“It’s all mystical” – Mexican president shares photo of a “forest spirit” “Lower Saxony is the new Lapland” – Northern lights in Germany and England

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador shared two photos on Twitter this weekend. In one of the images there is a blurred silhouette, in the other a pre-Hispanic sculpture. But not only the photos, also the captions of the president are more than enigmatic.

According to him, the photos were taken during the construction of the so-called Maya railway. This is a tourist train through the Yucatán Peninsula – a project that is close to the heart of the left-wing populist president.

A photo — the one with the faint outline — was taken by an engineer three days ago and shows an Alux, the president said. In fact, it looks like a dark figure with white hair and glowing eyes is crouching in a tree.

The Alux is a small, mischievous creature from Mayan mythology. As the Mayans say, the only knee-high Aluxe are invisible, but can make themselves visible if they want to play tricks. According to legend, they can be useful if treated well, but when angry they bring chaos and disaster.

The other photo shows “beautiful pre-Hispanic sculptures at Ek Balam,” a former Mayan center on the Yucatán Peninsula, López Obrador continues.

He ends the tweet with the phrase:

Users on Twitter found this anything but mystical. This for several reasons.

Their president’s belief in spirits does not seem to arouse enthusiasm among the Mexican people. As this Twitter user writes:

If the existence of such creatures can be disputed, the second point of outrage leaves no room for debate: the first photo could not possibly have been taken three days ago, as the president claims in his tweet. Attentive users have noticed that this is not the first time that the same photo has circulated on the Internet. Mexican journalist Mauricio Schwarz sarcastically writes:

In fact, you can find the original tweet on Twitter, which first started the discussion about the figure in the tree in February 2021. At the time, the supposedly mysterious figure was discovered in a tree in the Mexican state of Nuevo León and labeled a witch.

It is not known whether López Obrador deliberately distributed the photo with false information or whether it was brought in by the engineer. So far he has not commented on it.

In the past, he has repeatedly shown that the president is an admirer and protector of indigenous cultures. His first public position was in 1977 as director of the Institute of Indigenous Languages ​​in the Mexican state of Tobasco. When he took office in 2018, he pledged to pay special attention to Mexico’s indigenous peoples. In 2021, he formally apologized to the Yaqui indigenous people for the crimes committed by the state against their ancestors.

With the construction of the Maya railway in 2018, he started a huge project that should also benefit the Maya. The 1525 km route is not only intended to boost tourism in Yucatán, but also to better network the Mayan community and create jobs for them. But whether he actually helps them is highly controversial in Mexico.

Demonstration against reorganization of electoral authority

The planned restructuring of the Mexican electoral authority is also controversial. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated last weekend against a reform initiated by López Obrador, which aims to drastically curtail the influence of the Independent Electoral Authority (INE).

Protesters protesting under the motto “Mi voto no se toca” (My voice will not be touched) bathed the central Zócalo Square in the capital Mexico City in white and pink, the colors of the INE, on Sunday (local time). There were also demonstrations in favor of the electoral institution in other cities in Latin America’s second-largest economy, as the newspaper “Milenio” reported.

On Thursday night (local time), the Senate approved the reform that would lead to drastic cuts in electoral authority and budget cuts. The president’s final approval is considered a formality. According to the INE, numerous regional offices for the preparation, organization and implementation of the elections will be closed. According to the opposition, this would jeopardize the organization of free elections in Mexico. The electoral authority itself and the opposition announced that the Supreme Court would examine the constitutionality of the new regulations.

López Obrador accuses the electoral authority of acting undemocratically and wasting money. In his four years as head of state and government, the left-wing nationalist has repeatedly been accused of autocratic tendencies. (saw with material from the sda ​​and dpa news agencies)