Funeral ribbons fashioned from plastic bags hung from road signs Friday in this dusty northern cattle town where the ashes of slain presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio were returned for burial.
Groups of schoolchildren were among the thousands who lined the highway from the Mexican border town of Nogales to Colosio's hometown, 50 miles to the south. Some held Mexican flags and Colosio campaign posters as they awaited the procession from the Nogales airport."He is dead but not in our hearts and minds," Oralid Rochin said at a furniture store in Magdalena.
As nominee of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Colosio had been favored to win the Aug. 21 presidential election. He was shot in the border town of Tijuana as he campaigned Wednesday evening. The man accused of the assassination was formally charged with murder Friday.
The PRI has never lost a presidential election since it was founded in 1929, and Colosio had been virtually assured a victory.
"We all have a contract with Colosio. We all have a responsibility to carry on his work," his widow, Diana, said at the burial in the municipal cemetery. About 5,000 people attended.
Some remembered Colosio, a rancher's son, as a friend to the poor.
"If he had made it to the presidency, everything would have changed. The seat of power would have been been for the poor," said Maria Carmen Elias Ramirez, 65, from nearby Santa Ana.
PRI leaders pondered a replacement for their candidate.
Colosio's campaign manager, former Education Secretary Ernest Zedillo Ponce de Leon, appeared to be the front-runner Friday. But party chief Fernando Ortiz Arana, a possible candidate, said the PRI would not be rushed into a decision.
Government and party sources said the selection would most likely come after the Easter holiday.
Financial markets, meanwhile, rebounded, easing some worries about Mexico's economic future.
The stock market, closed Thursday, rose on Friday. U.S. financial backing for the Mexican peso Thursday, followed by Mexico's entry into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, helped rebuild confidence. The peso's value was reported almost unchanged with very little trading Friday.
Mario Aburto Martinez, 23, the man seized as Colosio's killer, was charged with first-degree murder Friday and with carrying a weapon without a license, the attorney general's office said.
Aburto faces a maximum 50 years in prison for the charges. Mexico has no death penalty.
Mexico's attorney general, Diego Valades, said Aburto confessed to the killing.