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In Mayan tradition, an aluxe is believed to be a mischievous elflike being that lives within the woods, a creature of folklore much like leprechauns, unicorns, mermaids and the Loch Ness Monster.
So it was a shock on Saturday when President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico shared a picture on Twitter of what he claimed was an aluxe.
The picture reveals what seems to be a determine with two glowing eyes crouched in a tree. There are few discerning particulars within the photograph, which seems to have been taken at night time. “Every part is mystical,” Mr. López Obrador wrote.
The president’s tweet was appreciated greater than 40,000 instances, and it drew hundreds of feedback from many customers who didn’t appear to take it critically.
Mr. López Obrador stated the photograph was taken final week by an engineer. He didn’t establish the engineer, however stated the photograph got here from work on a mission that he has backed, the Maya Train, a railway that’s anticipated to be practically 1,000 miles lengthy and that has been pitched as a technique to develop Mexico’s poorest area.
The picture didn’t have metadata, making it unclear when the photograph was taken or by whom.
A number of Mexican news outlets reported that the picture shared by the president was extraordinarily much like one other one widely shared on social media in 2021 of what was stated on the time to be a witch. The 2021 picture was reported to be taken by a person recognized as Juan Pacheco in Nuevo León in northern Mexico, based on Mexican information retailers.
David Stuart, an artwork historical past professor on the College of Texas at Austin who has researched Mayan civilization, stated that aluxes had been identified by Mayans primarily within the northern area of the Yucatán Peninsula as “trickster characters” who lived within the forest.
“They had been simply the little beings out within the outskirts of city that will make your life tough,” Professor Stuart stated, evaluating them to leprechauns or elves in different traditions.
Aluxes had been blamed for “pretty benign” mishaps, reminiscent of gates being left open or objects going lacking, he stated.
When Professor Stuart first noticed Mr. López Obrador’s put up, he thought the president was being “a bit tongue-in-cheek about it, however I don’t know.”
“I don’t know what he was attempting to do,” he added.
Within the tweet, the president shared one other picture of what he stated was a sculpture in Ek Balam, an archaeological website in Yucatán, Mexico.
Talking on the president’s each day news conference on Monday morning, Diego Prieto Hernández, normal director of the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past in Mexico, described the sculpture as a lady grabbing somebody being held captive by their hair. He didn’t handle the picture Mr. López Obrador stated was an aluxe.
In a 2008 version of Voices of Mexico, {a magazine} revealed by the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico, a person from a Mayan village described aluxes as “tiny, brief little sprites, about 40 centimeters excessive, with furry our bodies.”
“They seem on the roads, however not everybody can see them,” the person stated in an interview with the journal. “Generally we expect, ‘I don’t imagine it,’ or ‘they’re tricking me,’ and we do issues that trouble them. So then, you’ll be strolling alongside, and so they’ll shock you. ‘What’s that child doing standing there?’ And if you look again, it’s not there anymore. It’s a spirit; it’s the wind. However the picture stays in your eye, so that you keep in mind.”
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