Quito - (UpStreamGal!): Thousands have flocked to La Catedral de Quito following reports that its iconic 16th century portrait of the Virgin Mary Maddona El Petroecuador is 'weeping tears of oil.'
The painting began its lachrymose gush last year when Judge Juan Nunez was videoed haggling over his share of a $3 million bribe in the country's $27 billion malicious lawsuit against the Chevron energy corporation.
"About three barrels of heavy crude just burst out of the painting," a psychic medium channeling the ghost of Ecuador's former patriarch Cardinal Bernardo Echeverria Ruiz said today.
"Imagine."
Within days the portrait began producing enough heavy crude to fuel the Archbishop of Quito's ageing Cadillac motorcar.
And then the Ecuadorean taxman got wind of the scam and immediately slapped a huge crude fine on the archdiocese for failure to pay mandatory duty.
Meanwhile a routine analysis of the oil shocked the residents of Quito when results showed it to be highly similar to the neighboring Venezuela's heavy crude.
Further mass-spectrometry analysis revealed the Madonna's oily tears also contained a mystery ingredient not normally associated with the petro industry: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's DNA!
"Sounds like a classic Chavez snake-oil scam to me," a Chevron stockholder said today.
