David Agren

Special for USA TODAY

MEXICO CITY — This country's artisans usually set fire to effigies of unpopular Mexican politicians in their “burning of Judas” ritual every Easter weekend. This year, the politician they love to hate the most is an American: Donald Trump.

The Republican presidential front-runner has enraged people here with his portrayal of many Mexicans entering the USA as "criminals, drug dealers, rapists;" his vow to build a wall along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it, and his complaint about good U.S. jobs fleeing to Mexico.

So they are stuffing papier mâché figures of The Donald with fireworks, hanging them in the public square and lighting the fuse. Mexican media report effigies of the New York businessman being blown up in at least six cities.

In the capital here, artisan Fernando Galicia, 33, fashioned a figure of a fictional cartel kingpin riding atop an airplane with an assault rifle in one hand and Trump’s head hanging from a string from the other. “This is what people are asking for,” Galicia said, “Donald Trump’s head.”

Other forms of Trump-bashing are popular among Mexicans, as well. They’ve mocked him with memes and social media satire and beaten piñatas resembling the billionaire at birthday parties to protest rhetoric they view as racist and unneighborly.

“Every year they pick some corrupt politician, but this year it had to be Trump,” said Julio César Rodríguez, 26, a nurse who watched the burning of Judas in Mexico City. “He’s an obvious choice. He’s a bad person.”

Two effigies of Trump were burned in Mexico City's Merced Balbuena barrio, including a figure almost 10 feet tall that didn’t entirely explode on the first attempt. Residents whistled in derision, cursed and ultimately cheered. “Burn you filthy dog!” screamed one onlooker.

Other effigies included recently recaptured drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, President Enrique Peña Nieto, a devil branded with an Islamic State logo, Pope Francis and President Obama.

“(Obama) really hasn’t done much for the region,” said artisan Leonardo Linares, who made the image of the president and whose family has been making and burning Judas figures for five generations.

Artisans like Linares say the tradition of burning Judas has been fading in Mexico City as borough governments grant fewer fireworks permits and people lose interest in blowing up figures that are costly and time-consuming to make.

Yet the tradition lives as an expression of lower-class Mexicans' antipathy toward the elites in a country where free expression is not always appreciated or protected.

“It’s something closer to humor than political protest,” said Ilán Semo, political historian at the Iberoamerican University. “Humor has always given a little space for blowing off steam. This is critical, but it’s humor.”

The tradition of burning Judas Iscariot, who the Bible says betrayed Christ, arrived in the Americas from Spain and represented the overcoming of evil.

Early celebrants would explode images of the devil. Figures representing greedy hacienda owners and other wealthy people were later added by poor artisans, according to Linares. Eventually, Mexican politicians were added. “Anyone who betrayed the Mexican people is represented by Judas,” said artisan Felipe Susano.

Trump, Susano says, has been the most requested figure in 2016.

Trump’s comments have drawn sharp rebukes from Mexico's leaders, as well as average Mexicans. President Peña Nieto compared the Republican candidate's harsh populist attacks on Mexico to the demagogic rhetoric that fueled Adolf Hitler's rise in Germany before World War II.

For two decades, Mexico's establishment courted better economic and security ties with the United States, said historian Semo. “They bet everything on free trade. Then one day, a member of this (U.S.) establishment attacked them for internal electoral purposes. They don’t get that here.”