How we got to peak avocado: Super Bowls to Mexico’s drug cartels

Humans have been eating avocados on this continent for some 10,000 years or possibly longer, according to the archeological record. The history of the annual NFL championship game as a cultural event is firmly entwined with the rise of guacamole in mainstream U.S. culture, according to Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, whose encyclopedic knowledge on all things American Mexican food is evident in his 2012 book, “Taco U.S.A.” “Guacamole doesn’t take off until chips take off, and chips don’t take off until Doritos take off, and that’s the late 1960s,” Arellano says. A California industry was taking shape, and as early as 1937, the New Yorker declared the avocado to be the “ future of eating.” In the postwar era, as interest in Mexican or “Spanish” foods began to grow, prepared guacamole — made with varying recipes involving avocado, chile, onions, tomato, cilantro and lime — began surfacing in restaurants. As people moved north, Mexico wanted to send avocados as well, but rules protected California’s produce from Mexican competition — until one key year that might be called guacamole’s inflection point. Despite this “sad reality,” Arellano said, most people won’t put much thought into how Mexican drug cartels are inextricably linked to the avocado trade in Michoacán.