Word: colosio
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last murder of a national leader occurred in 1928 when President-elect Alvaro Obregon was shot. Colosio's assassination jolts Mexicans with the prospect that violence may be subverting the modern society they thought they were building. It also puts the political focus between now and the Aug. 21 presidential election on two main issues: What will be done to ease the poverty that still afflicts so many Mexicans, and how much electoral reform will the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or P.R.I., accept without endangering its 65-year grip on the presidency -- which opponents regularly charge has been maintained through...
Mexican Presidents cannot serve more than one term, but traditionally they have secretly selected the party's nominee and, in the process, their successor. Salinas picked Colosio, who then headed the government's social development secretariat last November, and most experts considered his election close to a sure thing. Now, only five months before the balloting, the P.R.I. has to find another candidate quickly, not only to resume campaigning but also to tamp down the tide of anxiety and insecurity. Uncharacteristically cooperative, the eight candidates suspended their campaigns...
Agustin Lopez Santiz understands that all too well. He lives in the southern state of Chiapas, at the opposite end of the country from the shantytown where Colosio was shot. Santiz, 66, sits barefoot in the dust of Tuxaquilja, a village of 600 people, picking corn off a cob to feed his chickens. The earth is dry, rocky, infertile. Roads are ruts, and there are few public services. Looking down at the dirt, he says in a mixture of Spanish and Tzeltal, the local Indian tongue, "This is where we are from. We cannot leave...
...Salinas chose as his negotiator was Manuel Camacho Solis, a former mayor of Mexico City who had resigned when he lost out to Colosio in the competition for Salinas' blessing as the presidential nominee. As a consolation, Salinas named Camacho Foreign Minister, then tapped him to represent the government in the peace talks. In that role he stole the limelight from Colosio, and in late February he came up with tentative agreements on improved medical care, housing and other services for impoverished communities, along with proposed reforms intended to make elections harder...
Camacho infuriated much of the P.R.I. by using his position in the peacemaking spotlight to hint that he might make an independent run for the presidency. Uncertainty over his spoiler potential had ruffled the stock market and shaken the peso. Only last Tuesday, the day before Colosio was murdered, did the ex-mayor finally announce he would stick to the peace talks rather than run. But he had already made life difficult for Colosio by focusing attention on the government's failure to provide basic services for the poorest parts of the country and putting pressure on the candidate...