Who was Luis Donaldo Colosio, the controversial politician who was assassinated months before being elected president of Mexico?
Find out in this short translated article from Milenio:
Twenty-five years after the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, society's interest in knowing who he was and what he did remains as valid as that March 6, 1994, when he delivered his cathartic speech on the foundations of the PRI, at the Monument to the Revolution.
Son of Luis Colosio and Ofelia Murrieta, he was born on February 10, 1950, in Magdalena de Kino, Sonora. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Economics from Tec de Monterrey and a master's degree in regional economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
According to the informative publication of the PRI La República, while he was in the sixth year of primary school he won first place in a regional oratory contest and his prize was to visit and shake hands with then-president Adolfo López Mateos, in Mexico City.
He joined the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary in 1979 and parallel to his political career taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Colegio de México (Colmex) and the Universidad Anáhuac, where he met Diana Laura Riojas, who was his wife, according to the publication.
In 1982 he obtained a position in the Secretariat of Programming and Budget, then headed by Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado. Three years later (1985) he won the federal deputation for Sonora and assumed the presidency of the Programming, Budget and Public Account Commission of the Chamber of Deputies.
According to the César Camacho organization, in 1987 he was appointed senior official of the PRI's National Executive Committee (CEN); however, one year was enough for him to become its national leader and hold a seat as a federal senator. Under his leadership, the Institutional Revolutionary obtained the majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, during the federal elections of August 18, 1991, according to the history of the Federal Electoral Institute.
In that same year, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (who was his godfather when he entered the party) incorporated him into the federal cabinet as Secretary of Social Development. On November 28, 1993, Colosio consolidated the PRI's candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic and left his colleagues Manuel Camacho Solís and José María Córdoba Montoya behind.
The cathartic moment of his political career came on March 6, 1994, when he delivered a speech at the Monument to the Revolution in which he demanded the modernization of the PRI based on the demands of history and the country's poor. Just 17 days later (March 23) Luis Donaldo Colosio died after being shot by Mario Aburto, a confessed murderer, after concluding a rally in Lomas Taurinas, Tijuana, considered the poorest neighborhood in the country.
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