EYDER PERALTA, HOST:
Here in Mexico, an assassination has made huge waves. Carlos Manzo was the mayor of a city called Uruapan in the state of Michoacan. He launched a full-frontal assault on organized crime. He told his officers to shoot criminals without hesitation. In a country drowning in corruption and violence, he became a folk hero. But during last month's Day of the Dead celebration, he was killed by a lone gunman. Protests erupted in his state, and last month, the indignation spread here to Mexico City.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARCHING BAND)
PERALTA: Thousands walk the streets of downtown, led by a big band. Some protesters dance like Carlos Manzo used to.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARCHING BAND)
PERALTA: But as the crowd gets closer to the presidential palace, the chants grow angry.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Chanting in Spanish).
PERALTA: "End the agreement," they denounced. "End the narco state." When they are feet away from the president's palace, their anger explodes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: Young people, old people, people from the city, others who came from villages, band together to bring down the metal barricades that protect the palace. And then they face off with police.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: Police fire stun grenades, tear gas. Protesters hurl stones. This is for Manzo, they shout.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "This is the force you should use against the narcos," they scream. Lourdes Campos (ph), who's in her 60s, stands in awe. She's seen many protests, but this one had her thinking that maybe Mexico can change.
LOURDES CAMPOS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "They're going to regret the day they ordered Manzo's assassination," she says. A few days after that protest, I find Esteban Constantino Magana (ph) at the main plaza in Uruapan. This is where he saw his friend shot seven times.
ESTEBAN CONSTANTINO MAGANA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: He kept driving past this place, but he hadn't dared to stop until tonight. The plaza is still cordoned off on the sidewalks. On the grass, there are dozens of candles that were trampled when people ran from the gunshots.
MAGANA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Right now, I feel impotent," he says. "I feel sad." Magana says Carlos Manzo's project started small. They set up a table in the town center where they would sit every afternoon to hear people's problems.
MAGANA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Before meeting Carlos," he says, "I thought you had to be a millionaire to help others."
MAGANA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "But he taught me all you needed was the desire to help." At that table, they helped people find medicines. They helped them fight back against mistreatment at government offices, and they helped them get access to services at public hospitals.
MAGANA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Manzo," he says, "would stand silently outside hospitals with a placard and a bandana over his mouth until a patient was given a surgery or the medicine they needed." Magana smiles big.
MAGANA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "We got into a lot of trouble," he says. They all wore straw hats, so they became known as the movement of the hat. And Manzo became incredibly popular. In 2021, he won a congressional seat by a landslide, and almost immediately, he began causing more trouble.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: In 2023, he slapped and kicked a state trooper who he said was trying to extort a citizen. The people of Uruapan joined him, pelting the police with rocks.
(CROSSTALK)
PERALTA: When he became mayor in September, he became a bulldozer. In the same plaza where he would be killed, he told his police force, everything changes now.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CARLOS MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I've been told that this city is run by this person or that person."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
C MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I want to be clear," he said, "The people run this town." He banned police from covering their faces. He hired citizens to keep watch over them. Manzo himself, wearing a bulletproof vest, went on patrol.
(SOUNDBITE OF HELICOPTER)
PERALTA: Once he even rode a helicopter into the narco-controlled hills and literally called the shots.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: This September, one of his police officers was assassinated at a checkpoint.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUMPET PLAYING)
PERALTA: Everyone around Manzo saw the killing as a warning.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking Spanish).
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOT)
PERALTA: Independence Day celebrations were canceled. The town held a funeral instead, but Manzo didn't back down.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
C MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I still want to deliver the traditional cry," he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
C MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: But a cry for justice, justice for our officer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
C MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Justice for the disappeared."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
C MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Justice so that organized crime groups are punished." And then he did something incredibly dangerous in Mexico - he named names.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
C MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I mean the Jalisco New Generation Cartel," he said, "and the Knights Templar." Manzo was killed less than two months after that, at a Day of the Dead celebration with hundreds of others. He had just put down his baby boy when a gunman took aim.
JUAN DANIEL MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: His brother, Juan Daniel, says Manzo was a voice that didn't exist in Mexico. He says it was planned. His brother wanted to be president. He says Manzo made a bet that a head-on confrontation with crime could get him there.
J MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "It was a risky bet," he says, "that he ended up losing." Juan Daniel Manzo is the deputy secretary of the interior for the state of Michoacan. Organized Crime in Mexico, he says, is a monster. Its tentacles reach across borders and into every crevice, from government to business. He wishes, he says, that his brother had been more prudent.
J MANZO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "A fight like this calls for big resources - firepower, intelligence. It's not a fight," he says, "that you can win alone."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in Spanish).
PERALTA: The big cemetery in Uruapan is full of gravestones for young men in their 20s. Family members sit on graves playing music for the departed. Uruapan was where the brutality of the drug wars in Mexico first became apparent. It was here where in 2006, gunmen entered a bar and emptied a bag full of severed heads onto a dance floor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in Spanish).
PERALTA: At Carlos Manzo's grave, Guadalupe Fernandez (ph) and Maria Martinez (ph) bring flowers before Manzo. They say this place was lawless - shootouts, robberies, kidnappings.
GUADALUPE FERNANDEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: Fernandez stops herself as she mentions police. She looks over her shoulder.
FERNANDEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "We're worried that we'll go back to how things used to be," she says.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL TOLLING)
PERALTA: Carlos Manzo left behind two kids. And after his death, his straw hat movement chose his wife to replace him as mayor. I meet Grecia Quiroz at City Hall. She's a petite woman with braces on her teeth. She walks in holding Manzo's hat.
GRECIA QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "The truth is," she says, "I've been thinking a lot about his actions. When I'm alone," she says, "I ask, what were you thinking?"
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Did you think nothing would happen to you?"
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Did you even think about our kids or that future that you wanted so much?"
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Sometimes," she says, "I think that maybe this is what he wanted." Since Manzo's death, Quiroz has given rousing speeches. She's calmed tempers on the streets. She's told police that she won't tolerate corruption, either. I asked her, aren't you afraid you'll face the same fate as your husband?
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I'll be honest," she says, "the first thing I wanted to do was grab my kids and run far away from here."
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "But then I felt like Carlos was next to me."
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish)..
PERALTA: "And running, she said, would have felt like a betrayal." Of course, she's scared, she says, but this has now become her duty, her obligation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEAN ANGUS WATSON'S "SIREN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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