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Miss Mexico’s frock touches a nerve

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It was as if Miss USA had turned up at a beauty contest ‘wearing a dress showing images of the Ku Klux Klan in the deep South, with their hoods, their burning crosses and beer cans,’ a columnist wrote in the Mexico City daily newpspaper La Jornada.

The cause of this outrage was a dress worn by Miss Mexico, Rosa Maria Ojeda, the dark-haired beauty who is currently representing her country in the Miss Universe pageant, which Mexico is hosting this month. From a distance, the garment in question looks like a fetchingly old-fashioned, hoop-skirted ensemble. But the dress, accented by a bandolier belt and a wide sombrero, was adorned with depictions of a firing squad and Catholic rebels hanging from posts.

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The theme of this, um, highly original design refers to Mexico’s so-called Cristero War of 1926-1929, when Roman Catholic followers rose up against Mexico’s leftist, anti-clerical government. After the Mexican revolution of 1910-20, the victorious rebels effectively outlawed the Catholic church, which they regarded as a repressive vestige of the old regime.

Catholics fought back against the government and allied vigilante groups in a brutal conflict that claimed 90,000 lives. The designers of the dress said it expressed a rich chapter of Mexican history.

But, Miss Mexico’s dress has been redesigned with a less controversial image: the Virgin of Guadalupe. NBC and Telemundo will broadcast the pageant’s finale live from Mexico City on May 28. No official word yet on whether there’ll be any historically themed bathing suits.

Posted by Reed Johnson in Mexico City

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