A few months ago, I admitted in print that I hadn’t voted for President Claudia Sheinbaum or her party, but, quite unexpectedly, I was moved by the promise of her first months in office. There was something genuinely hopeful about the way she handled proposals from Washington, how she and the federal security minister, Omar Harfuch, dealt with criminal organizations, how she made bold efforts to attract foreign investment, and, not least, how she appointed a self-proclaimed feminist cabinet.
I said then—and I say it now—that the judicial reform, whose final steps toward becoming law she oversaw, was a dangerous step backward. But even so, hope remained. Even among my skeptical friends, that faint but palpable sense of possibility lingered in our conversations.
The assassination and polarization of a mayor in Michoacán
However, today that hope has solidified. The murder of Carlos Manzo was the turning point, not only because of its brutality but also because of the unsettling sense of déjà vu it produced.
Manzo refused to be swallowed up by the anonymous tide of statistics. He stood before the camera, pleading with the president to protect his city—Uruapan. Sheinbaum’s response, from the hallowed stage of the morning press conference, was to urge Manzo to follow official procedures. Bureaucracy is offered as a balm.
He did so obediently. In the end, the “protection” of the Mexican National Guard extended to a single man, not to a community plagued by real danger.
Protests erupted, first in Uruapan and then throughout Michoacán. The unrest found its face and symbol: the sombrero, a local cry for basic security. As former electoral councilor Luis Carlos Ugalde observed, these were the perfect conditions for a genuine mobilization: a fallen leader, a powerful symbol, a crisis, and an urgent call to action.
But let’s not mistake consequences for coincidence. According to a report by Wired magazine, a group of young Mexicans, organized on Discord, the online chat platform favored by gamers worldwide, were inspired by the Nepalese movement to denounce corruption and violence. However, almost immediately after Manzo’s assassination, profiles emerged on social media for “Generation Z,” supposedly an idealistic and leaderless movement, but one that quickly became entangled with agents of the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
From the outset, the movement showed signs of being co-opted, as Sheinbaum herself pointed out.
Source: aconagua
