1994 Mexican general election

Items from the Fernández de Cevallos (PAN) and Cárdenas (PRD) campaigns.

Outgoing President Carlos Salinas de Gortari chose his Secretary of Social Development, Luis Donaldo Colosio, to be the PRI presidential candidate. Salinas' choice sparked a brief internal conflict in the government, as Manuel Camacho Solís, who was then Mayor of Mexico City, had expected himself to be the PRI candidate, and quit his position in protest. President Salinas immediately appointed Camacho as Minister of Foreign Relations to hide the conflict, and tried to appease him. In the aftermath of the Zapatista uprising, Camacho was designated Peace Commissioner in Chiapas.

The PAN chose Diego Fernández de Cevallos as their candidate through an internal convention.

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas ran for the presidency once again, this time as the candidate of the PRD, the party he founded in 1989.

Six other parties presented their candidates.

Colosio campaign items.

Colosio campaign buttons.

In the initial months of the campaign, PRI candidate Colosio expressed dissatisfaction with his campaign management, as polls indicated his popular support was far lower than earlier PRI candidates. Colosio's campaign lacked funding and had problems getting media coverage in the wake of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Due to this poor performance, the PRI leadership considered replacing Colosio as the presidential candidate. At the same time, Camacho's popularity was rising due to his role as mediator in the Zapatista conflict, and it was rumoured that he might replace Colosio as the presidential candidate. At one point, President Salinas had to state to the media "Don't get confused, Colosio is the candidate".

Due to his campaign's underperformance, Colosio tried to distance himself from the outgoing President. On 6 March 1994, the anniversary of the PRI's founding, Colosio broke with Salinas in a controversial-but-popular speech in front of the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City. In his speech, Colosio spoke against government abuse, and in support of indigenous peoples and the people's independence from government. The speech was controversial, as it echoed many of the beliefs of the ZANL platform.[2]

On 22 March, Camacho himself stated that he was not interested in being the PRI candidate, instead focusing on the Chiapas conflict. The day after Camacho's statement, Colosio was killed.

Water bottles from the Colosio, Fernández de Cevallos and Zedillo campaigns.

At 5:05 PM PST on 23 March, at a campaign rally in Lomas Taurinas, a poor neighborhood of Tijuana, Colosio was shot in the head with a .38 Special by Mario Aburto Martínez at a distance of a few centimeters. Colosio collapsed and was rushed to the city's main hospital after plans to fly him to an American hospital were cancelled. His death was announced a few hours later amid inconsistent eyewitness reports. The assassination of Colosio was the first magnicide to occur in Mexico since the murder of Álvaro Obregón in 1928.

The assassination had a profound impact on Mexican public opinion, already tumultuous by the conflict in Chiapas.

Many conspiracy theories about the assassination persist, including that it was orchestrated by drug traffickers.[3] However, the most accepted theory among the Mexican people is that he was betrayed by his party and that the murder was orchestrated by high members of PRI, including President Salinas, as Colosio had begun to reject Salinas's political agenda.

The shooter, Mario Aburto Martínez, was arrested at the site and never wavered from his story that he had acted alone. Nonetheless, many theories still surround the assassination. The authorities were criticized for their poor handling of Aburto, having shaved, bathed, and given him a prison haircut before showing him to the media, which started rumors about whether a man who looked so different from the one arrested was really the murderer. Colosio received three bullet wounds, and it was never clear if they could have been done by a single person or not. The case was officially closed after many prosecutors investigated it, but after the many mishandlings of the investigation and contradictory versions, the controversy continues. Aburto remains imprisoned at the high-security La Palma facility in Almoloya de Juárez.

Zedillo campaign buttons

Zedillo campaign items.

A ticket for a fundraising raffle for the Cevallos campaign.

President Salinas declared three days of national mourning after Colosio's death, while all the opposition candidates lamented the assassination and called for an end to political violence.

In the aftermath, many PRI members sought to replace the dead candidate. In the end, President Salinas chose Ernesto Zedillo, who had been Colosio's campaign manager, as the new PRI presidential candidate. Zedillo had been Secretary of Education, a relatively unimportant ministry; he had resigned to run the campaign of Colosio. Zedillo had never held elective office, sharing that trait with many previous presidents, but Zedillo was not otherwise politically experienced. He was perceived as a weak candidate. It was speculated that Salinas wished to perpetuate his power as Plutarco Elías Calles had in the wake of the 1928 assassination of president-elect Alvaro Obregón, controlling successor presidents.[4]

A Zedillo campaign hat, featuring his campaign's motto: "Well being for your family".

A Cárdenas campaign hat.

For the first time in Mexican history, the 1994 campaign featured televised debates between the Presidential candidates. On 12 May, the three main contenders Zedillo, Fernández de Cevallos, and Cárdenas participated in the first Presidential debate in Mexican history. An estimated audience of 34 million watched the debate. Polls after the debate indicated that the PAN candidate, Diego Fernández de Cevallos, had defeated the other two candidates, and had become capable of defeating the PRI candidate in the elections.[5]

A phone survey carried out by the Oficina de la Presidencia de la República Mexicana after the debate shows the widespread perception of Cevallos' victory in the debate, as well as Zedillo's lackluster performance and the appalling reception of Cárdenas' performance:

However, in the aftermath of the debate, Fernández de Cevallos seemed to decrease his media presence, and Zedillo continued in the first place at the polls; on the other hand, the polls also indicated that Zedillo might win with less than 50% of the popular vote, something unprecedented for a PRI candidate (notwithstanding previous controversial elections in which the PRI was accused of fraud).

After the 12 May debate between the main three contenders, there was also a debate between the Presidential candidates of smaller parties.

Based on the official results of the Federal Electoral Institute.