SIX DAYS AFTER THE ASSASSINATION OF presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, his campaign manager sounded distinctly reluctant to claim his role as the governing party's new man. Addressing the assembled crowd at party headquarters, the freshly anointed candidate, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, chose to stand in front of a floor-to-ceiling photo of Colosio and wrap himself in the shroud of the martyred hero. "We are not starting a campaign. We are continuing one. Colosio was the best man for Mexico," he said in an 18-min. speech that mentioned the slain politician's name 38 times.
The strategy was not subtle: Zedillo,...