Stream It Or Skip It: ‘1994’ On Netflix, A Docuseries On Mexico’s Violent Election Year

Most people in the U.S. don’t realize how violent and tumultuous the year 1994 was in Mexico. The leading party’s candidate for president was assassinated, NAFTA was being protested by far-left rebels, and the entire political system that had run the country for decades was thrown into crisis. A couple of months after Netflix dropped a scripted series on this topic, they return to it in the docuseries 1994. Which one should you watch?

1994: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Aerial views of Mexico city, cut with archival footage of a pivotal speech by Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta. We see building with Colosio campaign murals still on them, a quarter-century after his assassination.

The Gist: The election year of 1994 was a tumultuous one in Mexico; President Carlos Salinas had selected Colosio, who was his hand-chosen leader of the dominant PRI party and later a part of his cabinet, as his successor. Colosio, whose history pointed to the fact that he wanted to reform not only the Mexican government but his party, as well, made people in and out of PRI uncomfortable.

In 1994, director Diego Enrique Orsono takes a look at this tumultuous year, starting with Colosio’s assassination after a rally in Tijuana. Orsono not only interviews Salinas, but many members of Colosio’s campaign, journalists, and other PRI loyalists. He also reaches back to 1968 to see the seeds of reform that were sown by reformists that started to bear fruit during the contested 1988 presidential election, where PRI candidate Selinas was elected and inaugurated despite real evidence that ballots were not counted, that dead people voted, and that other ballots were destroyed. By the following year, the first candidate from the opposition PRN party won the gubernatorial election in Baja California — an election that Colosio took pains to ensure that all votes were legal and counted.

Colosio did not want to take dirty corporate money, nor did he want illegitimate votes to help him get elected. He also felt that the PRI was more of a dictatorial party that impeded democracy, and he sought to reform it. Not only did that make people uncomfortable, but at the same time NAFTA was about to go into effect, an agreement that Salinas helped shepherd into being. As soon as it went into effect on January 1, 1994, things changed.

Our Take: It’s interesting that less than two months after Netflix released a docudrama about Colosio’s assassination (Crime Diaries: The Candidate), they release a docuseries that examines more or less the same thing, with a similar arc: The first episode discusses Colosio and the political climate that built up to the assassination, and the rest involves the investigation and aftermath. But where the dramatization tended to concentrate on Colosio and his family (most notably, his cancer-stricken wife Diana Laura Riojas de Colosio), 1994 zeroes in on the election and the unrest in the country that made that year so violent and tumultuous.

The archival footage of Colosio that Orsono used really showed how persuasive Colosio could be, speaking to crowds about reform and doing something remarkable when he accepted that the opposition party won in Baja California, almost praising it because it’s an example of democracy in action. Such bipartisanship seems almost unheard of now, both here and in our neighbors to the south. But it’s that exact manner that made Colosio so appealing… but also a target.

Orsono’s focus on the political process made 1994 so much more compelling than its docudrama counterpart, and it gave us a better picture of what was really going on there at the time.

Parting Shot: We see a masked man smoking a pipe and sitting down for an interview; he’s identified as “Deputy Commander Galeano (formerly Marcos)”, a spokesman for EZLN, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, an influential libertarian guerrilla group, many of the members being indigenous` citizens, that had its first protest in Chiapas on 1/1/94.

Sleeper Star: Salinas had a lot of personality. When Orsono asked him to introduce himself, he joked if she should give his entire curriculum vitae.

Most Pilot-y Line: There was a bit of confusion between Salinas’ narrative that NAFTA was signed in late 1993 and the visuals of U.S. President George H.W. Bush signing it. Bush signed the agreement in 1992, but in 1993 it was ratified by the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Bill Clinton was the U.S. president that ratified it and made it law here.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you want a real insight into how Mexican politics work, 1994 will be an eye opener.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream 1994 on Netflix