Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador set social media on fire Saturday by sharing a photo of what he claimed was a mystical elf sitting in a tree.
Obrador shared a photo of sculptures from a Yucatec-Maya archeological site that he says are of this type of elf.
“I’ll share two photos of our monitoring of the Mayan rail works: one taken three days ago by an engineer, apparently by Alux; Another is the magnificent pre-Hispanic sculpture at Ek Balam by Diego Prieto. Everything is mystical,” the Mexican president wrote, according to a machine translation.
According to Mayan lore, Alux was a somewhat mythical figure that caused danger and mischief.
By the next day, the tweet had five million views.
I’ll share two photos of our monitoring of the Mayan Train works: one taken three days ago by an engineer, apparently by Alux; Another is the magnificent pre-Hispanic sculpture at Ek Balam by Diego Prieto. Everything is mystical. pic.twitter.com/Tr5OP2EqmU
– Andres Manuel (@lopezobrador_) February 25, 2023
While some social media users embraced the theory and had a good time with it, others quickly got to work debunking Obrador’s elf photo.
“Yes, Andres, the engineer took the photo three days ago in Nuevo Leon from February 2021 and from December of the same year in Thailand. You are sad, very sad… and the country is even more… if you believe that, you are stupid… if you know you are lying, you are malicious…” wrote a Twitter user.
In fact, the photo previously made the rounds claiming to be a “witch” spotted in Nuevo Leon.
The mysterious photo looks like a type of gibbon, lesser monkey or langur monkey.
