers (10 women and 58 men), two former middlemen (illegal-harvest gatherers), and six former soldiers who participated in eradication incursions, all of them imprisoned in Oaxaca. Five of the interviewed farmers were middlemen at some point as well. The 68 interviewed smallholders were originally from 43 municipalities. They had an average schooling of 5.5 years, were mostly native speakers of an indigenous language (76%), and formerly produced maize with average yields of 1.4 t/ha. Smallholder interviewees were knowledgeable of and previously involved in resource governance in their municipalities, which range from around 1000 to 40,000 inhabitants (approximately 10,000 on average; INEGI 2010). More than half of the interviewed smallholders formerly grew marijuana and/or poppy (55%), others did not grow either of these crops but had relatives who did (23%), and the rest knew about illegal crop production in their municipality from friends and neighbors (22%). All interviewees except three agreed to be recorded. The names of interviewees and their municipalities are confidential and so pseudonyms are used.

The interviews followed a structured format when collecting demographic and agricultural data and when comparing illegal crops and maize. The remainder of each interview followed a semi-structured format. Broadly, we discussed the history of illegal cultivation in their municipality and other topics related to this research, including the main political institutions, actors, economic activities, and property rights in the municipality; the acquisition, amount, type, and use of firearms and other weapons; as well as historical and contemporary events and processes leading to violence within and between communities, or with external actors. The relationship between illegal crops and physical violence was directly addressed.

RESULTS

Illegal crops and homicides

We begin with the quantitative analysis, fitting a regression model of municipality-level homicides (Model 1a, Table 2). The association is statistically significant, with coefficient estimates revealing a generally positive association characterized by modest non-linearity at the very highest levels of eradication observed in our data. To better understand this relationship, we plotted the predicted number of homicides across a range of eradication levels while holding all other variables at their means (Fig. 1). This plot revealed a positive association between eradication and homicides until eradication reaches around 200 ha, after which the association became negative. Homicides tended to increase from approximately 1 per year in eradication-free settings to above 2 at moderate levels of eradication (e.g. 200 ha). In contrast, predicted homicides decreased as eradiation levels increased further, trending back toward 1 per year at the highest levels of eradication. It is important to note that there was a high degree of uncertainty around estimates at the high end of the eradication distribution, which was because of the small number of municipalities at those levels of eradication. However, our qualitative analysis suggested such high-production municipalities may be characterized by unique social dynamics that indeed limit violent conflict. Nonetheless, it is important to emphasize that within the ranges of illegal crop eradication that most municipalities fall into, the effect is positive and nearly linear. Note that the inclusion of municipality fixed effects (Model 1b, Table 2) yielded qualitatively similar results but with diminished statistical strength as expected given the more conservative approach.

Illegal crops and maize production

We also fit regression models to examine the association between eradication and the area sown for maize (Model 2a, Table 2). This relationship appeared to operate in a non-linear manner as well. Given the apparent complexity of this association, we again interpreted the result by calculating the predicted area sown for maize across different levels of eradication (holding all other variables at their means). Maize increased considerably the more hectares of marijuana and poppy were destroyed for much of the observed range of eradication. For example, as eradication increased from 0 to 100 hectares, the predicted area sown for maize increased from 983 to 2098 ha. However, after eradication levels reached around 250 ha, the association plateaued and marginal changes became negative (see Fig. 2). The implication is that after this threshold is crossed, there may be a tendency to partially substitute maize for illegal crops. It is important to recall, however, that this threshold is high, with only a small share of illegal crop production-intensive municipalities falling above it. Note that the inclusion of municipality fixed effects (Model 2b, Table 2) again diminished the statistical strength of the focal association but supported qualitatively similar findings as the main model.

Intra-community violent conflict: six triggers

With our statistical estimates as an empirical benchmark, we turn to our primary interview data. Here, our goal was to better understand the processes that may explain the observed associations or identify counter-examples that are masked by averages. Nineteen interviewees (25%) mentioned and discussed triggers of intra-community violent conflict related to the production of illegal crops. At least six major triggers were identified in the interviews. One was harvest theft, which was always latent and more common than with legal crops because of illicit crops’ superior commercial value. To avoid theft, one or more men in charge remained armed in or near the field a few weeks before and during the harvest. Bringing firearms to the field is meant primarily for theft deterrence, but lethal confrontations do take place with harvest thieves, either in the cultivation area or elsewhere if farmers later find out who stole their harvest.^[8]

A second trigger was the proliferation of firearms. When most farmers produced illegal crops in town, they often purchased guns and high caliber weapons. The main purpose of buying these firearms was to dissuade crop theft. “No one will take you seriously if you simply have a 22 [caliber rifle].”^[9] Thirteen interviewees explicitly associated the acquisition of these firearms in their municipality, usually in the hands of drunken men, with the increase of murder.

Giving away or denouncing a neighbor to the police or the military for growing marijuana or poppy was a third trigger of violence. Such “tattle” was usually related to personal or family feuds, or simply out of envy, and it often unleashed armed revenge. In cases when the cultivation of illegal crops was not a prominent economic activity in the municipality, whistle-blowers might have emerged because of their opposition to the production of these crops, either for moral issues or for the risks that the cultivation implies for the whole community.^[10]

Fourth, confrontations between illegal crop growers and middlemen took place over the price of the harvest.^[11] Disagreements happened when middlemen offered to pay too little in the eyes of growers. This was most likely to occur when a monopsony was established; that is, when there is only one buyer or middleman. As with any other cash crop, farmers were fully aware of how the existence of middlemen reduces their profits from what would be obtained through direct sales to traffickers or consumers. Farmers constantly complained that they “do all the work” but earn much less than middlemen. Importantly, however, only two interviewees mentioned cases in which this grievance would lead to physically violent disputes.

Fifth, armed confrontations between different groups of middlemen have occurred but were also uncommon. Middlemen fought each other for the monopsony control of illegal crops in the municipality. These confrontations were mentioned by six interviewees. Finally, four interviewees described cases of repression and dispossession by enriched and empowered larger-scale illegal-crop growers. In fact, the four interviewees claimed to be held in prison as a consequence of this violent abuse.^[12]

Bonding for intra-community cooperation

Despite the six triggers of intra-community violent conflict described in the previous sub-section, cooperation for the production of illegal crops was predominant. Three-quarters of the interviewees did not point to any type of physical violence caused directly or indirectly by the cultivation of marijuana or poppy in their municipality. Instead, all but six of the interviewees highlighted one or more types of intra-community cooperation that developed during the production process or as a means for risk management.

During the production process, marijuana and poppy growers used two traditional institutions of collaboration: sharecropping and guetza. The latter is a system of labor exchange or reciprocity, an indigenous collective action institution that is carried out within and between families, usually for agricultural work (Caballero 2002, Maldonado-Alvarado 2015). Instead of hiring labor, farmers work in each other’s fields. Guetza helps to increase profits because no monetary payments are involved. This reciprocity is focused on labor-intensive stages of production, including land preparation, sowing, and harvesting. Harvesting opium gum is particularly labor-intensive and thus poppy growers often gather in groups of 10 to 20 to help each other. Guetza was also used for harvesting marijuana buds.^[13] Notably, this labor exchange was concurrently used to grow maize, giving farmers enough time to produce both maize and illegal crops.^[14]

Collective action for risk management in the production of illegal crops, on the other hand, involved warning each other of the arrival of soldiers to the municipality or to a neighboring municipality. Community members would do so with any means available, such as a reflecting-light mirror, a bull’s horn or a shotgun barrel used as a trumpet, a portable radio, or the town’s loudspeakers (to give notice in their own language, which was incomprehensible to soldiers).^[15] Sometimes paid watchwomen and men were located in key surveillance points of the landscape.^[16] Checkpoints in the road were settled, which would not stop soldier caravans but would help give notice in advance, before the soldiers’ arrival.^[17]

Common property land and the community Assembly played important roles in risk management as well. Growing illegal crops in common property offers anonymity to farmers, who would otherwise be easily identified when the field was discovered and have his or her land confiscated according to federal law (CPF 2020). In some cases, the Assembly asked community members to stop crop theft.^[18] It also demanded that farmers grow illegal crops far from town to reduce the exposure of other neighbors to potentially abusive soldiers or to reduce the exposure of other (legal) crops to military aerial fumigation.^[19] In some municipalities, the Assembly collectively bribed soldiers so that they provide notice of their arrival beforehand and minimize crop destruction.^[20]

Marijuana and poppy growers also worked to collectively prevent extortion attempts by DTOs. Acquiring high caliber weapons was central for this purpose. Trafficking organizations carry out the regional and international transportation of marijuana and heroin produced in Oaxaca. They also control the local cocaine and methamphetamine markets. Farmers seldom interact with members of these organizations because they deal solely with middlemen when trading their illegal crops. If anything, direct contact happened through armed confrontations when DTOs intended to charge taxes or control local production. For example, traffickers once unsuccessfully tried to take control of two municipalities. As soon as rumors were unleashed or suspicious people were identified in town, the purchase of firearms by farmers intensified and meetings were called to organize the traffickers’ expulsion, including curfews, armed confrontations, and lynching.^[21]

The same collective armed resistance in one municipality was able to break up a kidnapping organization by killing its members, one by one.^[22] In another municipality, the judicial police in the 1990s and the state police in the 2010s were violently repelled to avoid marijuana warehouse searches and the execution of arrest warrants. Both cases reached the state media. Interestingly, according to three interviewees, the resistance in the 1990s was carried out conjointly by two middlemen groups that had been violently confronting each other for the monopsony of marijuana but had decided to unite against a common external enemy.

Bridging for cooperation with soldiers and traffickers

Even if farmers are highly organized and heavily armed, they do not usually confront soldiers to try to stop the destruction of their crops. Four interviewees mentioned confrontations with soldiers, but these were ignited not by crop destruction but instead military repression.^[23] Two other interviewees remembered a well-known case in which their neighbors, a father and his son, both poppy growers, were fed up with the aerial fumigation of their illegal crops and thus shot and felled a military helicopter with AK-47 rifles; they were later caught and sent to a federal prison.^[24] Another interviewee mentioned how a group of 4–5 teenagers impulsively shot a group of soldiers; they were able to flee immediately and only returned to their hometown a few years later.^[25] However, these were not cases of organized community resistance but impromptu individual decisions that happened sporadically.

No other interviewee, including the six imprisoned former soldiers that we spoke with, was aware of any case of armed confrontations between farmers and soldiers. A certain municipality explicitly banned these confrontations.^[26] This restriction was not necessary in other municipalities because soldiers were strategically treated well. Community members would sometimes feed and drink alcohol with them.^[27] Diplomatic sensitivity also involved playing soccer and basketball together.^[28] On some occasions, soldiers pretended to walk toward illegal crop fields but camped out nearby without destroying any crops, as agreed through bribery. After such behavior, for example, farmers would sometimes “send them a cow or a calf” for soldiers to eat.^[29]

Organized farmers would successfully negotiate with DTOs as well. Only in one municipality (out of 43 municipalities that our respondents came from) had a DTO taken over the control of illegal crop production and of the territory more generally. This municipality and Herlinda’s (mentioned above; see footnote 12) belong to the same district. In all other municipalities, illegal crop production was carried out independently and voluntarily (i.e., without coercion) by smallholders. Given previous armed resistance against extortions, which had acquired quite a reputation, one certain DTO held a rather prudent position. To guarantee the constant acquisition of a high volume of harvest, the regional person in charge of this organization came to an agreement with the municipality’s authorities regarding the rent of lands for these crops to be worked by local farmers. Besides renting lands, traffickers would buy remaining production from middlemen.^[30] From time to time, the traffickers would also hand over gifts to the local authorities to secure the collaboration. “A dove came by and left an egg,” the authorities would say to their people to explain the origin of the money.^[31]

Comparing two bordering municipalities with contrasting illegal crops-violence outcomes

As an extension of our main qualitative analysis, we now focus on specific comparisons between two of the highest illegal-crop production municipalities in Oaxaca, which are characterized by differing levels of physical violence. They both produce marijuana and are among the top 10 poppy producers in the state. One of them (Municipality A) has endured one of the highest levels of homicide (among the top 10), forced displacement, and a positive correlation between annual poppy eradication and homicides in the period of study (r = 0.45; results not shown). The other (Municipality B), quite differently, had around 40% lower levels of homicide and zero homicides in 10 out of 16 years of the period. This municipality experienced no forced displacement and presents a weak, negative correlation between poppy eradication and homicides on an annual basis (r = -0.21; results not shown).

The two municipalities border one another (i.e., they share municipality boundaries) and have in common several social and ecological factors. They are both located in the Southern Highlands (Sierra Sur) and belong to the same district. The size of their territories is similar: 206 and 156 km², respectively (INEGI 2010). Their climate is also alike, mostly temperate subhumid, with minor semi-cold subhumid areas in the highest elevations (CONABIO 1998). The majority of their inhabitants speak the same sub-variant of the Zapotec language (Smith-Stark 2003). Their populations are small (1000–3000 people) and are mainly dedicated to the primary sector (INEGI 2000, 2010, 2020), agriculture in particular, with maize production of 0.2 and 0.3 ha per capita, respectively (SIAP 2021). Both municipalities are ruled by non-partisan, traditional governments (i.e., Usos y costumbres), and their lands are mostly common property.

We interviewed five farmers from Municipality A, twice each to allow for follow-up questions. Their testimonies neatly concurred. They spoke about constant marijuana harvest theft and their efforts to acquire firearms to avoid it. By contrast, poppy production is not usually stolen because, as mentioned above, harvesting opium gum is labor-intensive. Many marijuana growers in the municipality therefore switched to poppy. Such substitution was also driven by the decline of marijuana prices while poppy was booming in the 2000s and 2010s. Profits from these crops were mostly used for house construction, firearms, and alcohol.

Illegal-crop growers in Municipality A warned each other when soldiers were close by but did not collaborate for production or risk management in any other way. For example, they did not perform guetza (labor exchange) for poppy harvest. Moreover, the community Assembly would not address any issues related to illegal crop cultivation. The main reason for such a lack of cooperation is that only one of the four main villages in the municipality was involved in this economic activity. Although it is the most populated village and the great majority of its farmers produced illegal crops, it represents only a third of the municipal population (INEGI 2000, 2010, 2020).^[32] Furthermore, the one village producing illegal crops had been historically excluded from participating politically at the municipality level until 2013 (IEEPCO 2018). Before this political reform, only people from another village (the municipal capital or cabecera) were involved in the Assembly and held government positions (cargos). Unlike the rest of the municipality, people from the municipal capital do not speak Zapotec but only Spanish (INEGI 2000, 2010, 2020).

The political and ethnic inequality and the uneven salience of illegal crops between villages within Municipality A were key foundations of the almost total absence of collective action at the municipality level. This inequality and uneven salience undermined the authority of the municipality government from the perspective of illegal-crop growers, who became empowered by incoming cash and firearms. Municipality government officials would not interfere with illegal cultivation; they were afraid to do so. Neither would they try to enforce sanctions against illegal-crop growers involved in homicide, who were mostly drunken young men. Before the poppy boom, such men would fight with their fists and cause disruptions but would not usually kill each other. When a murder did take place, those responsible would be arrested, delivered to state authorities, and imprisoned. This was no longer the case in the one village producing illegal crops, where 76% of homicides in the municipality took place between 2003 and 2018, all officially classified as “aggressions with a firearm” (INEGI 2021).

The number of homicides and their impunity in Municipality A got the attention of the state and federal governments. A permanent military camp was established at the borders of the village producing illegal crops and a road was constructed connecting this village directly with the highway. Soldiers conducted disarming raids twice and the destruction of illegal crops more frequently. “There is no [municipality] authority [there] anymore,” concluded one of our interviewees.

Noticeably different processes happened in Municipality B. Historically, the local government there does not deliver its own people to external (state or federal) authorities. Crimes are sanctioned locally. Quarrels are eventually solved between families or arbitrated by the local government. In all four state prisons that we accessed for this study (total population ≈ 2800), there was only one person that was originally from this municipality, who we interviewed three times. We will refer to him as Celestino. He explained that his case, as a member of this municipality who was held in a state prison, was exceptional because he committed a crime and was arrested outside of his municipality.

According to Celestino, poppy seeds arrived in the municipality in the 1980s and soon after practically all farmers were producing it.

I grew up with that [plant] ... That’s what my father did for a living. That’s what I did as well. ‘I belong here,’ I thought, ‘so I have the right to grow it’ ... It is a very calm community ... There are no murders or displacements caused by the drug. No such type of violence. People are very united there, everyone doing the same work. We see the drug as something normal, as any other crop. There are other communities where people say ‘look, that guy grows the drug, he is a narco.’ Not in my town. Everybody grows it. We live from that, we eat from that. There is no reason for us to fight each other. Even kids know what their father does for a living; how their father supports his family ... Violence occurs [in other municipalities] when some people grow and others are against it. In my town everybody is okay [with poppy cultivation].

Farmers have no need to acquire new firearms in Municipality B because harvest theft does not happen there. Besides guetza, poppy seed exchange and seed gifts are common, which has resulted in a great diversity of poppy varieties in town. Celestino named and described five of these landraces. They differ in color, height, length of their roots, length of their growing period, frost resistance, yield, and the quality of the gum for producing heroin. Such diversity, and the informal seed system that produces it, are indicators of the social-ecological adaptation of poppy cultivation in this municipality throughout four decades. They are also indicators of a long-lasting and institutionalized farmer-to-farmer cooperation.

Almost all the people in Municipality B speak Zapotec (more than 95%; INEGI 2000, 2010, 2020). There is only one village and one common property unit in this municipality. All adult men have historically had the right to participate in the Assembly. More recently, adult women participate as well (IEEPCO 2018). This is one of the municipalities mentioned above where the Assembly determined to grow illegal crops far from town and from any other agricultural field. It is also one where community events (e.g., basketball and soccer tournaments) were organized with soldiers. “We treat soldiers well so that they treat us well,” explained Celestino. “There have never been confrontations with them. On the contrary ... They don’t come to our town by their own will but because someone else orders it, someone above them. They have to do their work, just as we do our work.”

Celestino claimed that no one has been arrested for illegal crop cultivation in his municipality. “Soldiers simply destroy the plants.” If a new group of soldiers arrives who do not know the town, or if a new commander is in charge, they usually demand to know who grew poppy there. “Everyone grows here,” would be the answer. “Yes, even us [members of the local government].” “Whose are the plants that we found here [in this specific area]?” the commander would insist. “They are everyone’s,” they responded. “[Soldiers] are not going to arrest the whole town, are they?”

DISCUSSION

The results of mixed-methods analysis demonstrate that the agrarian systems and small-scale production units of indigenous peasants residing in traditional governance communities in Oaxaca adapted to and were strengthened by linkages to the marijuana and poppy economies. Existing collective action institutions were effectively mobilized for illegal crop cultivation and the management of related risks and conflicts. These institutions included the communal Assembly, labor exchange, informal seed systems, surveillance systems, the common property of land, and local militias. Consequently, despite the militarization of these landscapes on several fronts, in most cases intra-community physical violence was mitigated and local governments were vested with the authority to effectively negotiate with both the state (i.e., soldiers) and traffickers to secure local autonomy and the viability of this commercial enterprise. Furthermore, these results demonstrate the absence of abrupt or major agrarian transformations resulting from illegal-crop production in Oaxaca.

This study finds that eradication and physical violence are associated, both in the statistical analysis (the relationship is significant, even if small) and in the qualitative analysis (19 interviewees, or 25% of the sample, mentioned and discussed six triggers of violent conflict related to the prohibition of these crops). However, in most cases this relationship was meager or absent.

Importantly, we identified counterexamples to these general patterns that further reveal critical factors that promote cooperation or conflict. Our analysis of interviews, and especially the comparative case study of bordering municipalities, indicated that traditional collective action for intra- and supra-community cooperation responded to the salience of illegal crop cultivation within the municipality. Existence of local traditional governance was key for collective action (as found by Prest 2015 in the Bolivian coca production region of Chapare) yet by itself insufficient, similar to what Ley et al. (2019) found with regard to regional armed resistance for territorial control against DTOs in the Mexican states of Guerrero and Chihuahua. In Oaxacan municipalities, when only a minority of farmers or villages are involved, illegal crop cultivation will unlikely be normalized and accepted by the rest of the population, and local institutions will hardly be mobilized for risk management at the municipality level. Conversely, high levels of production per capita in smallholder communities indicate that a majority of farmers are involved in illegal crop production. As such, they share common interests and risks, work together for mutual aid, and will not benefit from fighting each other or confronting external actors. This qualitative finding is consistent with our statistical models, which show that the marginal effects of illegal crop production on violence moderate and possibly reverse at the highest levels of production, when illegal cropping is most likely to become normative.

The results of this study account for the non-linear association between illegal crops and maize found in the second statistical model. As analyzed elsewhere (Tamariz 2022, Tamariz et al 2023), maize has been grown by farmers in Oaxaca as a visual diversion (that reduces exposure) and an insurance mechanism (that reduces sensitivity) to the risks of producing marijuana and poppy. These functions of maize added to its ancient social and emotional values. The statistical model shows that low and medium levels of illegal crop production tend to increase smallholder maize cultivation, but this association moderates and becomes negative in some cases at the highest levels of illegal crop production. This inflection suggests that the role of maize as a household risk management strategy (Tamariz 2022, Tamariz et al 2023) is partially substituted by inter-family collective action. This happens precisely when collective action is most likely to occur, when marijuana and poppy production has become common and accepted in a community. The partial character of this substitution confirms that processes of adaptation and adjustment, as opposed to a structural transformation, take place among small-scale indigenous peasant producers at all levels of production.

The multi-case framework used in this Oaxacan study reveals that peasants do not necessarily become involved in illegal cultivation to support existing elements of their livelihoods and lifestyles, a conclusion that contrasts with findings by Morris (2020a,b) in other regions in Mexico, by Zimmerer et al (2022) in Bolivia, and by Mansfield (2016) in Afghanistan. Findings underscore, moreover, that cultural resistance and the struggle for local autonomy are not universal in indigenous peasant societies, which are heterogeneous among them and within (Bernstein 2001, 2010). In a minority of cases in Oaxaca (including Municipality A; also, see footnote #12), larger-scale illegal crop growers emerged as increasingly powerful actors who commodified labor, undermined traditional collective action institutions, and acquired or strengthened their extra-legal means of governance, often violently and at the expense of their own village or municipality neighbors. The emergence of these actors (the sixth trigger of intra-community violence described above) entails an abrupt and structural agrarian transformation, rather than an adjustment or adaptation. It runs against the ability of smallholders in common property land systems to inhibit land accumulation and associated dispossession and labor exploitation. This ability is relevant because it limits production and profits per production unit but avoids potential conflicts related to the unequal distribution of resources and unjust relations of production and power.

CONCLUSION

Through a combined framework of political ecology (PE) and social-ecological systems (SES), our conceptual approach to the drug crop eradication-violence nexus underscores both the relevance and limitations of local governance institutions in mitigating resource-related conflicts. Our findings argue against environmental and institutional determinisms, or pre-given associations between violence and valuable natural resources, as well as one-size-fits-all explanations of the interactions between resource management practices and institutions. At the same time, we acknowledge that the amount and properties of any contested resource and the type of prevailing institutions do matter for intra- and supra-community cooperation, as demonstrated in the results of our research. Rather than the amount per se, what matters is the economic relevance for and moral sanction by the majority of the population of an externally criminalized resource system, and its incorporation to local traditional resource governance and conflict management institutions. Future research for other sites may benefit from our focus on pre-existent collective action institutions, the salience of a criminalized resource system, the interactions between those two factors, and their implications on violent conflict (management), both within the community and with external actors.

__________

^[1] Although being #6 in poppy eradication and #5 in marijuana eradication in Mexico (among 31 states and Mexico City), Oaxaca overall accounted for only 3.5% of all hectares where these crops were destroyed between 2007 and 2015 (Resa-Nestares 2016). However, at the municipality level and in relation to municipality area and population, Oaxaca stands out as a major producer. In fact, in the Top 100 municipalities in Mexico in terms of hectares of illegal crops destroyed per municipality area, 39 of these municipalities are in Oaxaca; per municipality agricultural area, we find 35 Oaxacan municipalities; per municipality legal crops sown area, 27; and per municipality population, 23 (Resa-Nestares 2016). For reference, note that eradication has taken place in 1608 municipalities in Mexico, according to data on the number of fields and hectares of cannabis and opium poppy destroyed by the Mexican Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA, by its Spanish acronym) in Mexico in 1990–2018, disaggregated by crop, municipality and year, requested by the authors through the National Institute of Transparency, Information Access, and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) (request #700085718).
^[2] The term “traditional governance” has been used in scholarly literature on Oaxaca to refer to the UyC non-partisan regime (e.g., VanWey 2005, Robson 2009, Díaz-Cayeros et al. 2014, Magaloni et al. 2019, Bobonis et al. 2021).
^[3] Marijuana and poppy arrived in the country in the 19th century and were simultaneously banned in the 1920s. They were originally produced in the northwestern states but later expanded to the south, including Oaxaca, around the 1960s (Astorga 2016, Tamariz 2022).
^[4] Our findings from the qualitative data (described below) suggest that this 16-year period covers main fluctuations in illegal crop production, which is a dynamic enterprise both spatially and temporally in Oaxaca.
^[5] On average, each maize production unit in Oaxaca uses 1.9 hectares (INEGI 2008). Maize yields are 0.9 tons per hectare (t/ha), on average. Only 16 municipalities in Oaxaca (out of 570) produced a yearly average of more than 3 t/ha in the period of study; only one municipality produced more than 5 t/ha (SIAP 2021). For reference, note that maize yields of 3 t/ha or less and maize production units of 5 ha or less indicate smallholder agriculture in Mexico (Bellon et al. 2018, 2021). On the other hand, around 93% of the area sown for maize production in Oaxaca in the period 2003–2018 was rainfed.
^[6] Six of 570 municipalities were excluded from the analysis; four of them for being metropolitan cities (i.e., with 100,000 inhabitants or more), and two for missing maize data.
^[7] Approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the Pennsylvania State University on August 6 2018 (STUDY00009347).
^[8] Sixty-one interviewed farmers (90%) stated that illegal-harvest theft occurred in their municipality. Six of them mentioned armed confrontations or murders as a consequence.
^[9] Interview #50, February 2019.
^[10] Nine interviewed farmers (13%) talked about whistle-blowers in their municipality. Five of them mentioned armed confrontations or revenge as a consequence.
^[11] Middlemen gather and then resell the municipality’s illegal harvest. In most cases, middlemen are originally from the municipality.
^[12] (1) Herlinda was a successful marijuana grower until the town’s local political boss or cacique, as she called him, decided to monopolize local production. She was then beaten, raped, and forced to flee with her daughter during the night in the river. She was later arrested and accused of kidnapping, and dispossessed from her land. (2) Serapio had a similar experience. Since he returned from the United States, he resumed agriculture on an inherited plot of land. After Serapio declined on several occasions to sell his land to a local producer of marijuana and other cash crops who owned the surrounding fields, he was arrested and imprisoned on accusations of homicide. The same neighbor then offered Serapio’s family to pay a private lawyer to get him out of jail, in exchange for his land. (3) Evaristo was also accused of homicide, by two neighbors who produced larger amounts of poppy than the rest of the farmers in his town. Empowered by their recent enrichment from poppy, these two neighbors would murder at will and with impunity, killing amongst others Evaristo’s aunt, uncle, and brother-in-law. They tried to kill his brother as well. Evaristo fled but was later found and arrested to prevent him from taking revenge. (4) Artemio was unwilling to work for free for a wealthy neighbor and marijuana producer whom he considered a cacique. He convinced his father to stop working for him. After a quarrel, the neighbor tried to kill Artemio with a high-caliber rifle, but Artemio had been a sharpshooter since he was a child and was able to respond and kill the man with his hunting rifle.
^[13] Interview #25, December 2018.
^[14] Interview #22, December 2018.
^[15] Six interviews, September-December 2018.
^[16] Interview #68, July 2019.
^[17] Four interviews, December 2018 and January 2019.
^[18] Four interviews, September-December 2018; January 2019.
^[19] Four interviews, October 2018; January 2019.
^[20] Three interviews; October 2018; July 2019.
^[21] Six interviews, October-December 2018; January 2019.
^[22] Interview #34, January 2019.
^[23] As described by Tamariz (2022), military repression during eradication campaigns in Oaxaca took place mostly in the 1980s and 1990s.
^[24] Two interviews, November 2018.
^[25] Interview #35, January 2019.
^[26] Interview #25, January 2019.
^[27] Five interviews, December 2018; January and July 2019.
^[28] Two interviews, September 2018; January 2019.
^[29] Interview #6, November 2018.
^[30] Interview #65, July 2019.
^[31] Interview #25, January 2019.
^[32] The municipality is divided into four communal property units, each one with its own Common Property Commissary.

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