Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta (February 10, 1950 – March 23, 1994) was a Mexican politician, and PRI presidential candidate, who was assassinated during a meeting on his presidential campaign in Tijuana.

Political history

Main article: Mexican general election, 1994 Campaign for president
In the early evening of March 23, 1994, at a campaign rally in Lomas Taurinas, a poor neighborhood of Tijuana, Colosio was shot in the head from a distance of a few centimeters in front of a television camera. There was no foreign press coverage of this campaign event in spite of it happening only a few miles south of San Diego, California. Colosio collapsed, and was subsequently rushed to the city's main hospital, after plans to fly him to an American hospital across the border were canceled. His death was announced a few hours later; amid contradicting eyewitness reports that remain to this day.
Although the shooter, arrested at the site, never wavered from his story that he had acted alone, rumors still surround Colosio's assassination. The poor handling of the shooter by the authorities, who shaved, bathed and gave him a prison haircut before showing him to the media, started rumors about whether that 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 has been officially closed after many different prosecutors investigated it, but after the many mishandlings of the investigation and contradictory versions, the controversy continues.
Blame was initially laid at the feet of aforementioned Manuel Camacho Solís, allegedly very upset at having been passed over as Salinas's successor. The finger of suspicion also pointed in the direction of organized crime, particularly the Tijuana drug cartel. With the passage of time, however, the most persistent rumor, seemingly confirmed by Ernesto Zedillo's (Colosio's campaign manager) selection as the PRI presidential candidate, is that Colosio was shot on the orders of Salinas himself because of a speech Colosio gave, talking about the Mexican people "thirst" for justice and future. According to this rumor Salinas felt those words were a break-off between Colosio and him.
Nevertheless, these conspiracy theories have proven faulty and often short of logic and have remained topics of urban mythology, as video evidence and Aburto's clinical history have proven them wrong. The shooter, Mario Aburto Martínez remains imprisoned at the high-security La Palma facility, the mystery surrounding the political assassination of the man chosen to be Mexico's president remains as open and intriguing as day one.