Widow continues husband’s fight against ruthless cartels

Kate Linthicum, Tribune News Service

Grecia Quiroz sometimes felt like she was married to a superhero. Most nights, after her husband, Carlos Manzo, tucked their small sons into bed, he donned a bullet-resistant vest, made the sign of the cross and strode out into the night. The mayor of Uruapan, the capital of Mexico's rich but violent avocado country, Manzo led police down dark alleys in search of kidnap victims and combed hillsides for cartel training camps. He chased car thieves by helicopter, exchanging gunfire with the suspects below.

Videos of these endeavors appeared online, and soon other people were calling Manzo a superhero, too. In a nation fed up with leaders seen as tolerating or colluding with organised crime, Manzo, 40, stood out. He called out "narco-politicians" by name, and fired police who solicited bribes. There was talk that he could become governor of Michoacán, or even president, a dream he had harbored since childhood.

Quiroz, 36, was proud of her husband. But she was also terrified, keenly aware of what happens in Mexico to those who challenge the status quo. She found herself inventing excuses to try to keep him home at night. In the end, Manzo's crusade would cost him his life — and force Quiroz to make a painful decision: abandon her husband's fight, or embrace it as her own.

Manzo was 21 when gunmen stormed an Uruapan nightclub not far from his mother's dress shop and rolled five human heads onto the dance floor. He was 34 when sicarios, or assassins, hanged nine corpses from a downtown bridge.

He had friends who had been kidnapped, killed or faced extortion by the gangsters who fought over drugs and control of the region's multibillion-dollar avocado trade. Manzo himself had once been stopped on a highway and robbed at gunpoint.

Confrontational since childhood — his mother recalls him challenging his teachers and practicing fiery speeches in the mirror — Manzo became disillusioned by his government's failure to contain crime. Two decades of federal strategies, including the deployment of soldiers and a sweeping social program called "hugs, not bullets," had left the cartels stronger than ever. Gangs forced business owners to pay "protection fees" and had added to their arsenals roadside bombs and drones rigged with explosives. While studying political science at university, Manzo had been seduced by theories of populism, which held that anger at elites could be weaponised at the ballot box.

He admired the vigilante armies that had formed in Michoacán beginning in 2013 — everyday men and women who took up arms against the cartels. And he was inspired by his father, an art gallery owner who had been a thorn in the side of local leaders, once staging a demonstration over what he claimed were rigged elections. One day, Manzo and a friend, Esteban Constantino Magaña, set up a table in Uruapan's central plaza and asked townspeople about their problems. The pair helped the sick find medicine and guided others through the labyrinth of municipal bureaucracy. Once, Manzo stood outside a hospital with a poster and gag over his mouth until a patient was granted surgery.

Manzo dressed like a farmer, with leather sandals and a white straw hat. He and his friends and their growing community of supporters became known as the movimiento del sombrero — the hat movement.

In 2021, Manzo was elected to Congress with Morena, a political party founded by then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, another populist who had campaigned against corruption. Quiroz, the daughter of local merchants and a former director of Uruapan's family services agency, joined Manzo's team. The pair grew close as they worked long hours to open free pharmacies and elder care programs. They married in 2022.

But the nearer Manzo was to the centre of traditional politics, the more he disdained them. In Congress, he clashed with Morena leaders, whom he accused of corruption and complacency. In 2023, he made national news after he confronted state police officers in Uruapan whom he accused of extorting from a woman and her daughter. He swung at the officers, who beat him and shoved him into a squad car.

"They don't want us watching them because they're robbing the avocado pickers," Manzo said after being released. "We've had enough!" He broke with Morena and in 2024 ran for mayor of Uruapan as an independent, campaigning with his first son, Carlitos, in his arms. Manzo was angry but oozed charisma, riding to events on horseback and often breaking into folkloric dance, clips of which went viral. He won in a landslide, and three other members of the hat movement secured seats in the state legislature.

Manzo purged the municipal police and pleaded with the federal government to send troops and military-grade weapons to Uruapan. Aside from a few photos of his family, he never bothered to decorate his office, spending most of his time in the street.

"He'd call me in the middle of the night— at 2 or 3am — to say, 'Hey, go fill that pothole,'" remembers Constantino, whom Manzo appointed as Uruapan's director of public works.