Heads of state are expected to be all-seeing. So perhaps it was no surprise that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador spotted an aluxe, an elf like creature, in a photo some engineers took while working on a tourist train in the Yucatan peninsula, a favorite project of the President. Fascinated with the Mayan culture of fifteen thousand years ago, he wouldn’t doubt he had seen a contemporary offshoot of the ancient past.
He wanted the world also to see it, and it did with varying reaction – excitement, skepticism or relief that it has nothing to do with the current drug trade that has overwhelmed the country. But wait! On closer inspection, is that something in his hands? Could it possibly be drugs? Is there no escape from them? Could aluxes now be carrying them across the border? What an advance in the drug trade!
Mischievous aluxes like to hide things from humans. Perfect! They can hide drugs as they cross the border. It’s hard enough to see them at all, much less the drugs they carry. The U.S. Border Patrol would need a revised manual to describe their activities and how to catch them. Once apprehended, what then? Would they join human migrants in detention centers and on release go north to various destinations? What communities can we count on to accept them? Would they qualify for sanctuary cities?
Their existence sheds new light on President Obrador’s ambitious and controversial plan for developing the Yucatan peninsula. It is there in the Mayan culture that aluxe originated. A train that goes 910 miles around the peninsula will be able to transport any number of aluxes to support drug cartels at the border. Tourists go down to the Mayan scenery, aluxes come up to make a lot of money. A nice trade-off.
But it could eventually backfire. The cartels, as is their habit, would treat aluxes the way they do human Mexicans. Do what we say or die, and the cartel manner of death can be unpleasant for any living creature. But the aluxes are not known for tolerating this kind of abuse from humans. They could change their minds and turn on their oppressors with their special aptitude for other-worldly annihilation. The cartels wouldn’t know what hit them.
Having accomplished what U.S. might could not, the aluxes would be the toast of the town. Aluxe for President, if Constitutionally ok.