Uruapan (Mexico) (AFP) – The brazen murder of a small-city mayor shocked Mexico and forced President Claudia Sheinbaum to step up an offensive against all-powerful drug cartels.
But even after a deployment totalling thousands troops and the killing of a top cartel capo, she has struggled to impose peace in restive Pacific coast states. Residents of the state of Michoacan's second city Uruapan, have resigned themselves to live with violence. "You can't be out on the streets too late anymore," 24-year-old student Natalia Miranda told AFP. "If you're assaulted, you don't make it out alive." Uruapan, a city of more than 300,000 people, is the center of Mexico's multi-billion-dollar avocado industry. It's also a stronghold of several of the world's largest cocaine and fentanyl trafficking cartels. In the town square, people chat amiably in the shadow of a memorial to slain cowboy-hat-wearing mayor Carlos Manzo.The 40-year-old was shot multiple times during November's Day of the Dead festival, allegedly by a 17-year-old drug addict working for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.After his death, protesters set fire to public buildings and clashed with police, resulting in over 100 injuries.'We can't forget'Uruapan has a long history of violence. In 2006, armed groups tossed five human heads onto a nightclub dance floor in the city. In the 20 years since, there has been a cycle of intensifying violence."Michoacan was on the brink of becoming a failed state," governor Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla told AFP, recounting how farmers created self-defense militias just to survive. But the situation reached a point of inflection with Manzo's murder, as much for residents as for Sheinbaum's government.Around 20 people were arrested for Manzo's killing, including seven of his bodyguards. The young gunman was killed by the mayor's security team at the scene.
