the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio

Mexican Suspect Is Portrayed By Authorities as Obsessed

New York Times

By ANTHONY DEPALMA,

Published: March 28, 1994

The mystery over the motive behind the assassination of the leading presidential candidate is deepening as the Government releases information that depicts the suspect as an obsessed zealot who once set his sights on President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Only part of the transcript of the police interrogation of the suspect has been released. That information focuses on signs of instability in the man charged in the shooting death of the governing party candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta.

Officials said that all evidence indicated that he had acted alone, but that the investigation was far from over.

Earlier Murder Plan Alleged

The suspect, Mario Aburto Martinez, 23, planned to shoot but not kill Mr. Salinas during his campaign for the presidency in 1988 but changed his mind, according to the transcript taken en route to the Almoloya de Juarez federal prison near Mexico City.

"I thought because of my age that I was mistaken" in wanting to shoot Mr. Salinas, the transcript quotes Mr. Aburto as saying. In 1988 he was 18.

Now, Mr. Aburto says he feels responsible for the Indian uprising that began in the state of Chiapas in January because he did not prevent Mr. Salinas from becoming President, the transcript says. Mr. Aburto said he had planned to shoot Mr. Salinas to gain attention for his ideas about peace.

Investigators say he has confessed to shooting Mr. Colosio but has said he intended only to wound him.

There was much speculation over the identity of the suspect. Mexico City newspapers today published photographs comparing news photos taken immediately after the shooting on Wednesday in Tijuana with prison photos of the suspect.

The picture from Tijuana shows a man with curly black hair and a mustache. A side of his face is covered with blood from a blow received during a scuffle that followed the shooting.

The prison photograph shows a man without a mustache, with short black hair and a composed look.

There is no evidence that the man captured at the scene and the one in custody are different, but the speculation grew so widespread that Mexico's Attorney General, Diego Valades, stepped in. He declared that while the suspect's hair had been trimmed and his mustache shaved, the man in prison was indeed Mario Aburto Martinez, and that all evidence indicated that he had acted alone in shooting Mr. Colosio.

Unanswered Questions
But Mr. Valades said there were still unanswered questions and that the investigation was not closed.
What puzzles some people are the statements Mr. Aburto made indicating the involvement of others. For example, he told investigators he was part of a group, but would not describe it. He also hinted at accomplices when he stated, according to his lawyers, that "we have saved Mexico."

The authorities have pieced together an account of Mr. Aburto's life on both sides of the Mexico-United States border that pictures him as unsettled, changing jobs and residences often. Although he was not a citizen of the United States, he reportedly was registered to vote in California.

The police have found a notebook that Mr. Aburto kept with him all the time. In one section are drawings allegedly showing Mr. Aburto's spirit entering the body of Mr. Colosio, but the authorities have not made the book available for examination.

On Saturday, the Mexican Congress approved the appointment of a lawyer, Miguel Montes Garcia, to head a special investigation into the assassination. Mr. Montes Garcia is expected to issue a report by the end of this week.

The New York Times Theater

Also see: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,980426,00.html?iid=chix-sphere

Arrested for the crime is MARIO ABURTO MARTINEZ, 23, previously a factory worker in San Pedro, California, now working at the Cameros Magneticos factory in nearby Otay Mesa. Press photos show a bloodstained young man being dragged along by several bystanders. According to news reports, he claims to be a pacifist and cries out, "I saved Mexico!" Also detained are JORGE ANTONIO SANCHEZ ORTEGA and VICENTE MAYORAL VALENZUELA, former head of the homicide division of Baja California State Judicial Police in Tijuana. Police say they are being detained as witnesses. (Mexico City News, 24 March 1994) (probe)

A notebook and papers found in Aburto's Tijuana home include drawings showing ``Aburto's soul entering the body of Colosio, taking Colosio's hand and rising up to heaven, and Colosio in a coffin,'' according to a government official.

The news weekly Proceso reported that federal agents interrogated Aburto's aunt and tried to ``pressure'' her into saying Aburto was a member of the opposition party. ``She always answered that he was a PRI member,'' says Angel Cuadra Pena, an official from the town where Aburto's aunt lives.

Friends say Aburto was a devout Jehovah's Witness. Aburto was a ``problem student'' who was ``disrespectful of the nation's symbols,'' says the director of the junior high school he attended. Jehovah's Witnesses have been publicly criticized by Mexican officials for not saluting the Mexican flag, an act adherents consider worshiping a false god.

Government interrogators quote Aburto as saying he considered studying to becoming a Roman Catholic priest, but changed his mind ``because they were going to send me to Puerto Rico.''

Although there has been no full confession, Mexican officials say there is little doubt about Aburto's guilt. The act was filmed by television news crews. And Aburto was tackled and captured within seconds of the shooting. Tests show traces of gunpowder on his hands and have identified the .38 caliber pistol in his possession when arrested as the murder weapon. (christian science monitor)

Assasin Suspect Calm, A Recluse, Friends And Officials Say

By LAWRENCE KOOTNIKOFF

Associated Press Writer

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) - (March 26, 1994) The accused assasin of Mexico's leading presidential candidate was a reclusive factory worker who hoped his crime would win publicity for his political views, family and officials said.

Mario Aburto Martinez, a 23-year-old who worked in a maquiladora factory near the U.S. border, has been formally charged after confessing to gunning down Luis Donaldo Colosio during a campaign stop here Wednesday, officials said. They are still trying to discover why, and find out who the quiet, serious young man with few friends - now sitting in a maximum security prison outside Mexico City - is.

Aburto seemed sane, and told investigators he wanted media attention for his pacifist views, according to the state human rights ombudsman who sat in on his police interogation. ``He seemed relaxed and in full control,'' said Jose Luis Perez Canchola. ``He said he only wanted to injure Candidate Colosio. The only time he seemed nervous, during two hours of questioning, was when he was told that Mr. Colosio had died.''

Since his arrest details are emerging about Aburto's life - on both sides of the border. For the past five weeks he had worked at a plastics moulding factory, earning about $100 a week. Though Aburto inadvertently caused an accident four days before the assasination that cost the family-run company $20,000, ``he worked hard, with a lot of will,'' plant manager Eduardo Oviedo Medina said.

But after working a normal shift Wednesday, he asked directions to Lomas Taurinas, a poor canyon neighborhood where Colosio, 44, was holding a campaign rally that day. Aburto was apparently carrying his .38 calibre pistol, authorities said. When Colosio waded into the crowd after his speech, he shot him twice.

Aburto would occasionally talk politics with fellow workers. ``Sometimes he would ask, `What would you do if you were president?''' Oviedo remembered. ``I couldn't believe it when my wife told me, `It was one of your employees!'''

Aburto was born on Oct.3, 1970 in La Rinconada, a small town outside Zamora, in Michoacan state. His family were devout Jehovah's Witnesses, which set them apart from the rest of the mostly Roman Catholic community. Aburto was an average student who was expelled from school twice for not showing the proper respect for the Mexican flag.

He came to Tijuana at age 15 after graduating from junior high school. Once in this border city he built a small house of unfired brick in Buenos Aires, a poor, hilly neighborhood near the airport of muddy, unpaved streets and ramshackle homes inhabited by low-paid maquiladora workers.

"He's a serious boy,'' said Aburto's aunt, Angelica Martinez Pinoles, who now lives in the house. ``He didn't like to go out.'' Neighbor Alma Gutierrez agreed. ``He was very quiet, very reserved. He had almost no friends.'' Martinez said after the shooting police came and detained her, her two sons and her six-year-old daughter overnight.

Aburto also traveled to southern California where he, his father and brother got jobs at a furniture factory in Torrance, near Los Angeles. And though a non-citizen, the Los Angeles Times reported that he was registered to vote in California and may have voted while residing in San Pedro. He also wrote books about his pacifist views. A year before gunning down Colosio, Aburto was trying to get Spanish-language newspapers in California to publish them, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

``He was looking for an editor,'' Sergio Velazquez, publisher of Santa Ana newspaper Miniondas, told the paper. ``I couldn't help him. Now I wish I had.''

Colosio's death has turned the Mexican political scene, already reeling from a New Year's Day Indian uprising in Chiapas state, on its head. Leaders of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which hasn't lost an election in 65 years, are scrambling to find a new candidate.

Aburto - who faces 30 to 50 years in prison if convicted - told police he practiced shooting his weapon at a Tijuana firing range. He has refused to answer questions about whether he acted alone. But that hasn't stopped the conspiracy theorists. They point out that Colosio had been a controversial choice since President Carlos Salinas de Gortari handpicked him last November, and accuse his enemies of plotting to remove him. Martinez Pinoles doesn't believe her nephew acted on his own.

``Something is behind this,'' she said. ``He couldn't have done this by himself.''

And this story is also worth a read:
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-04-08/news/mn-43621_1_mario-aburtos

My comment:
Although it is claimed that Aburto was not a member of any political or religious groups, his time in California would have enabled him to fulfill his wish of searching for methods of self-improvement. This may have led him to any number of cultic groups practicing magick, self-hypnosis or other methods. His drawings and writings seem pointed in those directions.

We are way ahead of the pack, as usual. This post in 2010, followed up by this, in 2020
https://gregrparker.com/forums/topic/know-your-patsy-2/ I never did get around to completing it, but the basis was to show the similarities between each case and each accused.

Now the Mexican government admits it was an inside job.
https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29756-mexicos-president-calls-jfka-a-state-crime/