By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS

The United States has its Sasquatch, Nepal has its Yeti and Scotland has its Loch Ness Monster, so Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) apparently felt that Mexico, too, was entitled to an urban legend mythical creature.

On Saturday, Feb. 25, the Mexican president posted on his social media a blurry image of what he claimed was visual evidence that a Maya mythological woodland spirit known as an aluxe did indeed exist.

According to López Obrador, the photo of the elusive elfin was taken three days earlier by one of the engineers working on his controversial Tren Maya tourist train megaproject in Mexico’s southeastern Yucatan Peninsula.

Although hard to distinguish, the monotone photograph appears to show the branch of a tree with a rounded figure with two glowing eyes and a tuft of hair staring out.

López Obrador posted the alleged aluxe photo alongside another image of a pre-Columbian statute depicting the supposed fay.

In pre-Hispanic times, the Maya believed the mischievous aluxes inhabited the forests and would steal their crops and play tricks on them, and like most modern myths, there are still people in the region who believe that aluxes exist.

Notwithstanding, the photo the AMLO tweeted Saturday is not likely to be declared by the scientific world as proof positive that aluxes are real since that very same photo was apparently first tweeted in February 2021 after allegedly having been taken in a Manchester, England, public park as evidence that witches existed.

Cultural expropriation, anyone?