Remembering Colosio

The assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio shook Mexico. His killing destroyed what was for many a hope for change, leaving behind a scar and a question of what could have been and never was.

In his March 6, 1994 speech, Colosio severely criticized his own Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for its lack of connection with the people and its neoliberal economic policy, while at the same time presenting a vision of a more just Mexico. That message, delivered on his party’s anniversary, was surprising for its candor and projected an image of a new breed of PRI candidate, someone capable of changing the musty, antidemocratic party structures from within. Seventeen days later, Colosio was assassinated in Tijuana.

To this day, this political context has called into question the official version of a solitary assassin: that Mario Aburto acted alone in killing the PRI’s presidential candidate. Most Mexicans believe that there was a political conspiracy behind the assassination.

Over time, most also now think that Colosio would have been a good president—at least better than his campaign manager, Ernesto Zedillo, who was named his replacement.

Imagining Colosio’s presidency is a hypothetical exercise. What is true is that Zedillo was the one who marked the end of the presidential “appointment” by internal election to determine the PRI’s candidate, and from Los Pinos acknowledged his party’s electoral defeat, with the first change in political control since 1929.

Colosio sparked hope for reforming the gigantic party-state of the PRI. Mexico would also change to become a more just nation. Hi assassination was a national tragedy that immortalized him as “the right candidate” and as the victim of a hidden power that felt threatened by a different kind of PRI candidate.