A 14-year-old girl who was snatched out of school by Mexican federal police with an Interpol order, taken to the Houston home of a woman who claimed to be her mother, then returned to Mexico when DNA evidence showed otherwise has had a whirlwind few days since her triumphant return last week.
Politicians have glommed on to her, taking selfies with her, holding her hand in political marches and promising her an unforgettable 15th birthday bash.
On Tuesday, the government-financed National Human Rights Commission had a short message for the politicians: Leave the girl alone.
They and others shouldn’t take actions to “spread her image, name, personal data and other information to allow identification or cause an interference with her private life and her family,” the commission warned.
The saga of Alondra Luna Núñez has transfixed the nation and sparked hand-wringing over how a girl could be ripped from her home and taken across international boundaries without the usual safeguards.
As if the international drama weren’t enough, the parading around of Alondra by politicians in her state of Guanajuato – less than two months ahead of midterm state and local elections – has brought withering criticism.
“Her story is one of being kidnapped twice. The first time was the result of incompetence. The second time was thanks to politicians with an opportunistic streak,” J. Jaime Hernández wrote on the website of El Universal newspaper.
Last Saturday, politicians of the center-right National Action Party, including its 2012 presidential nominee, Josefina Vázquez Mota, paraded the girl around Guanajuato in a campaign event.
Vázquez Mota held Alondra’s hand during the march, held her at her side as she announced that she might write a book about the case and urged the party to sponsor an elaborate quinceañera, or 15th birthday celebration and coming-out party, for Alondra in August.
Afterward, the politician tweeted: “Alondra Luna is with our campaign for National Action, let’s look for a fairer, peaceful Mexico.”
The girl’s parents, who’ve been separated for at least half of her life, have subsequently gone at each other. The mother, Susana Núñez Granados, accused the father of lending the child to the campaign event for an undisclosed sum of money.
The mother told local reporters in Guanajuato on Monday afternoon that she wanted her former husband “not to be exploiting the girl, because that’s what he’s doing.”
The case came to public attention when a video went viral earlier this month of federal police pulling the screaming, wailing teen from her school into a police vehicle, then preparing to pack her off to Houston on Interpol orders.
Dorotea Garcia, a Houston resident, had convinced a Texas judge that Alondra was her long-lost daughter of the same first name, taken by her husband back to Mexico in 2007 when the girl was 4 years old.
The case has put a spotlight on the judge in the neighboring state of Michoacán who ignored her family’s pleas at a hearing April 12 and ruled that the order of the Texas judge be carried out, and the girl sent to Houston.
Upon her return last week, Alondra fell into a pre-electoral whirlwind in Mexico, where voters will head to the polls June 7 for elections that are widely seen as a litmus test of the popularity of President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Voters will elect all 500 deputies in the lower chamber of Congress, as well as 17 state-level assemblies, nine governors and more than 300 mayors.
A poll released this week by the Parametria firm found the ruling party of Peña Nieto, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, with a strong edge 40 days before the vote. The poll, published in El Financiero newspaper, found the PRI leading with 32 percent of voter preferences, against 24 percent for National Action, down from 27 percent a month earlier.
“The elections will have limited policy impact given that the balance of power between the political parties will remain almost unchanged after the elections,” the Eurasia consultancy said in a note Tuesday. “This, however, will do little to ease ongoing social discontent, which is likely to remain unchanged unless economic growth picks up in a meaningful way.”