Then came Patricio Roldán, director of acquisitions, with his expensive bag and his impeccable black van.
“At your age you should rest, Mrs. Mercedes. Sooner or later you will have to sell.
“My husband is buried here and these trees lead his whole life. They’re not for sale.
Patrick smiled with contempt.
Progress does not stop because of the feelings of one person.
Mercedes stared at him.
“Then tell your progress to surround my ranch.
Without those 12 hectares, the fractionation pipes would have to cross a rocky area. The change would cost millions and delay the work almost 1 year.
Pressured by investors, Patrick made a brutal decision.
He ordered to modify the plans and convinced a crew that an error had occurred in the limits.
On a Tuesday, while Mercedes was traveling to Morelia, 3 bulldozers and 2 bulldozers broke the fence and entered the orchard.
When contractor Abel Neri warned that the pillars did not match, Patrick responded by radio:
“Follow the plane. Tom down everything. The lawyers will take care of the widow.
At 2:15 in the afternoon, a neighbor called Mercedes.
She returned desperately and found the earth turned into an open wound. The roots were uprooted, the apples crushed and Ignacio’s trunks stacked like garbage.
Mercedes fell on his knees.
Then Patrick appeared, extending a check for 150,000 pesos.
It was an accident. This covers the wood and the new grass.
Mercedes stood up with his hands full of mud.
Do you think he destroyed firewood?
They were old trees. Be reasonable. My attorneys can lengthen any lawsuit until you die.
Mercedes looked at a broken metal label between the branches and stopped crying.
“You didn’t destroy an orchard, Patrick. It destroyed genetic material recorded. And when I’m done with you, you’re going to wish I’d never learned my last name.
That night he opened Ignacio’s safe and discovered a document that even Patrick did not imagine existed.
What was written there could cost Grupo Lomas Doradas much more than all the fractionation.
PART 2
At dawn, Mercedes placed all of Ignacio’s files inside 3 boxes and drove to Morelia.
He didn’t go looking for any lawyer.
She appeared in the office of Clara Mendoza, an agrarian law specialist known for having faced miners, sugar mills and chieftains who believed they could buy justice.
Clara, a 63-year-old woman with gray hair and a serene voice, heard the story without interrupting.
Then he opened the first box.
He found graft records, detailed maps of each tree, contracts with nurseries, research agreements and certificates issued by an agricultural university.
But when he read the document found in the safe, he looked up.
Did the construction company know that this area had special protection?
Mercedes denied with his head.
I never showed them the papers. But the City Council did have a copy.
The document showed that, 5 years earlier, the garden had been recognized as a collaborating unit for the conservation of plant genetic resources.
It was not a decorative appointment.
Any work that could affect it needed studies, opinions and authorization from various institutions. None of that had been requested.
Clara slowly closed the folder.
