Mexico’s Passion for UFOs – A Book Review by Salvador Mora

Mexico’s Passion for UFOs – A Book Review by Salvador Mora

Our colleague Salvador Mora of Mexico’s La Esfera Azul (http://www.laesferaazul.com.mx) has just alerted us to his latest site update, and we encourage all readers of INEXPLICATA to pay him a visit.

Among the many research items featured, one caught our attention: Salvador has written a thoughtful review of Laura Castellanos's book on the UFO phenomenon in Mexico, entitled Historia y Pasiones de los Avistamientos OVNI en Mexico (History and Passion of Mexico’s UFO Sightings)

He extracts the following quote from Ms. Castellanos: “Extraterrestrials are more welcome in Mexico. They aren’t a source of fear and form part of everyday life. The country is a sort of alien paradise, because we have a culture that’s very rooted in the mystical and spiritual. Mexicans have a great need to believe that there is something beyond.”

This is one of the conclusions – writes Salvador Mora – reached y the author, nourished by the voices of a variety of scholars, scientists and ufologists after venturing into the controversial subject of unidentified flying objects in her latest book, published by Grijalbo.

The author remarks that she chose to overlook the indignation of her colleagues when they learned about the subject of her research, and ventured into “a territory of ridicule, steeped in disrepute” in order to turn into a “joyful narrative exercise” that gave her “intellectual breathing space” and was “fun”

“It’s not far from my journalistic trajectory, because I like iconoclastic subjects that depart from the norm. The book is a journalistic narrative exercise. I do not mock the subject, but I narrated it in a humorous manner, and bring to the fore a variety of voices [arguing] whether there is or isn’t life outside the planet, and if we are visited by aliens or not,” she adds.

Castellans points out that her book was inspired on a profile written last October for Gatopardo magazine. “It was translated into Italian and French, and when I saw the interest and controversy it stirred, I thought to approach the subject as an important part of popular culture, which has taken it over.”

No one else has experienced a true “Saucer Psychosis” like Mexicans have, she notes, such as the one in 1965 when an alien parade from La Villa [outside Mexico City] to the [statue of] the Angel of Independence was summoned, and the public was seriously asked to join in a farewell to the Venusians. “Nearly a thousand articles were published between April and November of that year in the national press, and in the 1970s, DUDA magazine reached a circulation of 250,000 issues.”

“A highly recommendable book to reflect on what UFO research has been in Mexico during the first decade of the 21st century.

(Translation (c) 2010, S. Corrales, IHU)