Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador made a peculiar statement on social media last weekend when he shared a photo that supposedly depicts a bona fide creature from indigenous folklore.
A tweet posted by the president features two photos, with one of them, a nighttime picture, showing some strange shape “sitting” on a tree.
As Lopez Obrador explained in his tweet, the picture was apparently taken by an engineer at a construction site for Tren Maya railway, and supposedly depicts an alux – a spirit from the mythological tradition of some Mayan peoples in Central America.
The second photo shared by the Mexican president depicts what he describes as a “splendid” pre-Colombian sculpture at the Ek Balam archaeological site in Yucatan.
Screenshot of a tweet posted by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
© Photo : Twitter/@lopezobrador_
“Everything is mystical,” Lopez Obrador surmised in the tweet’s caption.
The president’s post elicited a somewhat mixed reaction from the social media crowd, with one netizen, for example, jokingly suggesting that the shape in the first photo is just “a raccoon with a bag on its head.”
“That’s exactly what the woodland elf wants you to believe!” another jokingly retorted to that remark.
And quite a few social media users were quick to note that the nighttime photo was taken at least two years ago, and has been used in media stories since at least February 2021.