Fear has come to live in the shadow of lemon trees in the Mexican state of Michoacán. This fruit — essential to the food served on every street in the country — is a prize co-opted by organized crime, which demands ever-increasing quotas from its producers in order to grow it. With the entry of new groups into the territory, such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), payments are rising, suffocating the countryside, which is already being battered by domestic market prices. The last farmer who dared to challenge the reign of terror by denouncing the extortion racket, Bernardo Bravo, was found murdered with a gunshot to the head a few miles from Apatzingán. His death is a stark warning to remain silent and designed to sow fear in the land cultivated by lemon growers, so often splattered with the blood of activists and peasants.

In Apatzingán, everyone remains silent. No one dares to speak about the four-peso fee charged for each kilo of lemon harvest — a fee that has doubled in a short time. Nor about the death threats, the murders of producer families, or the abandonment by authorities who have left them to their fate in the face of violence and insecurity.

Under an assumed name, farmer Antonio Mendoza tells EL PAÍS, despite his wife’s pleas not to speak, that all his colleagues have made a pact of silence that will last until the tension reigning in the lemon-growing municipalities subsides. “We’re all afraid and don’t want to talk right now. We have to think with a cool head and figure out what we’re going to do,” he blurts out, worried about the future of the Apatzingán Valley Citrus Growers Association, which Bravo chaired and which had managed to organize the threatened farmers to give them the courage to confront organized crime.

When Bravo was shot, he was at the height of his activism. Just days before his death, he had called for a massive farmers’ demonstration, throwing crates of lemons into the streets to protest low prices. He had managed to organize the day laborers to harvest lemons only three days a week in an attempt to control supply. He had also demanded that authorities establish agreements with water and electricity providers to alleviate the debts of farm owners. His increasingly emboldened and confident voice led him to also point out the constant threats from the Tierra Caliente cartels.

Mendoza acknowledges that the practice of paying a tax to the small local mafias in the region is commonplace, almost an uncomfortable custom they’ve grown used to since Felipe Calderón’s administration (2006–2012). But things worsened when a new player in the drug war, the CJNG, burst onto the scene. “Before, they took ten cents from us, or fifty cents at worst, a modest fee. Now that many cartels have emerged, things are much worse,” the farmer explains.

As always when they arrive in a new territory, the armed groups seek alliances with the civilian population, promising to end extortion and violence in exchange for their support in the war for territory, from which everyone will benefit when they win, as they anticipate they will. “They say they’ll help, but then they fight,” says Mendoza, who, far from stopping paying dues as he expected, had to start paying a fee to two different groups. “They know they make money more easily that way,” he laments.

From the Human Security Observatory of the Apatzingán Region, Julio Franco explains that farmers are experiencing a shift in violence. “Extortion is easier than the drug business. You don’t need precursors, laboratories, or even to cross the border. You instill fear and it’s productive,” he notes. The returns from this thriving business have led criminals to expand it to the entire market for basic needs. It’s no longer just lemons; if you sell tortillas, eggs, milk, or even alcohol or fried foods, you also have to pay. In exchange, the cartels promise to fill the gap left by the state and deliver justice. “In Tierra Caliente, order is a criminal order. Here, it’s common to hear people say: if the authorities don’t solve your problems, look for a solution in the hills,” Franco notes, referring to the mountains where armed groups have their strongholds.

A four-billion peso business

The quotas affect the fruit’s volatile price in supermarkets. The cost of lemons can rise by up to 153% during times of greatest shortage, whether due to poor harvests, drought, or violence. But in the same way they rise, they can also plummet — dropping from 65 pesos per kilo to 20 pesos — but producers barely receive five or six pesos in the wholesale market. Organized crime’s extortion quotas, which have been multiplying since 2023, have made profit impossible. Last year alone, Michoacán produced one billion tons of lemons. With a quota of four pesos per kilo of lemon produced, organized crime can pocket up to 4 billion pesos ($217.5 million) just from the terror tax on this product.

In this area of Apatzingán, the Blancos de Troya, the hit squad of the Los Viagras criminal group led by the Sierra Santana brothers, are in charge. This cell, heir to the Knights Templar Cartel, was part of the local mafia group that reorganized into the United Cartels, but with the arrival of the CJNG, they decided to become allies of the most powerful criminals. They now call themselves the Michoacán New Generation Cartel. Their leader, Nicolás Sierra Santana, alias “El Gordo” or “El Curoco” (named after his family’s tradition of raising fighting cocks), is being targeted by the United States for trafficking fentanyl and cocaine. Washington is offering up to $5 million for information leading to his capture. Over the past year, his criminal group has suffered several blows, including the arrest of one of its main operatives, Gerardo Valencia Barajas, alias “La Silla,” in Cenobio Moreno last February, and the capture in July of Cirilo Sepúlveda Arellano, known as “El Capi.” Both are being prosecuted for the extortion of farmers, among other crimes such as kidnapping and murder.

The only people arrested for Bravo’s murder are linked to the Los Viagras group, which managed to infiltrate peasant associations and monitor the farmer’s movements. One of them, Rigoberto López Mendoza, had marijuana, 25,000 pesos in cash, and credentials certifying him as a producer of the Apatzingán Valley Citrus Growers Association in his possession when he was arrested. Antonio Mendoza, also a member of the association, explains that López was able to pose as a freight forwarder to obtain this credential more quickly, since producers must provide documentation proving their ownership of a plot of land.

The quotas will continue, and the only ones who will mourn Bernardo’s death will be his family, his wife, and his son

Guillermo Valencia, local PRI deputy

The investigation is looking into why Bravo decided to go to a supposed meeting with farmers on Sunday afternoon, October 19, without the armored truck he had been provided with and without his three assigned bodyguards. Both Franco and Guillermo Valencia, a local Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) deputy who supported Bravo’s security proposals, describe him as a man of extreme confidence and courage, perhaps too much so, to the point of arrogance. “He was a hard-working young man, very spirited, very forward-thinking. He had social support, and that made him feel safe,” Valencia emphasizes.

Part of the affection the community felt for him stemmed from the role his father, also named Bernardo Bravo, played in the fields as one of the founders of the Apatzingán Valley Citrus Growers Association. The town knew him as Don Berna, and he was murdered in 2013 in similar circumstances to his son 12 years later. The Bravos’ fate was the same as that of lemon farmer José Luis Aguiñaga a year ago, when he was shot dead inside his ranch in Buenavista. In that same location, in 2023, lemon farmer and founder of the self-defense militias, Hipólito Mora, was shot dead along with his two bodyguards in an armored car. All those who have dared to point out the extortion schemes involved in the crime have met the same fate.

Mendoza is waiting to see what will happen to the citrus growers’ association when calm returns. “It’s time to speak out. Bernardo, a colleague of ours, died for a reason and it shouldn’t go unpunished. It seems we left him alone, but we’re realizing that we can’t leave anyone alone,” he says. For his part, Valencia fears that the murder will mark the end of the last attempt to curb organized crime and will once again silence the producers. “The quotas will continue, and the only ones who will mourn Bernardo’s death will be his family, his wife, and his son,” laments Valencia, who recalls that on one of the last occasions he saw the farmers’ leader, he praised his courage. “I congratulated him because in order [for others] to protest, they had to overcome their fear because they are facing organized crime, but he paid a very high price for speaking out.”

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