Easter tradition gets political

Frenchwoman, Mexican ex-gov end child custody fight

MEXICO CITY, April 6, (Agencies): During Holy Week in Mexico there are always processions and prayers, traditionally observed by worshipers across the country. But lesser-known traditions also persist, such as burning Judas figures as a means of overcoming evil.

Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, gets what’s coming to him in this bit of faith-inspired Easter street theater: giant papier mache Judas figures — they can cost as much as $4,000 to make — are hung over crowds who light giant sparklers that hiss and crackle as the bad guy goes down in flames.

“This has been handed down from generation to generation,” said Leonardo Linares at the capital’s Sonora marketplace, among a clutch of Judas figures getting ready to be torched.

“This really is where you learn tradition, we have kept it up all this time because we have seen everything that this art has brought, felt it being handed from parents to children.”

One quirky Mexican twist: what started as a symbol of rage against a biblical traitor has expanded to the political realm.

Anybody who is particularly unpopular could be in line, such as President Enrique Pena Nieto. Afigure in his likeness disappeared into flames before cheering crowds at this weekend’s Easter celebrations.

“If people don’t like them, if they did something wrong, they’ll be here,” said Leonardo’s son, Luis Pablo Linares, warning that it’s open season for anyone deemed roast-worthy. The 24-year-old has been making Judas figures for sacrifice his whole life.

Pena Nieto has come under fire over his wife’s purchase of a mansion from a government contractor. His finance minister also bought a house from the same contractor, which has won lucrative government projects. Others have criticized his response in the case of 43 missing students in Iguala presumed dead.

Though Pena Nieto’s followers might not approve of his Judas-style torching at this Easter tradition, his detractors consider it a healthy way to vent frustrations.

In Venezuela, meanwhile, similar anger was on show as President Nicolas Maduro and US President Barack Obama made this year’s cut as Judases worthy of a burning.

The towering figures made of cloth, cardboard and old clothes were labeled traitors by revellers.

“You burn a traitor. And we decided in this case to burn Obama for his infamous decree against our sovereignty and freedom,” said housewife Gladys Bolivar, 63.

The US president on March 9 called Venezuela’s political situation an extraordinary threat to US security.

Maduro has said the animosity is a sign the United States wants to invade to get control of the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves.

The Venezuelan president, also torched, is facing rock-bottom approval ratings as the country’s mostly state-run economy continues to tank. Shortages are common, and inflation is the region’s highest.

AFrenchwoman and her ex-husband, a former Mexican governor close to his country’s president, have resolved a high-profile, three-year-old child custody battle that threatened to turn into a diplomatic headache.

Maude Versini told AFP on Sunday that she and her husband signed an agreement allowing her to take her three children to France for seven weeks every year.

In return, Versini agreed to drop her legal actions against Arturo Montiel, a former governor of the central State of Mexico, who has had their three chil- dren in Mexico since January 2012.

“We signed this agreement last night (Saturday) in which I gave up way too much for my taste, but I didn’t have much of a choice,” she told AFP at Mexico City’s airport.

“It’s a first step and it’s important for me to be able to rebuild a relation with my children that has been very damaged,” Versini said.

She was heading back to Paris after spending Easter in the State of Mexico with her children, 11-year-old twins Adrian and Sofia and 9-year-old Alexi.

Versini, 41, and Montiel married in 2002 but divorced five years later.

A Mexican court initially gave her custody of the children, but Montiel kept them in Mexico when they traveled here in 2012. Montiel, 71, is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and political mentor to President Enrique Pena Nieto. He ran unsuccessfully for president himself in the past.

In May 2014, French authorities issued an international arrest warrant against Montiel. In March, the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights urged Mexico to implement measures to allow Versini to see her children without restrictions.

Versini, who had asked the commission to intervene, saw her children in December for the first time in three years, at a judicial center in the central Mexican city of Toluca.

During French President Francois Hollande’s visit to Mexico last year he discussed the custody dispute with Pena Nieto.

Relations between Mexico and France were strained under the presidencies of Felipe Calderon and Nicolas Sarkozy after French woman Florence Cassez was arrested on kidnapping charges in 2005.

But Hollande and Pena Nieto mended ties after she was released in 2013 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that her arrest was rife with irregularities.

Pena Nieto is expected to be a special guest at France’s July 14 Bastille Day celebration.

Mexico’s state-run oil company continues to search for three missing workers from a platform fireball that killed four others, while beginning to restore production at the damaged Gulf of Mexico facility, officials said Sunday.

Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, will start processing 170,000 barrels of crude by Monday and expects to restore 80 percent of the pre-fire production in the coming week, said Gustavo Hernandez, general director of exploration and production.

The Abkatun platform was handling 220,000 barrels of crude when a fire hit on Wednesday, causing the evacuation of 301 workers, some of whom were forced to leap into the sea to escape the flames. Some 45 people sought medical attention, according to Pemex statistics shown in a press conference.

Hernandez said the accident, whose cause is still under investigation, won’t affect production projections from that region of the gulf of 646,000 barrels of crude a day and 1.4 billion cubic feet of gas.

He said the Navy continues to help in the search for three missing workers, one from Pemex and two from the contractor, Cotemar. “The effort won’t stop until we find them,” he said.

The Abkatun A platform largely serves to separate gas, oil and other petroleum products, and pump them to refineries onshore.

Pemex said it managed to avert any significant oil spill because the fire happened on a processing platform where the feeder lines could be turned off, rather than at an active oil well with a virtually unlimited amount of fuel flowing up from the seabed.