MEXICO CITY — Carlos Manzo forged a path of dissent, fighting both the cartels and what he called scant federal support for his crusade against organized crime in his hometown of Uruapan in western Mexico.
“The Man in the Hat,” named after his signature white sombrero, irritated Mexico City's power structure but was beloved by many voters for his uncompromising stance against the ruthless mafia that rules much of the country.
“They can kill me, they can kidnap me, they can intimidate or threaten me,” Manzo said candidly on social media in June. “But people who are tired of extortion, murder, car thefts – they will demand justice.”
He added: “There is an angry tiger out there—the people of Uruapan.”
That anger was on full display last week when tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Uruapan and other areas of violence-torn Michoacán state to condemn the killing of 40-year-old Manzo. He was gunned down on November 1 among a crowd of revelers, including his family, celebrating Day of the Dead, in a killing that reverberated across the country and beyond.
The killings of other public figures in recent years have also sparked outrage and alarm in the country, but Manzo's death has sparked something else: a controversy that has led many to question Mexico's very ability to confront rampant cartels in places like Michoacán, where organized crime has a strong grip on the government, the economy and people's daily lives.
“This kind of structural control over organized crime is deeply troubling for the entire country,” said Erubiel Tirado, a security expert at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. “This speaks to a crisis of legitimacy in terms of the government’s ability to function.”
Lawmakers from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) placed hats painted like blood on their seats to condemn the murder of Uruapan Mayor Carlos Manzo during a meeting of the Chamber of Deputies on November 4, 2025 in Mexico City.
(Louis Barron/Sipa, USA, Associated Press)
Mexico, as columnist Mariana Campos wrote in the newspaper El Universal, is “split into zones where criminals set the rules, administer justice, levy taxes and decide who can be mayor, who can be businessman.”
Less than two weeks before Manzo's murder, Michoacan police discovered the beaten body of Bernardo Bravo, a prominent leader of regional lime growers who had resisted the cartel's extortion demands. Bravo was shot in the head and his body showed signs of torture, authorities said.
For months, President Claudia Sheinbaum's government has released statistics showing a nationwide decline in murders and other crimes and the arrests of hundreds of organized crime figures, including dozens deported to face justice in the United States.
However, polls consistently show that many Mexicans remain unconvinced. The death of Manzo, who damaged the national reputation by insisting that officials coddled criminals, only added to the pervasive sense of vulnerability, especially in places like Michoacán.
The picturesque region, with its verdant hillsides, pine-studded mountains and wild Pacific coastline, has long been a hub for cartel violence. In 2006, then-President Felipe Calderon chose Michoacán as the location to declare Mexico's ill-fated “war on drugs.”
This came a few months after a particularly gruesome incident in Uruapan in which cartel gunmen threw five severed heads onto the dance floor of a nightclub.
During the war on drugs, the military was deployed to fight the cartels, but the strategy backfired, leading to a significant escalation of violence across the country and raising concerns about the militarization of the country and the erosion of human rights.
Relatives pull the coffin of Mexican journalist Mauricio Cruz Solis during his wake in Uruapan, Michoacan, October 30, 2024. Cruz was shot and killed Oct. 29 in western Mexico, local prosecutors said, in a part of the country hardest hit by organized crime.
(Enrique Castro/AFP via Getty Images)
According to many in Uruapan and across the country, the situation has only gotten worse since then.
“Tell this to the world: Mexico is ruled by drug traffickers,” said Arturo Martinez, 61, owner of a craft shop in Uruapan, a city of more than 300,000 people in the heart of Mexico. Multi-billion dollar avocado industry. “What can an ordinary person expect if the mayor is killed in front of his family, in front of thousands of people? We are completely at the mercy of the criminals.”
This is a frequently expressed view that coincides with President Trump's comments that cartels exercise “total control” in Mexico – a charge Sheinbaum denies, although others say the collapse in Michoacán is an example of a broader lack of control.
Uruapan “became a mirror of the country, a microcosm in which the ability to govern goes off the rails, [and] Fear replaces the state,” political scientist Denise Dresser told news outlet Aristegui Noticias.
Manzo, independent, broke with Sheinbaum's ruling Morena party more than a year ago and accused the central government of ignoring his requests for more police firepower and funding for security services to fight organized crime.
After the murder of Mayor Sheinbaum excluded refund to a militaristic war on drugs that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and, according to Sheinbaum and other critics, done little to stop the drug trade.
Police officers stand guard during a demonstration by protesters against the assassination of the mayor of Uruapan at the Government Palace in Morelia, Mexico, on November 3. The Mexican government said Nov. 2 that Uruapan Mayor Carlos Manzo, who was killed the night before during a public event in the western state of Michoacan, had been under official protection since December.
(Gurdie Hare/AFP via Getty Images)
Manzo was the latest of a slew of Mexican mayors and local officials killed in recent years as cartels seek to control territory, human trafficking routes, police departments and municipal budgets, and maintain extortion schemes and other rackets. Manzo's death stood out because of his provocative media presence as he demanded that authorities force criminals to comply or kill them.
“In many places, criminal gangs control police chiefs, local treasuries, mayors,” said Victor Manuel Sánchez, a professor at the Autonomous University of Coahuila. “And then there are mayors like Carlos Manzo who try to break this cycle—and they end up getting killed.”
Sheinbaum criticized opposition critics who blamed the killing on what they call her weak policies. She condemned the “cowardly” and “cowardly” attack on Manzo and vowed to bring the killers to justice.
The 17-year-old gunman who fatally shot Manzo was killed at the scene and two other suspects were arrested, police said. Authorities are calling the operation a well-planned cartel attack, although there has been no official confirmation of which of the numerous gangs operating in the area was responsible. The motive is also still unclear.
Following the assassination of the mayor, the President introduces the “Plan Michoacán” in an attempt to improve security. Many are skeptical.
“This is the latest of many similar plans,” said Tirado of the Iberoamerican University. “None of them worked.”
The post of mayor of Uruapan was taken over by Grecia Quiros, Manzo's widow, who vowed to continue her husband's fight against the cartels. When Quiros raised her right hand to take the oath of office last week, she held her husband's signature white hat in her left hand.
“This hat,” declared the new mayor, “has irresistible power.”
White hats were common at demonstrations condemning his death, and a white hat adorned Manzo's coffin at his funeral.
His widow's well-placed oath of office, amid heightened security measures, did little to change the prevailing mood of melancholy and despondency in Uruapan. Hope is a scarce commodity for the city's desperate and frightened residents.
“This drug dealers who runs things here, not the mayor or the president,” said Martinez, the store owner. “Carlos Manzo only wanted to protect his people. And look what happened to him.”
times withtaf wWriter Kate Linthicum and special correspondent Cecilia Sanchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report..
