Why does the killing of Mayor Carlos Manzo continue to spark outrage in Mexico, a country characterized by violence?

Although the reason for the killing has not been clarified, authorities point to the involvement of the Jalisco Nueva Generation (CJNG), one of the country’s two largest gangs, and to a possible conflict between a cartel cell and a self-defense group in an area rich in lemon and avocado crops.

While the details are being revealed in a monotonous manner, the killing of the frontline mayor killed on the Day of the Dead seems to have become a symbol of crime fatigue in Mexico.

The resonance of the murder has a lot to do with the character of the mayor of this municipality of 400,000 people, located in a major center of the million-dollar avocado industry.

At the age of 40, Manzo’s popularity has grown rapidly in Michoacan politics thanks to his transparent style and “zero tolerance” rhetoric toward crime.

As deputy and then mayor, Manzo had no qualms – unlike many of his political colleagues in the region – in denouncing the “lack of control” over violence in Michoacán, in exposing the alleged “collusion” of criminals with politicians and police, in exposing child recruitment and training camps by armed groups, and in providing details of agribusiness-related extortion networks by name and titles.

Coming from the ranks of the ruling Morena Party, Manzo ran for mayor as an independent with the aim of sending a message of separation from traditional power schemes. His political outlook was not only regional – he seemed like a potential candidate for governor – but national as well.

In the mayor’s office, since October 2024, Manzo has wanted to restore the state’s territorial control in disputed areas, allying himself with the federal government to purge police and prosecutors, and even canceling symbolic public events, such as the Cry for Independence, to protect residents from a succession of attacks.

“I don’t want to be another mayor on the list of those executed,” he said in an interview.

He added on his social networks: “They can kill me. They can raise me, intimidate and threaten me. But outside there are people demanding justice, and they are already tired of blackmail. They can fuck me, but they are left with a very angry tiger, which is the Uruapan people. So, damn it, because if they touch one of us, they touch the entire Uruapan people.”

It seems that this message has been received. The sombrero movement – a movement that uses the palm hat as a symbol of direct war against crime – has begun crossing the Michoacán border.

Much of what this issue represents is not limited to this western Mexican state: in Guerrero, Zacatecas, Colima, Morelos, and the State of Mexico, the same variables of institutional capture and fragmentation of armed groups are clustering together, leading to ongoing conflicts.

In other states, such as Guanajuato, Chihuahua and Sinaloa, the organized crime force is an element of the routine that translates, almost every day, into murders and extortion.

However, the emergence of violence in Mexico is nothing new: the country has been mired in this situation for at least two decades, and organized crime has become increasingly powerful.

In Michoacan, in fact, three presidents before Sheinbaum – Felipe Calderon in 2006, Enrique Peña Nieto in 2014, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2021 – launched regional pacification and recovery plans. Nothing works.

In the absence of results from the measures taken by the authorities, between 2010 and 2013, various groups of local citizens joined forces and created armed teams to contain the violence through checkpoints, patrols, neighborhood coordination, and direct confrontations with gangs.

But instead of reducing it, self-defense groups have increased violence; Although they are no longer as powerful as they were 10 years ago, some of their members created divisions that are today at the heart of the conflict that led, indirectly, to Manzo’s murder.

Sheinbaum came to power with a security strategy that yielded results during his tenure as mayor of Mexico City: strengthening and purging the offices of prosecutors and the police, coordinating civilian and military entities, and improving salaries and technical training for officers.

For many, murders like Manzo’s are a response to the government’s crackdown.

According to official figures, his strategy yielded results: murders in the country decreased by 37%, nearly 40,000 people were arrested for serious crimes, and 1,500 laboratories for the production of illegal drugs were destroyed.

However, disappearances have increased by about 13%, according to the National Registry of Missing and Unidentified Persons. An average of 41 people are reported missing daily.

“The case of Manzo reminds us of existing regional inequalities, because while everything seems to be going for the better on a general level, the violence does not subside in some specific areas,” says Carlos Pérez Ricarte, a political analyst and security expert.

He concludes: “That his leadership had popular power, that the crime occurred on Candlemas (Day of the Dead) and that the press was there, that his hat movement had a national resonance and that his wife, Grecia Quiroz, has replaced him as mayor and is running for governor, shows you that this story, in fact, has not yet been written.”

The Manzo icon was barely born.

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