Who was Carlos Manzo, the mayor of Uruapan who demanded more security for the municipality and who was assassinated?

Spanish CNN
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Moments before being attacked with a gun in a public square in Uruapan, Mayor Carlos Manzo posted on Facebook an invitation to citizens to attend the Candle Festival, a local celebration. Manzo, who died Saturday evening as a result of this attack, regularly used social networks to publicize his activities. In broadcasts or other publications, he broadcasts information on roads, public works or even his meetings with the population.

In addition, he used these spaces to talk about one of his most interesting topics: security in Uruapan, one of the 113 municipalities of Michoacán, a state in southwest Mexico with problems of violence linked to the operation of organized crime groups.

From the House with Morena to mayor as an independent candidate

Manzo was born on May 9, 1985, according to his profile published in the Legislative Information System of the Mexican Ministry of the Interior (SIL). He was 40 years old.

According to the same source, he studied political science and public management at the Western Institute of Technology and Higher Studies (ITESO). In the private sector, he worked in an art gallery and as an administrative assistant and coordinator in three companies, while in the public sector, from 2017 to 2018, he was an auditor at the headquarters of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) in Michoacán.

In 2018 he was also a candidate for federal deputy, a position he achieved three years later within the ruling Morena party.

During this 2021-2024 legislature, he proposed an initiative to reform the Federal Penal Code in order to punish anyone who fires a firearm “pointed in the air without justification” with a sentence of one to four years in prison or a fine of 180 to 360 days. The proposal was abandoned in August 2024.

After completing his term as deputy, he presented himself as a candidate for mayor of Uruapan in the 2024 elections. He did not do so with Morena, a party from which he distanced himself, but under the cover of an independent candidacy, enshrined in Mexican legislation after the political-electoral reform of 2014.

In the elections, Manzo won the municipal presidency with 95,381 votes, or 66.7% of the 143,800 votes cast, according to the minutes of the vote published by the Electoral Institute of Michoacán (IEM). His closest competitor was Morena, with 21,215 votes.

Manzo, who referred to himself as “the one with the hat” because of the clothing he wore during public events, took office as municipal president of Uruapan on September 1, 2024. His term would end in 2027.

Less than a month ago, on October 8, Manzo posted on Facebook an appeal to President Claudia Sheinbaum and Federal Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch “not to leave Uruapan alone in the fight against the federal crimes that the Federation is responsible for combating.”

“As the municipality of Uruapan, we will continue to fight with our municipal police and with everything within our reach to resolve this problem of insecurity and violence that exists in the country,” said the mayor, who had already made other similar requests.

Since taking office, he has made security one of his main flags. On social networks he has published numerous requests to the federal government and the governor of Michoacán, Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, to strengthen the presence of the army and police in Uruapan, a municipality with significant agricultural activity and where producers denounce extortion by criminal groups.

This Sunday, a few hours after Manzo’s assassination, President Sheinbaum posted a message on

“Since the beginning of this administration, we have strengthened the security strategy. These unfortunate events urge us to strengthen it further. We reaffirm our commitment to deploy all efforts of the State to achieve peace and security with zero impunity and justice,” the President said.

Later, Secretary García Harfuch pointed out during a press conference that Manzo had federal protection through 14 members of the National Guard and argued that the mayor’s attackers took advantage of Saturday’s public event to attack.

So far, authorities have not said whether they have identified those suspected of carrying out the attack. García Harfuch said that the attacker was killed the same Saturday evening and did not have an identity document, which is why the Michoacán Prosecutor’s Office “is carrying out the corresponding expert work to obtain his identity.”

According to the secretary, a short weapon was also seized at the scene, linked to the attacks between two rival criminal groups that operate in this area of ​​Michoacán.

The non-governmental organization Insight Crime, which is dedicated to analyzing the criminal phenomenon in Latin America and the Caribbean, claims that the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, Carteles Unidos, La Familia Michoacana and Los Caballeros Templarios operate in Michoacán.

This Sunday, President Sheinbaum said that commanders from the Department of Defense and the National Guard were in communication with the mayor to resolve the city’s problems.

For his part, Governor Ramírez Bedolla declared in

Some political actors in Michoacán, however, believe that the federal and state governments have ignored Manzo’s requests to increase security in the municipality.

“When an authority decides to act differently, to raise its voice, to directly attack organized crime, then this is the price,” said Guillermo Valencia, friend of Manzo and leader of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Michoacán, in an interview granted this Sunday to CNN for the program Mirador Mundial.

“We were barely digesting the assassination of the lemon leader Bernardo Bravo, who was also executed a few days ago and which touched and shocked the region of Tierra Caliente and all of Michoacán, and now they are doing it with the only municipal president who dared to raise his voice and directly confront the scourge of organized crime. It is scandalous. I believe that the death of Carlos Manzo should not be in vain,” he added.

CNN has contacted the Mexican presidency and the government of Michoacán to request comment on these statements and is awaiting a response.

Meanwhile, Manzo’s funeral took place this Sunday, a crowded ceremony in which participants expressed sadness and outrage over what happened, as well as the demand that the security situation in Uruapan improve quickly.

In October, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) reported that 82.6% of Uruapan’s population does not feel safe in their city, one of the highest percentages among cities in the entire country and almost 20 points above the national average of 63%.