In Campeche and Yucatan, Mexican Navy on Full Alert for Cucumber Wars Mexico News Daily
go to original September 28, 2014

In many states in Mexico, rival gangs fight over the lucrative drug trade. But in Yucatán and Campeche, they fight over cucumbers.

These are not your garden-variety cukes but those found on the sea bottom, a sea animal whose popularity in China is fueling piracy and smuggling to the point where cucumber-related crime is now worse than drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion combined.

To make matters worse as far as the authorities are concerned, civil defense groups are springing up as they did in Michoacán, as fishermen seek to protect their lucrative businesses.

How lucrative? ... The black-market price is 10,000 pesos a kilo, according to prices posted on alibaba.com. In Mexico, prices are a fraction of that, anywhere between 30 and 300 pesos per kilo.

But their value is still high enough to Mexican fishermen that it has led to cucumber trafficking and piracy, enmity between citizens of the two states, battles on the high seas.

Read the rest at Mexico News Daily

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