Mexico's leftist president claims proof of woodland elves in bizarre social media post

Tens of thousands took to Mexico City's main plaza over the weekend to protest their leftist president and his policies. Rather than face the real concern of citizens, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's has evidently turned his mind to fantasy.

Obrador posted a poorly lit image of a tree and something possibly in it to his social media accounts over the weekend, intimating that it was photographic proof of the existence of a folkloric elf.

Obrador wrote that the image was captured "three days ago by an engineer, it appears to be an aluxe."

According to the Yucatan Times, an alux (plural: aluxo'ob) are knee-high "pixies" from local, often Mayan mythology, tasked with protecting plantations, cornfields, and properties.

"As in all goblin traditions, these little beings are often naughty and play practical jokes on people crossing their domains," wrote the Times. "Sometimes they take reprisals that become real nightmares, they are said to produce short screams, strong whirlpools and other phenomena when they get angry and some people consider aluxes 'allies of evil.'"

Obrador juxtaposed the badly pixelated nighttime photograph of an undistinguishable specter atop a tree branch with a "splendid pre-Hispanic sculpture in Ek Balam," an archeological site on the Yucatan peninsula, noting, "Everything is mystical."

Obrador was roundly ridiculed.

Mexican novelist Mauricio Schwarz noted that the image allegedly captured days earlier "has been doing the rounds in Nuevo León since February 2021 and in Thailand since December of that year."

Schwarz added, "You are sad, very sad... and the country even more... If you believe it, you are stupid... if you know you are lying, you are malicious..."

A reverse-image search confirms Schwarz's suggestion. Images of Obrador's supposed alux have been online for at least two years.

In one instance, the photo was attributed to a man named Juan Pacheco, who allegedly saw a "witch on a tree" in Nuevo León, Mexico.

The Independent reported that this apparent diversion comes amid protests against the Obrador government's attempts to shrink the independent electoral authority in Mexico, which some allege may threaten the nation's democracy.

Last week, Obrador's proposals to cut funding for local election offices and reduce sanctions for candidates who fail to report campaign spending were passed along with others, reported Time.

On Thursday, the leftist president indicated that he would sign the changes into law regardless of whether he is challenged in court.

In addition to diverting some attention from the over 100,000 protesters who took to Mexico City over the weekend, Obrador's post may also serve to draw attention to his controversial pet project: a $15 billion 900-mile tourist train route through the heart of the defeated Maya civilization.

The Washington Post indicated that those involved with the project are "discovering an astonishing array of antiquities – and then tearing them down."

If there were pixies or faerie folk in the trees of the Maya Forest, then Obrador's train may have amounted to their demise.

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