Mexican heroin trade

Red and purple blossoms with fat, opium-filled bulbs blanket the remote creek sides and gorges of the Filo Mayor mountains in the southern state of Guerrero.

The multibillion-dollar Mexican opium trade starts here, with poppy farmers so poor they live in wood-plank, tin-roofed shacks with no indoor plumbing.

Mexican farmers from three villages interviewed by The Associated Press are feeding a growing addiction in the U.S., where heroin use has spread from back alleys to the cul-de-sacs of suburbia.

The heroin trade is a losing prospect for everyone except the Mexican cartels, who have found a new way to make money in the face of falling cocaine consumption and marijuana legalization in the United States. Once smaller-scale producers of low-grade black tar, Mexican drug traffickers are now refining opium paste into high-grade white heroin and flooding the world's largest market for illegal drugs, using the distribution routes they built for marijuana and cocaine.

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, poppy flowers grow in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains in Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday. Mexican heroin has become cheaper and more powerful at a time when Americans hooked on pharmaceutical opiates are looking for an affordable alternative. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

It is a business that even the farmers don't like. In a rare interview with reporters, the villagers told The Associated Press that it's too difficult to ship farm products on roads so rough and close to the sky that cars are in constant danger of tumbling off the single-lane dirt roads that zig-zag up to the fields. They say the small plastic-wrapped bricks of gummy opium paste are the only thing that will guarantee them a cash income.

"Almost everyone thinks the people in these mountains are bad people, and that's not true," said Humberto Nava Reyna, the head of the Supreme Council of the Towns of the Filo Mayor, a group that promotes development projects in the mountains. "They can't stop planting poppies as long as there is demand, and the government doesn't provide any help." 

Below is a selection of photographs by Dario Lopez-Mills, documenting the poppy farmers and their community based in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico.

To read more, see the AP news story, Mexican Opium Farmers Expand Plots to Supply US Heroin Boom.

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, an opium grower shows how he "milks" a poppy flower bulb to obtain opium paste in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico. The Sinaloa cartel farms out most production of opium paste to smaller traffickers, according to growers, law enforcement and drug-trafficking experts interviewed by the AP. That kind of decentralized system is a recipe for setting Guerrero's small, feuding drug gangs, the Rojos, Pelones, Guerreros Unidos and others, against each other. Since 2012, Guerrero has been Mexico's most violent state. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, an opium grower shows his home-made tool used to "milk" poppy flower bulbs in his field in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico. Opium is a business that even the farmers don’t like, and residents say there are no local users. It all goes for export, a lucrative business mostly run by the Sinaloa Cartel. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, a farmer stands in his poppy field in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico. The heroin trade is a losing prospect for everyone except the Mexican cartels, who have found a new way to make money in the face of falling cocaine consumption and marijuana legalization in the United States. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 27, 2015 photo, a man stands in a poppy flower field that died after the government aerially sprayed the field with a herbicide in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico. The herbicide kills both the poppies and anything around them. And it can kill or damage local Ocote pine trees, allowing beetles to move and attack the weakened trees, and then neighboring trees, farmers said. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 27, 2015 photo, men stand under a tree that was killed by the government's aerial herbicide spray meant to target poppy flower fields in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico. A community leader said the aerial spraying "poisons the land, the water, and the people and animals who use the water. It's okay if the government wants to combat these crops, but they should do it manually, on the ground, rather than with aerial spraying." (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, a youth walks past a home in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains where some farmers grow opium in Guerrero state, Mexico. One farmer said opium growers can earn more in one day than in one month at any legitimate job, if there were any legitimate jobs around. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, school children participate in the daily flag ceremony in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains where some farmers grow opium in Guerrero state, Mexico. Opium is a business that even the farmers don’t like. Residents say there are no local users, and it all goes for export. They hate the taste of the bitter paste, which they sometimes rub into their gums to sooth an aching tooth. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

APTOPIX Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, villagers gather to talk with Associated Press journalists about their communities and dependence on growing opium to make a living in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico. Many farmers say they would like to give up poppy cultivation and plant legitimate crops, in part because of the bloodshed the trade has brought to their state. Some growers have tried planting avocados and built trout ponds, but the trout are small because of a lack of food, and avocados take at least seven years before they yield a viable amount of fruit. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 29, 2015 photo, a relative of the late Alexander Mora Venancio watches TV inside his home where an altar stands in his honor in the town of El Pericon in Guerrero state, Mexico. Mora Venancio is the only one of the 43 missing students whose remains have been positively identified from a pile of bones found in a garbage dump. According to authorities, a drug gang known for trafficking opium paste killed and incinerated the 43 students who had hijacked two buses to travel to a demonstration. (Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, homes dot the mountainside of the Sierra Madre del Sur where some farmers grow poppy in Guerrero state, Mexico. In a rare interview with reporters, the villagers said it’s too difficult to ship farm products on roads so rough and close to the sky that cars are in constant danger of tumbling off the single-lane dirt roads that zig-zag up to the fields. They say the small plastic-wrapped bricks of gummy opium paste are the only thing that will guarantee them a cash income. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

APTOPIX Mexico Heroin Trade

In this Jan. 26, 2015 photo, poppy flowers grow in the mountains of the Sierra Madre del Sur in Guerrero state, Mexico. The multibillion-dollar Mexican opium trade starts here, where Mexican farmers are feeding a growing addiction in the U.S. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

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View the Mexican Heroin Trade collection

Opening text from AP news story, Mexican Opium Farmers Expand Plots to Supply US Heroin Boom, by Mark Stevenson.

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