Just two days before then U.S. president-elect Donald Trump was sworn into office on January, a cargo of 100 tons of avocados coming from the state of Jalisco was stopped at the Mexicali-Calexico U.S. border and detoured to Canada.
The immediate post-truth news was that The Donald had just dealt his first blow to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) literally declaring his already infamous trade war against Ugly Mexico, even before he was president.
But the fact was that the cargo was stopped on orders from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to Customs officials. It had nothing to do with The Donald and more to do with the fact that it was the very first shipping of avocados grown in Jalisco state and a signature fully legalizing their entry into the United States was missing.
It had more to do with red tape than politics, but in these highly political days, even guacamole gets to be political.
But panic does not ride on a slow burro, as goes the Mexican saying, and the news of the “embargo” spread like wild fire under strong winds. The Mexican government went as far as threatening an embargo of fresh potatoes from Idaho.
The distorted post-truth news on the stoppage of the avocado shipping went away as fast as they came. It was, in the end, to quote now-President Trump, “fake news.”
What was not fake news is that those avocados were aimed to be sold by these days, when they would be ripe just previous to the Super Bowl, which has made guacamole, corn chips and beer the favorite Grand Day snack.
Mexican Agriculture Secretary Eduardo Calzada said that indeed the Super Bowl is the best day in trade for the avocado growers of Mexico, previously concentrated mainly in the states of Michoacán, Sinaloa and Oaxaca, with now Jalisco entering into the avocado supply market.
“Mexico sells $200 million worth of guacamole in just one match of football,” Calzada says. No wonder Mexican avocado growers are now all avid Super Bowl fans. In just one day, football fans in the United States gulp down 35 thousand tons of Mexican avocado, all of them by now ready to be on store shelves all over the United States and Canada.
According to the spokesman of the Mexican Association of Growers, Packers and Exporters of Avocado (Apeam) Ramón Paz Vega, this Super Bowl sales match those of last year, which is becoming now an American tradition.
Historically, the football guacamole craze is something new and recent, as I remember my days as a reporter and columnist for The San Diego Business Journal back in 1989, when Mexican avocados were banned to enter the United States for “sanitary” reasons.
The ban lasted 80 years, from 1914 to 1994 when NAFTA forced the California Avocado Growers Association (Calavo) as well as their Florida counterpart to stop their fake news claim that Mexican avocados were infested with many plagues that surely came from Mexico.
Back in those days there were indeed plagues –as there are today – but in the end the real reason why Mexican avocados were not wanted in the United States was because of sheer protectionism similar to what Donald Trump proposes nowadays.
But without any threat of plagues, as Mexican growers have been very careful in tending their trees to produce a solid and tasteful product, the excuse for an embargo can’t exist.
I remember in those days back in 1989 that while a single tasteless avocado grown in Southern California sold for $2, the kilo of fleshy Michoacán avocados sold for the same price but per kilo.
That was indeed threatening competition to the California and Florida growers, who of course, would like to see the return of old-time protectionism from their federal government.
It was also in those days when the Ninja Turtles made famous the “holly guacamole” expression which like all things in comic books and cartoons means nothing, but sounds like a lot of fun.
But now Mexico, says Paz Vega, is the main supplier of avocados to the United States and Canada and eight of every 10 avocados consumed at U.S. tables is Mexican.
And indeed my 35 year old son and I have bought a kilo of Mexican Hass avocados and ready to sit next Sunday how the Patriots raze the Falcons, or vice versa, but also reminisce the Ninja Turtles of his childhood.
Holly Guacamole! Avocados are indeed a sacred fruit.
