Arrest rekindles an enduring political mystery in Mexico

Focus on ’94 assassination echoes Kennedy case

- By Patrick J. McDonnell | REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY

DAVID MAUNG Associated Press A 2004 ceremony in Tijuana honors slain candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.

A breakthrough in the decades-long investigation of a political assassination that convulsed the nation?

Or a political stunt meant to distract from more pressing issues?

Those are the questions that emerged in Mexico after the recent arrest of a suspected “second shooter” in the 1994 assassination of a young and charismatic presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, in one of the most consequential — and contentious — events of recent Mexican history. Colosio was gunned down at a campaign rally in the border city of Tijuana.

Doubts and conspiracy theories have long swirled over Colosio’s killing, and many have compared the lingering uncertainty about Colosio’s demise to the never-ending debate in the United States surrounding the 1963 killing of President Kennedy, an assassination also blamed on a lone gunman with ill-defined motives.

At the time of his slaying, Colosio was the presidential candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed Mexico in authoritarian fashion for most of the 20th century.

On track to be elected Mexico's next president a few months later, Colosio, 44, was a progressive voice inside the rigid hierarchy of the PRI. He vowed to institute reforms and clean up deeply entrenched corruption and cronyism. Some have speculated that hardliners within the ruling party were behind his killing a theory long rejected by the PRI leadership.

The arrest of an alleged accomplice in the Colosio killing came days after another high-profile political assassination, this time of Mayor Carlos Manzo of the western city of Uruapan. Authorities blame organized crime for the killing of Manzo, who was gunned down at a Day of the Dead festival this month in what some call Mexico's most sensational political assassination since Colosio's slaying.