Mexicans Love Jesus Art (Particularly When It's Made of Cocaine)

Mexicans are so darn inventive when it comes to smuggling. They have stuck a girl in a pinata, crammed a woman into a dashboard and encased a man in a car seat. Is there anything they won't do to smuggle people and drugs into America?

Of course not--they're Mexicans! Crime (organized and otherwise) is powerful in Mexico. When the government battles the drug cartels, the government loses.

The latest colorful border seizure is a statue of Jesus made out of cocaine...

Drug traffickers mixed as much as six pounds of the illicit white powder into a paste and used it to make a regal statue of the Christian savior, complete with painted-on flowing hair and a gold cape.

Smugglers were likely hoping the statue, which could be worth as much as $30,000 on the streets, would be dismissed by border guards as just another of the hundreds of plaster representations hawked to borderland tourists.

But a dog trained to sniff out drugs confirmed it was anything but another religious memento.
[Drug dealer's wait for Jesus denied by federal agents, Houston Chronicle, May 29, 2008]

The occasion is a perfect time for an update of the popular song, Plastic Jesus.

I don't care if it rains or freezes,
'Long as I got my Cocaine Jesus
Riding in the trunk space of my car.
Across the border into Texas
I'll be buying a brand new Lexus.
With my Cocaine Jesus I'll go far.

(Here's Paul Newman's low-key version of Plastic Jesus in Cool Hand Luke.)