The mayor of Uruapan, Greece, Itzel Quiroz, expressed citizens’ discontent with the insecurity situation on Thursday to Mexico’s Secretary of Security, Omar García Harfuch, during his first visit to Michoacán after presenting a federal plan for pacification of the state. “The feeling of citizens is fed up. There is social fatigue, social distrust (…) There is no more hope in the (federal) government,” Quiroz said at a press conference, a few days after taking office to replace her husband, Carlos Manzo, who was shot dead in early November. The mayor also reiterated that he is willing to continue the movement started by Manzo, which sought to combat crime and insecurity in Uruapan.
Quiroz met a few hours earlier with Harfuch in Uruapan. There he asked federal authorities to go and attack the hills where “they know the criminals are,” referring to the secretary’s route. “We don’t need them to walk among citizens, among us, when the only thing citizens want is to work, freely and with trust,” he clarified. The municipality of Uruapan found itself in the middle of the storm of strong violence that hit the state, still shocked by Manzo’s murder.
Harfuch visited Michoacán this Thursday for the first time since last Sunday’s announcement of a new state planning plan, on a trip in which he was accompanied by the Secretary of Defense, General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo. After landing in Morelia to meet with local authorities, Harfuch traveled to Uruapan, where he traveled the streets in an army vehicle, surrounded by a group of soldiers. Then he met Quiroz.
The mayor was unable to hide the pain caused by her husband’s murder, a feeling that also spread throughout the country. “They have been very difficult days on a personal level, as a family. And let’s not say as a society (…) I am very angry, very dismayed. There has not been a day in which I have not stopped asking for justice and there will not be a day in which I will stop doing so”, she said. The mayor assured that the same thing that Harfuch told her was asked to President Claudia Sheinbaum in the meeting we had a few days ago: “It was the same dynamic. Demanding justice for what they did to Carlos (Manzo), for all those who died in this way and that Uruapan and Michoacán are already tired.”
Harfuch recalled in a statement the meeting he had with Quiroz in Uruapan, “to strengthen surveillance and respond to the needs of the population”. “The security of Michoacán is a priority of the Government of Mexico. We will constantly return to supervise and promote peacebuilding,” he said. A few hours earlier he had also met with the various local and state authorities to review the strategic axes of the plan: intelligence, attention to the causes, coordination, regionalization and border fencing. “We thank the municipal presidents who have expressed trust and willingness to collaborate with the State and the Federation”, we read in the letter.
Sheinbaum announced during his regular morning briefing that the Security Cabinet will travel to Michoacán, where the National Guard, Armed Forces and federal investigative teams are deployed. Quiroz also spoke briefly about this project: “In this meeting (with the Secretary of Security), I told them that the Paricutin plan (the operation to strengthen security in Michoacán) seems very nice, very ostentatious, but society is fed up.” Sheinbaum, asked in the morning about the Cabinet’s progress on the peace plan, explained that they will provide the information next week: “Remember that when we presented the Plan, I said: ‘Every month we will report how we are doing.’ Next week we will present how we will start, with what work,” he explained.
The president also left open whether she will travel to the state soon: “We’ll see, we’ll see. But the government is present there,” she added. The president did not confirm whether he will attend the meetings Cabinet in the United States, because it seeks to “well consolidate” the plan for Michoacán. “We will see if, at the same time, we will have meetings throughout the country or if we will leave them until January,” he defended.
The murder of Manzo by a 17-year-old youth, attributed to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), showed the country the wounds of a territory marked by violence. A week after the tragedy, Sheinbaum presented this pacification plan, which includes a hundred actions, characterized by the disbursement of 57 billion pesos and the deployment of 5,000 soldiers throughout the territory. It is the reaction to an event that highlights data such as insecurity, even in Uruapan: 82.6% of the inhabitants of the municipality considered it unsafe in the third quarter of the year. This placed the territory as the fifth most dangerous in the country.
