MEXICO CITY — Carlos Manzo was well-known in Mexico for saying what few different politicians would: That cartels operated with impunity and wanted to be confronted with brute pressure. The mayor of a metropolis in an avocado-growing area beset by crime and violence, Manzo recommended authorities ought to beat criminals into submission — or just kill them.
It was a provocative message that resonated in some sectors of a rustic lengthy stricken by drug battle bloodshed. Many right here seen Manzo, together with his trademark white cowboy hat, as a hero.
However his iron fist rhetoric and criticism of the federal authorities’s safety technique additionally earned him enemies. Manzo acknowledged as a lot, saying he knew he could possibly be focused by organized crime. “I don’t need to be simply one other murdered mayor,” he stated final month. “However it will be important to not let concern management us.”
Manzo, 40, was gunned down Saturday evening as he presided over a public celebration of Day of the Useless in a central sq. in Uruapan, a metropolis of 300,000 within the western state of Michoacán. One suspected gunman was killed and two others arrested.
The slaying, captured on video, provoked outcry all through Mexico and in Washington.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, with whom Manzo typically sparred on problems with safety, mourned an “irreparable loss.” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted {a photograph} of Manzo smiling and holding his younger son simply moments earlier than the assault. “The U.S. stands able to deepen safety cooperation with Mexico to wipe out organized crime,” Landau wrote.
Manzo was part of a brand new wave of leaders all through the Americas who’ve referred to as for a tough line towards criminals.
It’s a membership that features President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who has locked up tens of 1000’s of individuals accused of gang ties, with little to no due course of, and President Trump, who has pushed a extra militaristic method to combating cartels, saying the U.S. ought to “wage battle” on drug traffickers.
The U.S. navy has killed 65 individuals in current months who it alleges have been smuggling medication within the Caribbean and the Pacific, together with a number of assaults off Mexico’s shoreline. Trump administration leaders have warned of the potential for U.S. assaults on cartel targets on Mexican soil.
Requires a violent crackdown on organized crime are at odds with the safety technique embraced by Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Each emphasised the necessity to deal with root causes of violence, together with poverty and social disintegration.
López Obrador, particularly, vowed to interrupt with the confrontational approaches of previous Mexican administrations, whose navy operations he stated didn’t weaken cartels and solely fueled violence. What Mexico wanted, López Obrador typically stated, was “hugs, not bullets.”
Manzo — who obtained his begin in politics as a member of López Obrador and Sheinbaum’s Morena get together however later grew to become an impartial — fiercely criticized that mantra.
“Hugs … are for Mexicans who dwell in excessive poverty,” Manzo stated. “Criminals, assassins … they deserve beatings and the total pressure of the Mexican state.” He inspired cops in Uruapan to make use of deadly pressure towards criminals who resist arrest.
The mayor often criticized Sheinbaum for not doing extra to confront cartels, regardless that there was a lower in homicides and an uptick in drug seizures and arrests since she took workplace. Sheinbaum has stated that safety in Mexico is dependent upon reinforcing the rule of legislation, together with giving suspects a good trial.
The son of a neighborhood activist, Manzo grew to become mayor of Uruapan in 2024. The town has been the location of a few of Mexico’s worst drug battle atrocities — kidnappings, bombings, our bodies hung from freeway overpasses — as a unstable mixture of legal teams battle for management of trafficking routes and earnings from the profitable avocado trade.
Manzo appeared Saturday together with his household at a crowded public occasion in Uruapan’s central plaza to mark the Day of the Useless vacation. He posed for pictures with followers and broadcast the candle-lighting occasion dwell on social media, sending “blessings to all.”
When a journalist requested about safety on the occasion, Manzo responded: “There’s a presence from totally different ranges of presidency. We hope every little thing goes nicely, is peaceable, and that you just benefit from the night.”
Minutes later, pictures — then screams — rang out. Manzo lay on the bottom, bleeding. Close by lay his white cowboy hat.
Safety marketing consultant David Saucedo, who stated Manzo was accompanied on the occasion by native police and 14 members of Mexico’s nationwide guard, described the killing as a “kamikaze assault,” saying it was clear the shooter could be killed.
Manzo, Saucedo stated, had been “courageous however reckless” in his quest to confront organized crime. “Carlos lacked the human, monetary, and materials assets to defeat the cartels,” Saucedo stated. His killing “makes it clear that even with political will, defeating the cartels on the municipal stage is an inconceivable mission.”
The mayor’s slaying was the newest in a string of violent incidents in Michoacán. Final month, officers introduced that they had found the physique of Bernardo Bravo Manríquez, the top of a lime growers affiliation who had repeatedly denounced extortion calls for towards agricultural producers.
Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in The Occasions’ Mexico Metropolis bureau contributed to this report.
