Americans love their "gauc." Whether you're Latino American or not, the delicious appetizer has become a Super Bowl staple -- and a culinary trend that can be associated with the growing Latino population in the U.S.

"Back at the turn of this century, Americans ate a mere 8 million pounds of avocados during Super Bowl festivities. Apparently this needed to be remedied, so in 2002 the Hass Avocado Board was formed to promote the dominant avocado variety sold in the U.S.," the Huffington Post reported.

"Today, Americans are expected to consume 79 million pounds of avocados around the championship game. For those keeping score, that's roughly 158 million avocados."

As American friends and family gather around a bowl of guacamole and chips to root for their favorite teams, or chat about their personal lives and jobs, there is a bigger picture lurking underneath that seemingly innocent and tasty appetizer.

On a daily basis, avocado farmers in Mexico are essentially risking their lives to bring guacamole to your table.

In Mexico, "a drug cartel known as the Knights Templar has brought kidnappings, murders, money laundering and fear to Mexico's prized avocado business," Vocativ reports.

Also known as Caballeros Templarios in Spanish, the Knights Templar, "has infiltrated the avocado sector, and now controls the local trade, from production to distribution."

Called aguacate in Spanish, it's classified as a fruit (actually a berry) -- not a vegetable -- that is native to Mexico and Central America. They are packed with healthy mono-unsaturated fat, which is actually good for your heart -- so much so that its consumption is even endorsed by the American Heart Association.

"It's also Michoacán, Mexico's principal export: 72 percent of all Mexican avocado plantations are located in the state. More than 80 percent of Michoacán's avocados are exported to the United States-the bulk of them of the fatty Hass variety," Vocativ adds.

"In the latter half of 2012 and the early part of 2013, the U.S. imported nearly $1 billion worth of avocados from this state. Not surprisingly, a common nickname for the fruit is 'oro verde,' green gold, because it yields more cash than any other crop--including marijuana."

But if anything, Mexican families who have been developing plantations and growing the fruit for generations don't feel like they have struck gold, or 'oro verde.'

The 80s and the 90s were the heydays of the thriving avocado business for legitimate Mexican avocado farmers, but that has since changed.

"The avocado used to make us all very rich people," one avocado plantation descendant named Jesús told Vocativ's Jan-Albert Hoosten. "A single hectare, yielding one harvest every six months, can make a trader up to 1.5 million pesos ($113,000) per year. During the good years I easily made yearly profits of $1.5 million."

Unfortunately, gone are the days of honest, hard-working families gaining the profit they deserve without the interference of the drug cartel.

"Last year, Jesús barely scraped together a profit of $15,000. Once, he had more than 100 people working for him. Now he has only seven," Vocativ adds. "'The Templarios have ruined my business,'" he says. "'I don't know how much longer I have until I go bankrupt.'"

According to Vocativ, the origin of the cartel stemmed from an earlier group of drug traffickers known as La Familia Michoacana.

"La Familia was founded by Nazario Moreno, called The Craziest One, a former preacher who reportedly wrote his own version of the Bible and recruited new members at drug rehab centers. Under his stewardship, La Familia gained thousands of followers. Most were converts to Moreno's strange brand of evangelical Christianity, which uses Old Testament verses to justify beheadings and other brutal tactics. Not content to traffic marijuana, cocaine and heroin, La Familia set up a variety of extortion rackets in Michoacán. The avocado business was one of them.

"But after Moreno was reportedly killed in 2010, internal strife led to his gang's dissolution and the creation of its offshoot, the Templarios," Vocativ adds. "This new gang intensified Moreno's forays into extortion and kidnapping, but went even further. Now avocado farmers and traders say the Templarios not only demand money, but they also actively take over plantations and packing plants."

Avocado farmers continue to be at the mercy of the Templarios, face extortion, and have their family members kidnapped and killed and theirbodies are to never be found. 

The extreme violence that has encapsulated Mexico's avocado business is "relatively new and so is the industry's dominance in the states," Vocativ points out. "In 1997, the U.S. Congress lifted an eight-decade embargo on Mexican avocados. Business has since surged, and a number of U.S. avocado traders such as West Pak and Mission have established footholds in Michoacán, among other places."

As a turf war ensues and avocado farmers are surrounded by Mexican soldiers and federal police who are supposed to help curb the violence - the reality is that they don't know who they can really trust. The avocado farmers have no choice but to pay up or face the consequences, which will most likely result in certain death.