Mérida, Yucatán -That's what Brigadier General Luis Manuel Vélez Fernández de Lara, commander of Military Zone 32, claimed earlier this week. He wasn't referring to bluegrass or bermuda, of course.
Gen. Vélez, who assumed his post in June 2012, was offering up theories on why there is so little narco violence in Yucatán. One of the reasons, according to Vélez, is that a major cash crop for drug traffickers simply doesn't thrive in the state. He said that the Yucatán's soil and climate provide less than optimal conditions for cannabis cultivation. "The few plants we occasionally encounter are generally of very poor quality," he noted.
But Vélez didn't address other recent evidence of a strong organized crime presence in this city.
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Nor did he comment on the huge quantities of cocaine which regularly come ashore in neighboring Quintana Roo state. Authorities there constantly find drugs along remote Riviera Maya beaches, and maintain that almost all are bound for the United States, via ground routes. If that's true, they have to pass squarely across the Yucatán peninsula.
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During a brief press conference the general acknowledged that poverty is behind most of Mexico's social ills, and particularly narco violence. "That's the issue which must be addressed," he said.
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In some regions of Mexico the local economy is based entirely on marijuana and poppy cultivation, at times leading to tragic events. In the hard, cold land of the Sierra Tarahumara, narco traffickers wage open war against the poorest of the poor.
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