Colosio Assassination Probe Stalls, but Rumors Flourish

Like a Mexican political mural of old, the official account of the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio presents a dramatic picture of a group of conspirators surrounding and killing Colosio at a campaign rally here.

That version does not go beyond the surface, however: Authorities have not said anything about the motives and masterminds behind the crime, and the evidence they have made public consists mainly of indistinct videotapes. Nearly six weeks after the murder of the man who had been expected to become the country’s next president, Mexicans are confronting a host of questions--and tantalizing theories.

In response to mounting public suspicion of a high-level conspiracy, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has appointed an independent commission of five distinguished citizens, including government critics, to assist the investigation.

“The country wants to know the truth,” he said. “At the same time, it is necessary to avoid a climate of suspicions, one against another. Any investigation is difficult--it takes time--but we cannot allow this to create a climate of doubt.”

Although four of the Tijuana-based security guards hired for the political rally at which Colosio was shot were initially charged with aiding the accused gunman, Mario Aburto Martinez, the investigation by a special prosecutor has apparently bogged down.

QUESTIONS ABOUT EVIDENCE

A judge dropped charges against a politically connected former police commander who organized the security force, but upheld homicide charges against the other accused. However, even the case against them looks weak so far, according to government officials, lawyers and other observers.

“If they had more proof, they would have shown it,” a Mexican official said. “They can’t go back. But they can’t go forward either.”

This view predominates among those who believe Aburto acted alone. Officials of the Mexican attorney general’s office are not convinced by the case advanced by special prosecutor Miguel Montes Garcia, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Nonetheless, many Mexicans believe that Aburto was a pawn in a plot linked to a power struggle within Colosio’s own Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Aburto’s personality and his mysterious conduct, as well as the many unresolved questions--among them, was there a second gunman?--feed theories that Aburto was in league with others, say political commentators and many ordinary citizens.

Critics of the investigation fault the special prosecutor for operating out of Mexico City, 1,000 miles from the crime scene. The secretive inquiry seems curiously passive at times, they say. Mexican and U.S. reporters in Tijuana have been surprised to find that friends and acquaintances of Aburto whom they have interviewed have yet to be questioned by police.

FOCUS OF INVESTIGATION

When investigators arrested the alleged accomplices in early April, the probe focused on the 45-member crowd-control unit at the rally. The so-called Grupo Tucan consisted mainly of former police officers, some of whom had been dismissed for corruption after serving in the scandal-battered administration of former Gov. Xicotencatl Leyva Mortera, a stalwart of the PRI’s Old Guard.

The suspects’ profiles, particularly that of security chief Jose Rivapalacio, point in the direction of the ruling party’s authoritarian hard-liners, who seek to block the political reforms that Salinas promotes and Colosio promised to advance. Speculation centers on them as the authors of the assassination.

Rivapalacio belongs to the PRI governing council in Tijuana. Before leaving the state judicial police in 1989, sources say, he was chief homicide investigator. He reportedly amassed wealth and power--a co-worker described him as the “unofficial commander” of the police force.

San Diego police say they suspect him of ordering an unsolved attempted murder north of the border in 1987, in which an assailant stabbed Rivapalacio’s ex-wife 17 times and shot her companion.

“He’s sharp and he’s slick,” said the former co-worker, a veteran Baja detective. “Of all the suspects, he’s the only one I could see being involved in something as big as the assassination.”

SECURITY CHIEF’S DENIAL

Rivapalacio has denied involvement in the assassination and the assault on his ex-wife. He held a news conference last week in which he provided detailed information about the case against him, saying he knew it would collapse. He said he cooperated with investigators to “prove my innocence. I was tempted to flee. I was afraid. But I overcame my fear.”

Rivapalacio stopped short of asserting the innocence of the other suspects, whom he invited into the volunteer security force. But he painted a benign picture of his contact with them.

Although still under investigation, Rivapalacio said, “I remain confident in the legal system.”

The special prosecutor’s office appealed the judge’s decision to drop charges against Rivapalacio. It was also criticized by federal legislator Fernando Gomez Mont, a member of the new presidential commission.

“There can be indications that a person is guilty, but the judge lets him go because he was not close by,” said Gomez, the liaison to the federal probe for the governor of Baja California state. “This is a problem all over the world. I think there was plenty of evidence against him, but the judge did not agree.”

Authorities did not attribute a role to Rivapalacio except to allege that he added names of the accused accomplices to the rally’s security list. They are Tranquilino Sanchez Venegas, a former city policeman; Vicente Mayoral Valenzuela, a retired state homicide detective, and Mayoral’s son Rodolfo, a truck driver.

OFFICIAL ACCOUNT

The official account details how these suspects allegedly obstructed and distracted Colosio’s federal bodyguards while clearing a path through a crowd for the gunman, who shot the candidate twice at point-blank range.

Photos and videos show Aburto talking to the suspected accomplices during the rally, authorities say, but they have released little further proof of a conspiracy. An exception is the statement of a 16-year-old girlfriend of Aburto, who says the accused assassin exchanged greetings with a man she identified as Sanchez in a park a few days earlier. The girlfriend also told interrogators that Aburto said he was a paid member of a political group that opposed Colosio’s candidacy, according to court documents.

But some law enforcement sources question the credibility of this witness, noting that she had known Aburto for only about a month.

A Tijuana lawyers association declared last week that it will assist the Mayorals’ defense. Authorities are violating the law by trying the suspects in Mexico City federal court instead of state court in Tijuana, where the crime occurred, the lawyers said. The Mayorals should be released for lack of evidence, the lawyers said.

Nonetheless, Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel of Baja said recently that new circumstantial evidence has fortified the special prosecutor’s case.

“Each day it becomes clearer that there was indeed coordination, although there is not yet powerful evidence,” Ruffo told reporters. “Little details are accumulating, and everything points in the same direction.”

A SECOND GUNMAN?

Ruffo also suggested that, despite early official assertions that Aburto was the only gunman, the possibility of a second gunman has not been discarded. He said doubts endure because police found only one bullet at the shooting scene and because shots fired in rapid succession hit the candidate in the right side of the head and the left side of the abdomen.

Despite the initial explanation that Colosio’s body spun counterclockwise after the first shot, Ruffo said investigators have to look further into the recovery of the bullet and the murder weapon.

In addition, authorities continue scrutinizing Jorge Antonio Sanchez Ortega, an agent of the Interior Ministry whom city police officers arrested as he ran from the scene with a bloodstained shirt. A test found gunpowder residue on Sanchez’s hands, and the reason for his presence at the campaign rally has not been determined. He was released for lack of evidence, but Ruffo said: “It is not clear to us that he was not involved.”

Sanchez, however, has not been identified near Colosio in any of the photos and videotapes. Federal investigators have not recently commented on his status or that of two other men who were identified as suspects through videos.

The current scenario implies that powerful political forces were behind the crime. The special prosecutor has not offered a theory about how and why the remaining accused accomplices--a trio of PRI minions, including two aging, infirm ex-cops--decided to commit Mexico’s most explosive assassination in decades.

THE ACCUSED’S VERSION

Aburto insinuated in a confession made immediately after the shooting that he had confederates. Gaps in the case do not preclude the possibility that he was indeed the agent of others, induced by political fanaticism, economic incentive or both. According to a Mexican official, the accused assassin told interrogators, “If you knew who else was involved, you’d be surprised.”

At the same time, Aburto has insisted that he was not helped by the other three men now being held as suspects, who say they assisted in capturing the gunman.

Investigators are still looking into questions about the introverted 23-year-old factory worker: Why did he tell friends and relatives about political meetings with older people and professionals? Why did he talk about connections to “armed groups”? What did he mean when he showed a relative a pistol and said he would soon take part in a prosperous deal?

Sundry details of the case have emerged. In a trunk stuffed with documents and other family possessions, Tijuana city police found a book on Marxism and three photos of young men, believed to be Aburto family members, posing with automatic weapons, said Jose Federico Benitez Lopez, the city’s police chief, during a recent interview.

Benitez was assassinated Thursday night in an ambush on a busy highway. Because he had shared information with the press that raised doubts about the official version of the Colosio case, his murder increased suspicion of a conspiracy. But it is not yet clear whether his slaying was related to the Colosio case or to border drug wars.

In addition, two witnesses have told The Times that last year they overheard periodic phone calls to California from Tijuana in which Aburto and his brother discussed smuggling guns into Mexico.

Although Aburto’s father says that one suspect, the elder Mayoral, befriended his son and brought him to shadowy political meetings, authorities have not publicly confirmed the friendship or Aburto’s political activity.

AN OBSCURE ORGANIZATION

An obscure Tijuana political organization has drawn interest because its headquarters in a downtown doctor’s office is in a building that matches the description of a building where a witness told police that Aburto attended meetings. Known as the Party of the American Union, the group calls for the violent overthrow of the PRI-controlled government and the annexation of Mexico by the United States, according to its founder, plastic surgeon Ernesto Messina.

In an interview, Messina called the accused assassin a “hero and a patriot” for rising up against the PRI “dictatorship.” Although Messina denied knowing Aburto, he said it is possible that Aburto attended meetings of the group.

Moreover, the party’s political manifesto includes a reference to the Aztec warrior figure of the “Eagle Knight,” a symbol that apparently obsessed Aburto.

Citing a possible connection to the gunman, authorities picked up Messina for questioning more than a week after he was first interviewed by reporters. Investigators searched Messina’s office and home. But he was released without further official comment.

LONE GUNMAN THEORY

In the absence of hard facts, the lone gunman theory has also gained new momentum. The semi-coherent ramblings in a journal attributed to Aburto foster an image of fanaticism.

“If it’s authentic, we are talking about a delirious, crazy guy,” a Mexican official said.

The journal proclaims that Aburto’s words will echo around the world. The writer espouses political reform, protection of marine life and better public transportation. He describes a kind of mythic encounter he had as a child with an aged revolutionary in the countryside; the old man christened him an Eagle Knight dedicated to fighting poverty and oppression “in the name of the people.”

But Benitez, the assassinated police chief, had expressed doubt that the writings were Aburto’s original thoughts. Noting the contrast between the arduous scrawl strewn with misspellings and the comparatively sophisticated concepts and vocabulary, the chief said the document could be a calculated attempt to paint Aburto as the classic deranged assassin.

“The education of someone who writes this does not correspond to the education of someone who writes like this,” Benitez said. “It looks to me as if it were dictated.”

Whether or not it is authentic, the journal hints at apocalyptic retaliation against the system. It concludes: “The rulers who do not respond to the people with true justice and democracy will pay the consequences.”

Rotella reported from Tijuana and Darling from Mexico City.