The Michoacan state prosecutor’s office announced on social platform X Monday that the body of Bernardo Bravo, president of the Apatzingan Valley Citrus Producers Association, was found in his vehicle on a road in the area.
In several interviews with Mexico’s Radio Formula in late September and earlier this month, Bravo denounced “organized crime’s permanent commercial hijacking of any commercial activity.” He explained that criminals’ demands had become so high that producers were left with no other choice but to negotiate with them.
Bravo acknowledged that the federal government had made some advances against organized crime in the region but emphasized that more needed to be done to end their impunity.
Last year, the federal government deployed hundreds of troops to Michoacan to protect lime growers who had been facing extortion threats. Limes have long been a revenue stream for cartels in Mexico.
Back in 2013, lime growers founded and led Mexico’s largest vigilante movement. At that time, cartels controlled distribution by manipulating domestic prices for crops such as avocados and limes, dictating when growers could harvest and at what price they could sell their produce.
https://fortune.com/2025/10/21/mexico-limes-murder-cartels-revenue-stream/
