THE ALUXOB OF MEXICO

Loren Coleman in his book Curious Encounters (1985) mentions these beings and I decided to see if I could in any way augment his information.

The plural of alux is aluxob. 
The Aluxob feature in the folklore of the Mayas of Yucatan.  The Mayas themselves are somewhat short in stature, but the Aluxob are a good deal shorter.  They are supposed to measure from 6" to 2.5' in height.  They are humanoid and equate to the Little People of European folklore.  Indeed, John E. Roth includes them in his scholarly American Elves (1997).  Male aluxob carry shotguns, whose provenance is not stated, and they are accompanied by little dogs.  

Small structures found near ruined temples or elsewhere are thought to be the dwellings of aluxob.  They are often thought to be naked, but sometimes they have habiliments.  They have palm hats with wide brims.

An alux may be made of clay and air.  The idea that they are sometimes made of clay seems fairly well established.  An old word for aluxob is kat, which can mean a statue made out of clay.  This makes one wonder if aluxob were originally clay figurines, small agricultural deities.  The term is sometimes used as an umbrella to cover a number of different kinds of being.

Alux dwellings, apart from being found adjoining temples, are also to be found in fields.  There are a number of similar dwellings, Coleman informs us, in the environs of the ruined city of Tulum, but, just to complicate matters, it is said locally that these were built by corcubados, hunchbacked beings with simian characteristics.

In Spanish the term duende, a general Spanish term for one of the little people, is sometimes used for the aluxob.  Whether the term denotes diminutive beings that once existed or still exist remains to be discovered.

Tulum