For Claudia Sheinbaum Michoacán is special. As a young player, Cherán was fundamental. In his campaign he honored Tata Lázaro. And in the 1980s the example of engineer Cárdenas promoted his activism. Now, the state of Ocampo is the epicenter of its first major crisis.
The president of Mexico decided that one of his strengths was his anti-crime strategy. Logically, during the election campaign he boasted about the drop in the crime rate in Mexico City. He promised to achieve the same result nationwide.
At the beginning of the six-year period, month after month, the statistics of the Sheinbaum-Omar García Harfuch couple supported the narrative of a new model of fighting crime with immediate results. Everything fell like a plumb line into the water. Everything, except extortion.
We must be honest and say that Sheinbaum is right in saying that violence has very ancient roots, that it did not begin with López Obrador and even less in 2024. And we must congratulate her because she ended the tone of tolerance that her predecessor had with criminals.
What the president could not have foreseen is that her initial speech about statistical success in security would be shattered by the murder of the closest thing to a symbol. As a scientist, she comes from a world where data tends to disdain history, and this disdain comes at a very high price.
In politics, not all murders are the same. All fatal victims must be treated with dignity and justice must be ensured; some require much more. It’s as if some grow towards the pantheon. This has escaped the veil of optimistic statistics and has been reincarnated as a social demand.
Carlos Manzo, president of Uruapan who was assassinated among his people on Saturday, still has something to say to Mexico. His voice has not remained silent since the bullets killed him. His hat immediately became the symbol of a martyr. Far from fading away, his statement resonates.
This vitality is not only due to the fact that Uruapan is a famous municipality; Nor because the widow repeated the cry for safety launched by her husband; nor that Manzo had a strong personality, simple words, proven courage and commitment to his people.
In addition to this, that death put Sheinbaum in crisis because what the murdered mayor said – a mixture of a demand for justice and total boredom – is what many think, in Michoacán and outside the land of Morelos: that perhaps those who submit live, those who make a pact; that the rebel will be silenced.
Shock is the product of helplessness. If they kill those who dared to say that the Claudian model has too much self-sufficiency in the morning and there is a lack of dialogue with society and the victims, what will become of those who lower their heads in the hope that the Palace will win the war?
Videos of Manzo carrying his son minutes before he bled to death catalyze years and six-year periods of frustration. Citizen fatigue was already boiling over after the death of the Michoacan lemon tree days ago. Another victim asking for less closure.
One of the two, Claudia Sheinbaum, is in crisis today because her team doesn’t tell her the truth and/or because she doesn’t agree to share with society the terrible news that her collaborators convey to her.
The president did not receive the mayor Carlos Manzo because she could not promise him openness or solutions; He didn’t open the doors because then how would he tell people that he had heard about a reality different from the one he promotes in the morning?
Today, with the forgiveness of the Manzo family, it is not too late to respond to the mayor’s requests. Nothing will return his children to the proud father of his position that was Manzo, but the president can honor the memory of the mayor by serving the people of Uruapan.
The crisis touched the walls of the National Palace this weekend and will not abate just with the announcement of a new plan for Michoacán. Not even promising justice will be enough. And insisting that they took care of the now dead man only adds to the federal government’s debt.
What Michoacán requires is first and foremost the truth. Which, after hearing out loud, which she can no longer do with Manzo, but which she can do with the compatriots of the murdered president, the president recognizes that plans at the federal level are one thing and fear at the local level is another.
This independent mayor, who equally criticized Felipe Calderón and the current government, inherited a new opportunity for Uruapan. His widow would have been on the verge of accepting the challenge of gathering her husband’s blood to preside over his people. Sheinbaum cannot leave someone who is capable of putting dignity before fear alone or unprotected.
Michoacán already had special meaning for the president. That land of the free deserves to live in peace. Because of this crisis, Michoacan Beef is already part of Claudia’s political biography. It depends on what this death is very regrettable, but not in vain.
