Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu

Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu was a Mexican lawyer and politician who served as the governor of Guerrero from 1987 to 1993 and as the secretary-general of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1994. He was the brother-in-law of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the father of former foreign minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu Salinas. He was known for his efforts to modernize Guerrero and improve its social indicators, especially in health, education and infrastructure. He also promoted the development of tourism and culture in the state. As the secretary-general of PRI, he was in charge of the party's internal affairs and electoral strategy. He was expected to become the leader of the PRI's parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies. However, his political career was cut short by his assassination on September 28, 1994, when he was shot by a hired gunman outside a hotel in Mexico City. His murder was part of a series of political violence that shook Mexico in 1994, which also included the killing of PRI's presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. The investigation of his assassination revealed a complex web of corruption, conspiracy and cover-up that involved members of his own party, family and government. His brother, Mario Ruiz Massieu, who was the deputy attorney general in charge of the case, accused Carlos Salinas and his brother Raúl Salinas of being behind the crime. However, he was later arrested in the United States for money laundering and extradited to Mexico, where he committed suicide in prison. The main suspect of ordering the murder, Manuel Muñoz Rocha, a PRI deputy and close associate of Raúl Salinas, disappeared and was never found. The gunman, Daniel Aguilar Treviño, was sentenced to 50 years in prison, but his sentence was reduced to 42 years in 2017. The motive of the murder remains unclear, but some theories suggest that it was related to power struggles within the PRI, personal rivalries, drug trafficking or political reforms.