Grecia Quiroz, widow of Carlos Manzo, went from anonymity to national and international headlines in less than a week, as did Uruapan, a city in Michoacán, southwestern Mexico. Last Wednesday, before the State Congress, Quiroz took her husband’s place in the municipal presidency. “They killed Carlos Manzo, but they couldn’t kill the one who woke up”, read the message from the woman who took over the reins of a municipality terrorized by organized crime. Quiroz reported the failure to respond to her husband’s requests to the federal government due to the violent situation. “He feared for his life, for his children, for mine and they never listened to him,” she said. His words were not denied, Morena and his allies, the PVEM and the PT, remained silent. The protest was followed by a promise. “I will follow in the footsteps of Carlos Manzo, I will leave you an Uruapan, a Michoacán and a Mexico that he would have wanted,” he said in front of a legislature with a pro-government majority.
Quiroz’s arrival at the State Congress required a security apparatus similar to that of a head of state. The National Guard has been tasked. About twenty members of the body responsible for public security throughout the country escorted the armored truck in vehicles and on foot in which the widow arrived dressed in a black dress. Her husband was a systematic denouncer of violence in the state and of the wave of extortion perpetrated by criminal cells. “I don’t want to be another municipal president on the execution list,” Manzo said as if it were a prediction. Her constant request for help from Claudia Sheinbaum’s government was echoed by 14 members of the National Guard who could do nothing to prevent her murder.
A minute of applause preceded Quiroz’s arrival in the room, followed by a handful of slogans that were maintained throughout the 50-minute assembly. “You are not alone, you are not alone!” has been heard over and over again. A few days ago, at the funeral of her husband and father of her two young children, the woman shocked society. “They didn’t kill the president of Uruapan, they killed the best president of Mexico. The only one who dared to always tell the truth, without fear for his family or to leave his children orphaned,” he said a few hours after Manzo was shot dead in the middle of a public square during the Day of the Dead festivities. The vote was unanimous in a session peppered with complaints against the Sheinbaum government for neglecting pleas for help from the seventh municipal president who was assassinated last year. “President Claudia Sheinbaum, you can’t say that you didn’t know it, you didn’t receive it. Your silence has a name and a surname, it has a face, it has children and it has a widow”, launched Carlos Bautista Tafolla, independent MP and member of the Cappello Movement, the name with which Manzo christened his political project.
Quiroz’s speech left no loose ends. Embracing her husband’s hat, she said: “Carlos Manzo’s legacy will continue even if his voice has been silenced. To those who gave the direction to take his life in the cruelest way (I tell you), the Hat Movement will continue.” The woman who took over the administration of Uruapan called on citizens to continue the fight. Manzo’s requests for help from the federal government and the announcement of the Sheinbaum administration’s intervention in Michoacán with a “plan for peace and justice” set the tone for the message. “How sad that they had to take Carlos Manzo’s life so they could send security, so they could protect us,” he said.
The voice of the independence movement, Manzo’s legacy, was the first in the session. Bautista Tafolla was frontal. “They didn’t kill Carlos, you let him be murdered. His death was an announced execution. He said it, he denounced it and no one listened to him,” he said before the eyes of the ruling party fixated on him. The process was quick, smooth, without confrontations. The pro-government lawmakers were tight-lipped and withstood the onslaught of the opposition, the Hat Movement and Uruapan’s municipal president. Of the dozen political forces that make up the local Congress, only three spoke out before the protest. Guillermo Valencia, parliamentary coordinator and leader of the PRI of Michoacán, fought for the continuity of the political legacy of the murdered mayor. “I leave my word. I don’t mind losing my life, but we will always fight to honor the memory of Carlos Manzo”, said the PRI member. “Not a step back! Not a step back!” was the proclamation heard before the vote. “We are with you, Greece, we are with Uruapan,” Vanessa Caratachea said on behalf of the PAN.
Grecia became the municipal president of Uruapan with no history of holding public office. Before her husband’s murder, her work in municipal government was limited to the honorary presidency of the System for Integral Family Development (DIF) in Uruapan. Offering support to children, women and the elderly had occupied large parts of their social networks. This Wednesday his life changed, Manzo’s widow took over the government which cost her husband his life.
