‘Highest Circles’ Blamed For ‘94 Mexico Killing

The 1994 assassination of a leading presidential candidate was plotted in “the highest circles of power” in Mexico, the capital’s Roman Catholic archdiocese claims.

The editorial in the Mexico City archdiocese’s Nuevo Criterio newspaper was one of the most direct statements yet of the widely held theory in Mexico that the still-unresolved killing was the result of a conspiracy in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The shooting of PRI candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio at a Tijuana campaign rally was “undeniably” the work of conspirators, not a solitary gunman, said the editorial in the twice-monthly newspaper. The newspaper is controlled by Archbishop Norberto Rivera, the church’s highest-ranking official in Mexico.

“The resources used in the crime and events afterward make us believe that … the mastermind was in the highest circles of power,” the editorial said.

The newspaper did not directly accuse then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, now living in Ireland, but said, “there are many testimonials to the violent and vengeful ways that ex-President Salinas resolved his difficulties with others.”