MEXICO CITY — A breakthrough in the decades-long investigation into a political assassination that shocked the nation?
Or a political stunt designed to distract attention from more pressing issues?
These are the questions that have emerged in Mexico following the arrest last weekend of the alleged “second shooter” in the 1994 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio. shot at a rally in the border city of Tijuana.
His assassination is widely regarded as one of the most important and controversial events in recent Mexican history.
Doubts and conspiracy theories Colosio's murder has long been discussed, with long blame placed on a “lone gunman” who was captured at the scene. Many have compared the ongoing uncertainty over Colosio's death to the endless debate in the United States surrounding the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an assassination that also was blamed on a lone perpetrator with unclear motives.
Many in Mexico dispute the prevailing theory that apparently apolitical factory worker Mario Aburto shot the candidate twice at point-blank range as Colosio spoke to citizens on the campaign trail.
“I looked up and saw a gun right in front of me,” Maria Vidal, who walked with Colosio to the scene, told The Times in 1994. “Then I saw him fall to the ground. Blood was pouring out of his head.”
Colosio was shot once in the head and once in the abdomen, raising speculation that a second gunman was involved.
People lay flowers in memory of Luis Donaldo Colosio on March 23, 2004, during a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of his murder in Tijuana.
(David Maung/Associated Press)
Aburto, who claims he was tortured into confessing, continues to serve a 45-year prison sentence.
Colosio's case has spawned tens of thousands of pages of testimony from hundreds of witnesses, as well as books, documentaries and a television miniseries on Netflix that explore the question: What really happened in Tijuana on March 23, 1994?
Everyone from political insiders to drug traffickers was rumored to be behind Colosio's murder, fueling unrest in Mexico. 1994 began with the Zapatista uprising in the south, quickly followed by the stunning assassination of Colosio, and culminating in the December collapse of the peso, causing an economic crisis.
More than a quarter-century after the murder, Mexican writer Cuauhtémoc Ruiz captured the pervasive sense of ambiguity in his 2020 book Colosio: Sospechosos y Encubridores—roughly, Colosio: Suspects and Cover-Ups.
The Colosio case even gave rise to its own version Zapruder filmlegendary home movie about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Video clips of the fateful 1994 rally show Colosio, his curly black hair streaked with confetti, shaking hands and signing autographs as he made his way through a cheering political crowd.
Suddenly, an image of a hand clutching a gun appears from the melee. The gun shoots directly into the right side of the candidate's head. Chaos ensues.
On Saturday, according to reports here, federal prosecutors in Tijuana Former intelligence agent arrestedJorge Antonio Sanchez Ortega, who has been wanted since last year in connection with Colosio's murder.
Sanchez Ortega, authorities said, was part of a federal defense team assigned to Colosio's rally in the Lomas Taurinas neighborhood of Tijuana, near the city's airport. The agent was arrested shortly after the murder, but prosecutors now say he was released and taken away as part of a cover-up. The agent's clothing was stained with the victim's blood and ballistics evidence indicated he fired a weapon, authorities said.
His new arrest follows a dramatic turn last year by Mexico's attorney general's office, which abruptly dropped charges of being a lone gunman. Instead, prosecutors confirmed the theory of a second shooter and named the suspect as “Jorge Antonio S.”, now identified as Sanchez Ortega.
However, the arrest of the former agent left more questions than answers. Prosecutors have not provided a comprehensive theory about why Colosio was targeted or who was behind his killing.
Neither the former agent nor his lawyer commented on the situation after the arrest.
Jesus Gonzalez Schmahl, the lawyer for Aburto, who was convicted of murder, hailed the arrest as a step toward finding out what really happened to Colosio.
“This will open the horizon of knowledge about what happened 31 years ago,” the lawyer said in a television interview.
But some have called the arrest a thinly disguised attempt to distract people from more pressing ongoing issues of crime and corruption.
Government President Claudia Sheinbaum is using the memory of Colosio “to hide his incompetence,” Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas, president of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), said at X. He said the president “has no shame and no idea how to govern.”
At the time of the assassination, Colosio was the presidential candidate of the PRI, which ruled Mexico authoritarianly for much of the 20th century. A few months later, he was on track to be elected Mexico's next president.
Colosio, 44, was considered a charismatic and progressive voice within the rigid PRI hierarchy. He promised to implement reforms and root out deep-rooted corruption and nepotism. Some have speculated that hardliners within the ruling party were behind his murder, a theory long rejected by the PRI leadership.
After Colosio's murder, PRI called Ernesto Zedillowho was Colosio's campaign manager as her candidate. Zedillo, a party loyalist and lackluster technocrat, won a landslide victory and served six years.
But these days the PRI is a weakened minority player in the opposition to the Sheinbaum government, elected under the banner of the now dominant Morena party.
The arrest of an alleged accomplice in the Colosio murder comes just days after another high-profile political murderThis time the mayor of the western city of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo. He was shot dead at the Day of the Dead festival this month in what some are calling Mexico's most sensational political assassination since Colosio's.
The killing of Manzo, who had criticized Sheinbaum's government for not doing more to fight the cartels, sparked widespread protests in his home state of Michoacán, where the cartel battle is taking place. Many have criticized Sheinbaum's government for what they call its lax approach to organized crime, a charge the president has rejected.
A generation after his assassination, Colosio's assassination remains an epochal event that continues to cast a shadow over Mexican politics.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sanchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.
