March 23, 1994—Luis Donaldo Colosio, the leading candidate in Mexico’s upcoming presidential election, is about to deliver a speech at a rally in Tijuana. It is assumed he will easily win. Loud music is playing. Colosio is being jostled forward by the crowd. They are chanting his name, excited to hear their candidate speak. Suddenly shots are fired. Everything erupts into chaos. Colosio is mortally wounded, shot twice in the head and stomach. He is rushed to the local hospital, and dies hours later.
This was an enormously important event in Mexico’s political history. We happened to stay in Colosio’s hometown yesterday, Magdalena de Kino, and took time to visit his mausoleum.
The murder of Colosio has many parallels to the murder of John F. Kennedy, and inflicted a similar trauma on the people of this country. There is a single grainy video that recorded the event. The gunman, Mario Aburto, a poor local factory worker, was immediately caught and beaten by the crowd, and later sentenced to life in prison. But it’s widely believed that there were other shooters, and that higher-ups within Colosio’s own party, the right-wing Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, organized his assassination.
Doctors say that his wounds were caused by two different calibers. A federal agent was found with blood on his shirt and gunpowder residue on his hands, but he was ultimately set free. The entire investigation was botched. No one knows who really killed Colosio. Indeed, when we visited his mausoleum—a big beautiful pyramid tucked behind white gates and towering trees—the first thing I noticed in the vault was an illustration of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Luis Donaldo Colosio standing together. All martyrs for their causes.
What was Colosio’s cause? Just days before he was killed, he gave a now famous speech in Mexico City in which he said “I see a Mexico with hunger and thirst for justice.” Colosio was promising to bring real change to Mexico, a country ruled by the same corrupt political party for decades. Only in 2000 did a member of the opposition party, the PAN, finally succeed in taking the presidency.
Throughout our trip we’ve seen TV commercials, billboards, and murals promoting different candidates for Mexico’s upcoming election, scheduled for July 1. I’ve made it a habit to ask people which candidate they support (asking rude questions is easy when you have translators). I’ve been shocked to find that no one plans to vote. That’s not an exaggeration. “Will your friends or members of your family vote?” Same answer.
No one likes the candidates, and no one sees any reason to care about, what they believe to be, a predetermined outcome. The entire system is corrupt, so why bother? This morning, at Colosio’s tomb, the caretaker we met said he planned to vote, but only because he believes his name and ballot, if left blank, would be used to support the ruling party. Voters are discouraged and disillusioned with their democracy. Colosio remains the ultimate proof that the people will not be allowed to choose.
People I’ve spoken with believe the PRI (which has won all but two presidential elections since 1934) is a puppet of the U.S. government. Current president Enrique Peña Nieto is especially unpopular for passing energy reforms that have doubled the price of gasoline, and lowering the minimum wage from 60 to 7 pesos an hour (38 cents). As Dolores, the woman who fed us chicken mole in Mexicali, said “If you can’t trust the U.S. president and you can’t trust the Mexican president, who can you trust?”
But the plot thickens: There is a candidate running in this year’s election that some people are genuinely excited about, potentially in a way Mexico hasn’t seen in years. His name is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and they call him AMLO. His followers are called AMLOVERS. He has his own far left party called the Morena. In previous years it would have been ridiculous to think that such a candidate could win. He’s run for president three times already, and people believe that he actually succeeded on two of those occasions. But this time it’s different. Why do people think he can win? What gives them hope? If Donald Trump can win in the United States, surely AMLO can win in Mexico they reason.
The caretaker we talked to this morning, a Colosio fanatic, agreed with the theory. “They’re both wildcards. Maybe they can understand each other,” he said.
