Thirty years ago, March 23, 1994, is a date etched in the hearts and minds of any Mexicans old enough to remember it and those too young who inevitably read and hear about it.

That was when Luis Donaldo Colosio, age 44 and the presidential candidate of Mexico’s long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, was brutally murdered barely six weeks before his certain election to the presidency. Having just concluded a speech at a rally in the city of Lomas Taurinas in Tijuana, Candidate Colosio stepped off a stage and plunged into an adoring crowd. A gunshot suddenly rang out, and Colosio was shot point-blank near the ear with a Taurus .38 caliber special. A second shot hit his abdomen, whereupon he was finally rushed to a hospital, dying despite the physicians’ effort’s best efforts.

In a country where the last assassination of a presidential candidate was in 1928, when President-elect Alvaro Obregon was shot before taking office, this horrible act was almost unprecedented. But where Obregon had previously served as president from 1920-24, Colosio was young, a reformer, and a truly fresh face for the PRI which had ruled Mexico for the previous 68 years and was now clearly odious with corruption.

“Colosio’s murder was devastating for Mexico,” Ariel Moutsatsos, US bureau chief and correspondent for the Mexican TV network Televisia, recalled to Newsmax, “It deprived the country of a future of much needed progress and change without rupture. People connected with him because he came from humble origins and worked his way to the top based on great effort. He was a role model of both: a good politician and a successful middle-class Mexican.”

Like John F. Kennedy, Colosio is remembered today as a charismatic leader who brought hope and optimism to his country only to be cut down in the prime of his life. More than a few Mexicans speculate that had Colosio been elected, he might have created a more competitive atmosphere in his country’s tumultuous politics, that the PRI (which lost the next elections in 2000 and ’06) might have reformed itself, and that Mexico’s current president would be someone other than the fiery far-leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (“AMLO”), and that the Mexican government might very well have been reformed enough to successfully take on the country’s fearsome drug cartels.

The son of a meatpacker who became mayor of the town of Magdaleno de Kino, the young Colosio earned a degree in economics from the prestigious Institute of Technology and Higher Studies in Monterrey and a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. But politics beckoned Colosio and he joined the PRI in 1979 and befriended one of its up-and-coming leaders, Carlos Salinas. Colosio’s humble roots were lightyears removed from those of the PRI’s ruling oligarchy, but he rose as the beneficiary of friend Salinas — son of a Cabinet minister and onetime presidential hopeful.

In short order, Colosio became a member of Congress, senator, and under Salinas (who was elected president in 1988) secretary of social development. He also served as president (chairman) of the PRI and got a close-up look at the corruption of a political system Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa famously characterized as “the perfect dictatorship.” There was considerable evidence of fraud in Salinas’ 1988 election and, in fact, an estimated 45 percent of the ballots weren’t counted and government employees were threatened with docking of their pay for failure to attend PRI rallies.

The next election coming up was for governor of Tijuana and, as party leader, Colosio knew the opposition PAN (National Action Party) was strong. He gave his blessings to citizens’ militias protecting ballot boxes and when the PRI lost a major election for the first time in 60 years, a gracious Colosio conceded and said “competition unifies us, democracy and good will strengthen us.”

Designated by Salinas and the party as their presidential candidate in 1994, Colosio knew well that underhanded insiders and questionable methods were behind his nomination. But he publicly vowed to change it all.

“I declare my commitment to reform the seat of power and make it democratic, as well as wipe out any traces of authoritarianism,” he vowed in a speech March 6, adding that “I see a Mexico hungry and thirsty for justice. A Mexico of people aggrieved by the distortions imposed on the law by those who should serve it [so] we have to overcome the attitudes that weaken our capacity for innovation and change […] Let’s start by affirming our identity, our militant pride and let us affirm our independence from the government.”

Strong medicine, all right. 17 days later, he was dead.

Celebrated Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, in his epic 2006 novel “The Eagle’s Throne,” writes of a presidential election in 2024 with numerous characters based on current Mexican political players. A wily former president (clearly based on Salinas) regularly holds court at a coffee shop in Veracruz and recalls a candidate assassinated years ago just before his election (obviously Colosio with a pseudonym). He reveals that Mexico at the time was not ready for his radical reform, that the assassination was a hoax staged by him, and that the supposedly slain candidate has been held in a private prison and wears a green opal mask much like Alexandre Dumas’ Man in the Iron Mask (allegedly the true King of France).

Mexico now needs this zealous reform, declares the former president, and, likening himself to God and his protégé to Jesus Christ, he vows to release him from prison in time for the election.

That was an example of Fuentes’ fervid imagination and flair for fiction. But it also serves as an example of how Luis Donaldo Colosio’s memory and promise live on.

“His vision of social justice and the culture of work that he represented should be an inspiration for a better future in a country that is currently going through a period of political, social and moral darkness,’ said Televisia’s Moutsatsos.

“And the pain we Mexicans feel lingers to this day,” wrote Mexican author Rafael Bracho, “We had a white knight, a shining figure to champion the cause of egalitarianism and meritocracy tragically cut down in his prime, before he’d had a chance to carry out his reform in Mexico.”

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