The only thing there seems to be consensus on is that the security crisis that led to the murder of Mayor Carlos Manzo was created six years ago. Outside of this, the government, opponents and relatives grope in the fog as to which path leads to salvation.
The mayor of Uruapan, who was killed Saturday night, called for federal support and an overhaul of the crime-fighting model. Their claim was scorned by the state government, of Morenoist extraction, and underestimated by President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Manzo’s blood has tarnished the speeches of the federal government, which claims to have achieved a 32 percent reduction in murders in Sheinbaum’s first year in the Palace. The Manzo family’s request for justice pierces the conformist Palazzo numbers.
It was a matter of time. If President Sheinbaum turned the declining crime rate into one of his first markers of identity after six years, as an affirmation of his disciplined and methodical nature, a murder bordering on assassination would shake the narrative of improvement.
Here the victim of the success of “her data” is the president, who with her inclination towards micromanagement, Morena’s sectarian drift and resistance to dialogue with opponents have made Manzo’s voice stand out above many others.
The National Palace believes that if this does not happen in the morning, it does not exist or is not relevant. And therefore, if the president had already rejected, upon express request, the demands of this mayor, the situation would be settled, the problem resolved, control assured.
Until reality arrives with one of its worst faces. It is still unclear why Mayor Manzo was killed in the midst of the All Souls Weekend celebration. What everyone knew immediately, however, was who would be the first political responsible for the event.
The echoes of the bullets fired in the square of Uruapan resonated throughout the country and hit the Zócalo. The president who did not want to publicly explore Manzo’s claims should now bear the shock of his murder. Bad combination.
One of the measures that Claudia is considering to deal with the crisis appears, as the days pass, more and more unexpected. On Tuesday, after a controversial false start on Monday, when she tried to make herself and her movement the victims, a more serene Sheinbaum announced a plan for Michoacán.
If in Mexico it has ever been a norm to establish a committee to deactivate the media aspects of a problem without having to solve it, with Sheinbaum it is more complex. Gather forums and at the same time take the Thermomix to present a detailed plan in a few hours.
It’s worth revisiting the film a bit before we lose sight of the fact that we already knew the plot was going nowhere. What would have happened if the Manzo family hadn’t had to mourn their son, husband, father today? Would the Presidency feel this urgency to save Michoacán?
Michoacán has been immersed in a spiral of bad governance and violence for decades. From the now Morenoist Leonel Godoy with his brother in a cage to escape justice, to the PRI members who agreed with La Tuta, the State is turned upside down with politicians playing the lyre in the midst of the fire.
The names of the criminal groups that compete for the riches of the state there entertain those who, as if it were the Game of Thrones series, denounce splits, brawls, successions and promotions of mafia bosses, each more violent and inhumane than the previous one.
On the government’s side, however, the truth is boring: it doesn’t matter whether the PRI, the PRD or, from 2021 at state level, Morena governs; Whoever is in the local offices, its occupants are incompetent, negligent or suspected of complicity with the criminal.
Such a trend risks reaching Sheinbaum, who with a year at the Palace no longer has the benefit of novelty. His government neither contains the extortions in Apatzingán and its surroundings, nor can it translate the alleged decrease in murders into tranquility, in Michoacán and other entities.
Sheinbaum’s plan, if it is more than a ploy to get out of the political crisis that has thrown tens of thousands of Michoacán onto the streets, has a big question mark: when will the inhabitants of Michoacán know that they have won this battle?
Morena promotes a crime-fighting model that on the one hand militarizes the largest police force in the country’s history, and on the other seeks the subordination of prosecutors and judges and the centralization of authority; the so-called attack on the causes.
Today, Michoacán is experiencing the seventh year of morenoism, without substantial progress and, of course, without stopping the bleeding of murders due to extortion in the area where the self-defense groups emerged in 2013. On the contrary.
What will be the scope of the plan when the action of a government whose unchallenged political power has proven to be as incapable as that of governments that had counterweights? And even more, what will Sheinbaum do differently than he did before Manzo’s murder.
Is there a laboratory planned to be exported to other states? Or is it yet another error in the centralism of a cabinet full of people from outside what was previously called the province? Does the plan replace the ineffective government or will it be another of its collateral damage?
A plan on its knees, due to the known self-sufficiency of this administration, will be destined to fail by neglecting local dynamics where power factors are not always as positive as they claim to be. For this reason, to discern, a Beef was needed.
Municipalities in a large part of the country experience to the extreme the criminal capture that takes advantage of the electoral ambition of people of all parties. If he does not take responsibility for defining the original sins of the elected powers, starting with the governor, the Michoacán plan will fall apart with the links between criminals and politicians.
It cannot be ruled out that mayors will be assassinated to destabilize. This does not discount the fact that perceptions of violence have not decreased in line with official statistics and that murders like this empower communities who rightly and with first-hand stories demand justice.
There are many Uruapan. And too many Michoacáns.
The first, municipalities suffering from extortion and threats, the weakness and/or corruption of the police, the ineffectiveness of the National Guard…, the second, states in full institutional dysfunction, lack of resources and governors who do not govern.
The Michoacán plan will be known soon. I hope he does not invent what has been invented, nor does he want to supplant what should be encouraged: city councils governed by peers, supervised by the State Congress, where the governor guarantees balance and harmonizes the struggles, with an effective and honest police, a prosecutor’s office that investigates diligently and judges who deliver timely justice… the rest is the less.
Without tested and efficient authorities, with the absence of collaboration on the part of politicians of respective competence, and the sectarian and refractory distance from the Palace, social programs “to combat the causes” are not an everyday occurrence. Not anymore. And projects like that of Michoacán, a six-year event with no present or future.
The unresolvable tension between figures of victims of violence without identity presumed by Sheinbaum and tragedies with names and families will make us suffer cyclical crises. The government must refine the plan for Mexico, not necessarily improvise one for Michoacán.
Containing criminal power, an undertaking in which Sheinbaum is engaged, means not repeating the mistake of not listening to the demands of an authority which, on behalf of its people, asks for support and dialogue. Whatever the party.
Unfortunately, sooner or later there may be more deaths, more murdered like Manzo. What there cannot be is a government that continues without listening, clinging to a strategy that in the United States is very different from the decoration of the Palace Treasury.
Everyone knows this all started too long ago. The hope is that soon everyone will be able to say when, and with which victim, the end of the discord began that led to a model that made criminals less powerful and marginalized them from politics.
