Quien La Trabaja: Recalibrating Avocado Production through Ejidal Systems
Year: 2025
Site: Michoacán, Mexico
Drawing on Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, this project examines the ejido lands of Michoacán as dynamic sites where traditional agricultural practices intersect with contemporary ecological strategies. Much like Comala in Rulfo’s novel—a landscape marked by the residual voices of its past—Michoacán’s avocado-producing regions reflect the legacies of deforestation, aquifer depletion, and social disruption. This project envisions a regenerative framework that positions ejidos as living laboratories, integrating ancestral ecological knowledge with the implementation of mycological networks within avocado orchards. These fungal systems, which improve soil health and enhance biodiversity, also symbolize the often-overlooked connections between past and present, community and land.
The strategy engages environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Environmentally, it focuses on soil regeneration through native fungi, the establishment of ecological corridors, and water conservation to mitigate the region’s intensive water demands. Socially, it aims to strengthen ejido governance structures, create platforms for knowledge exchange, and engage younger generations in agricultural education rooted in traditional practices. Economically, it supports the development of eco-certification, enhances market access for producers, and prioritizes sustainable production scales.
Mirroring the layered and fragmented narrative of Pedro Páramo, the project acknowledges the inherent complexities of the landscape, treating the ejido not as a static relic but as an evolving space of transformation—where historical legacies inform and enrich contemporary ecological and social resilience.
Criminal organizations, particularly the Caballeros Templarios, heavily infiltrated Michoacán’s avocado industry between 2011-2013, demanding extortion payments of approximately 2,000 pesos per hectare from producers, controlling Local Plant Health Boards, manipulating harvest schedules, and circumventing phytosanitary requirements, while simultaneously appropriating over 3,000 hectares of avocado orchards through violence and intimidation, leading to the formation of armed civilian self-defense groups (autodefensas) to combat their control over the industry.
Through this synthesis, the project reframes Michoacán’s ejidos as agents of renewal. These territories are where ecological restoration and cultural memory intersect to shape resilient futures. Quien La Trabaja transforms Rulfo’s haunted landscape into a narrative of regeneration, where terrain becomes both witness and protagonist of its own recovery.