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Over the weekend, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tweeted out a photo of what he claims is a mythological woodland elf from Mayan folklore.
No, he wasn’t kidding.
“I share two photos of our supervision of the Mayan Train works: one, taken by an engineer three days ago, apparently from an aluxe; another, by Diego Prieto of a splendid pre-Hispanic sculpture in Ek Balam. Everything is mystical,” López Obrador wrote.
So… was it really an elf, or aluxe (a sprite or spirit in the mythological tradition of certain Maya peoples), as the Mexican president claimed?
Les comparto dos fotos de nuestra supervisión a las obras del Tren Maya: una, tomada por un ingeniero hace tres días, al parecer de un aluxe; otra, de Diego Prieto de una espléndida escultura prehispánica en Ek Balam. Todo es místico. pic.twitter.com/Tr5OP2EqmU
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) February 25, 2023
Seems pretty doubtful.
Multiple Mexican media outlets (and Twitter) reported that the image looked an awful lot like one that was shared on social media in 2021. Back then, the creepy creature in the tree was said to be a witch.
Those “photographs of strange ‘beings’ captured in a Citricultores neighborhood park” were reportedly taken by a man named Juan Pacheco.
Either way, no one really knows what the creature captured in the photos really is.
Some believe it is an alien.
“Hello Mr. President, I zoomed in on the photos and got some detail on the face and I even see two bent legs showing him sitting down,” UFO expert Scott Waring tweeted back at the president. “He has a bump on top of his forehead, defiantly a face and two eyes, cheeks. Good catch!”
On Monday, Diego Prieto Hernández, general director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico, addressed the sculpture the Mexican president tweeted alongside the “elf” photo, but made no mention of the elf itself.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that in 2008 a man from a Mayan village described exactly what an aluxe is.
“They appear on the roads, but not everyone can see them,” the man said. “Sometimes we think, ‘I don’t believe it,’ or ‘they’re tricking me,’ and we do things that bother them. So then, you’ll be walking along, and they’ll surprise you. ‘What’s that kid doing standing there?’ And when you look back, it’s not there anymore. It’s a spirit; it’s the wind. But the image stays in your eye, so you remember.”
Do you believe?