‘Who’s Pulling the Rug From Under Our Feet?’ : Mexico: In a country stalked by accelerating violence, Colosio’s death is symbolic.

From the day of his destape, his designation last Nov. 28 as the governing party’s candidate, his campaign was dogged by misfortune. After Jan. 1, the shadow of Chiapas stalked him, and his public appearances were relegated to the inside pages of the papers.

Wherever Luis Donaldo Colosio went, the name of Manuel Camacho Solis, one of his principal rivals in the party, followed him, and he was harried by rumors that he would be replaced or could lose next August’s election. The uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army dealt him a fatal blow; it altered the familiar face of his constituency, crippled his campaign.

Colosio tried to confront these times of uncertainty with optimism. Branded as President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s man, he wanted to be his own man and demonstrate his independence in his speeches.

Destiny lay in wait for him on Wednesday at the hands of an assassin lurking among a crowd in the working-class Tijuana suburb of Lomas Taurinas, in Baja California Norte, at another border troubled by political unrest, social insecurity and migratory pressures. But this border does not face Central America and underdevelopment, as in Chiapas; it faces the most powerful country on Earth, a juxtaposition that serves as yet another reminder of their poverty to its inhabitants.

One could say that the borders killed Colosio. The southern border dealt the political blow, the northern border fired the shots. And worst of all, no one knows for certain what is happening in Mexico, who’s pulling the rug from under our feet, who’s behind the accelerating violence. Our present reality is being reconfigured, the course of our history changed, although we don’t know in which direction. A year of political, social and economic turbulence most probably lies ahead. We hope it will be only a year, and then we will return to stability and the road to democracy.

Acts such as the assassination of Colosio do not lead to democracy but to political barbarism. The pistolero who fired at the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party fired at all Mexicans, for we will all suffer from his act. No Mexican in his right mind can or should condone violence as a form of political expression.

Although we still do not know the motives of the gunman who committed this crime and whether he acted alone or as the instrument of a conspiracy, there is one thing we do know: Colosio is the first significant political victim of the climate of violence that Mexico has been experiencing since New Year’s Day. Perhaps a crime of this magnitude would not have been possible before the events in Chiapas. It has irretrievably transformed the atmosphere of the August elections.

Nearly 500 kidnapings took place in Mexico during the past year--and the murder of a cardinal last May in Guadalajara as well as a slew of armed robberies on our roads and in our cities. An increasing tide of violence, in which the hand of the police is often discernible, is invading our daily life. The crowds gathered in Mexico City to bid farewell to Colosio’s body were clamoring for justice.

If Mexico manages to emerge unscathed, it will be as a stronger and more democratic country, worthy of its history and culture and ready to enter the 21st Century under its next president, chosen in what must be, finally, a clean election.

Colosio ran for Tlatoani, supreme ruler of the Mexican political system; without becoming emperor, he suffered the fate of Julius Caesar and succumbed to his own Ides of March.