Abstract
This article explores the systematic exclusion of traditional mezcal producers in Mexico under current certification regimes, official standards, and global market demands, from a critical green criminology perspective. We argue that legal frameworks such as the Mezcal Denomination of Origin (DOM) and NOM-070 legitimize a form of structural violence by stripping ancestral producers of legal recognition, legitimacy, and market access. Through case studies and qualitative interviews in the mezcal-producing region of the State of Mexico, we show how legality operates as a tool of cultural, territorial, and ecological exclusion, and how these practices constitute forms of "green crime" by undermining the rights of communities to protect and continue their agro-food systems and traditional knowledge.