Antonio Ribera: Three Cases from March 1950

 

Antonio Ribera: Three Cases from March 1950

I keep in my archives three press clippings—the first French and the other two Spanish—none of which indicate the specific newspaper of origin, which I will summarize below.

According to an inspector from the Mexican Civil Aeronautics agency, who was traveling through the northern part of the country, on March 3rd—at approximately 3:00 p.m.—he sighted a strange, yellowish disc over the city of Chihuahua at an altitude he estimated to be 5,000 meters.

The object remained motionless for five minutes, positioned directly above the airport. Although two aircraft took off in pursuit of the object, they were unable to reach it. According to said inspector, another twenty people were accompanying him at the moment of the observation.

The second news item is dated March 14 and is very brief, stating verbatim: "Mexico, 14. — Hundreds of people—among them several aviation observers—report having seen four flying saucers over the Mexico City Airport. — EFE."

The third press report is dated March 21, and, under the headline "The Enigma of Flying Saucers," it compiles various global news items regarding the issue—one of which comes from Mexico: "In Mexico, one of them was sighted so clearly that it was able to be photographed by newsreel cameramen. A newspaper, *El Nacional*, asserts that another saucer crashed in the Sierra de Moronesa (State of Zacatecas) and caused the earth to boil."


1953: Salvador Villanueva's "Contact"

The case of Salvador Villanueva is not, chronologically speaking, the first of the numerous cases of "contact" with extraterrestrials—an occurrence to which the American continent has been so prolific—but it is, indeed, the first one we document in this book.

This case began on Friday, August 14, 1953—the day on which Salvador Villanueva, a taxi driver from Mexico City, agreed to drive an American couple, the Reeves, all the way to the United States. The journey took place the following day; during the trip, the car suffered a breakdown, leaving it stranded on the highway with only Villanueva present, as the couple had continued on foot toward the nearest town. While Villanueva was alone in the car, two small beings—resembling aviators in appearance—suddenly appeared, and the driver struck up a conversation with them.

However, I believe it would be more interesting to partially transcribe an unpublished document regarding this case, thereby ceding the floor to Villanueva himself. It consists of a letter written by him personally, containing... Date: February 5, 1962. To my collaborator, Doña Editha Schmidt, who resides in Palma de Mallorca. After providing a few
personal details, he states the following:

"Yours truly was approaching his birthday on August 17, 1953; I had no money other than what I earned each day, as I was working with a hired car—or 'cruising service,' as it is called in Mexico City. In the course of this work, I served some Americans who were en route to their hotel. Along the way, they asked me (in Spanish—for they hailed from the Southern United States, where this language is spoken) if I knew of a chauffeur who could help them drive a car toward our shared border. The pay was good, and the prospect offered relief from the thought of spending my birthday in destitution—a date that was only three days away, as this encounter took place on Friday, August 14, 1953. So, we agreed to meet on Saturday, August 15, at their hotel. We picked up the car—which was being kept at a mechanic's shop—and, after some last-minute shopping, we set off toward the northern reaches of the American continent. Just as dusk was falling, we passed through a town called Ciudad Valles, located 480 kilometers from Mexico City; four kilometers further on, the car began to emit a troublesome noise from its transmission. (The couple—the gentleman and his wife—agreed to return to the town of Valles in search of a mechanic.) It began to grow dark, and then occurred the event I recount in my book regarding the departure for Venus. What became of the car and its owners is easy to understand (it was a Saturday, and in Mexico, people tend to stop working early in the day). My impromptu employers could not find anyone to assist them immediately. They checked into a hotel in the town—of which there are dozens—and spent..." ...comfortably through the night, and the following day—Sunday, August 16—after having a meal, they secured a tow truck and retrieved their car. They didn't find me. They assumed that I, too, had returned to the town to have breakfast; and, in any case, if they didn't see me again, they would save 8,500 Mexican pesos on my wages. But by then, nothing in this world mattered to me anymore, for I was under the influence of those amiable Venusians....an absence that lasted until Friday, August 21—perhaps at 6:00 a.m., more or less the same time he had departed the previous Sunday. Thus, my absence lasted five days, give or take a few minutes."

Salvador Villanueva Medina provides all these details in response to a question posed by Mrs. Schmidt regarding the duration of his absence from our planet (for, according to Villanueva, the two small beings had taken him to Venus in their spacecraft) and regarding what had become of his car during his absence.

The eminent British researcher Gordon Creighton describes the case in his work *Los Humanoides* (The Humanoids), and Villanueva himself recounts his journey in the aforementioned book.
Given its significance, I will transcribe the version of the event offered by GWC in *Los Humanoides en Iberoamérica* (The Humanoids in Ibero-America)—a section or chapter of the aforementioned work which I myself translated into Spanish for Editorial Pomaire:

"At 6:00 p.m. on a day in mid-August 1953 (as we have already established, it was the 15th), the Mexico City taxi driver Salvador Villanueva—40 years of age—was lying beneath his vehicle, examining the transmission, which had broken down, when he noticed two pairs of legs clad in something that resembled 'seamless gray corduroy.' Emerging from beneath the car, he found himself standing before two pleasant-looking men, approximately 1.35 meters tall, dressed in one-piece suits that covered them from neck to ankle, featuring wide, shiny, perforated belts, metallic collars, and small, gleaming black boxes attached to their backs. Under their arms, they carried 'helmets resembling those worn by pilots or rugby players.' Their diminutive stature did not seem particularly strange in Mexico, a country home to numerous very short indigenous people." Villanueva concluded that they were, without a doubt, aviators from some sister republic in Central or South America. "One of them spoke Spanish well, though in a peculiar manner—'running all the words together'—and with a strange accent. The other, conversely, although he evidently understood the language, did not utter a single word. Both directed sympathetic smiles at him, spoke of his automobile and other trivial matters, and, when it began to rain, accepted Villanueva’s invitation to take shelter inside the vehicle, which was parked on the side of the national highway.

"Throughout the night, various casual observations began to unnerve Villanueva, who was left utterly dumbfounded upon hearing this final statement: 'We are not from this planet. We come from one very far away, but we know many things about your world.'

"At dawn, he accompanied them to their craft, which was resting in a clearing half a kilometer from the highway; he noticed that as they crossed a stretch of marshy ground—into which he himself sank deeply—the legs and feet of the little men remained clean. 'When their feet touched the muddy puddles, their belts would glow, and the mud would splash away as if repelled by an invisible force.'
"The disc—some 12 meters in diameter—resembled two gleaming soup plates joined together at their concave sides. There were small portholes set into the craft’s small dome; the vessel rested upon three large metallic spheres and emitted a low, muffled hum. A section of the lower hull opened up, forming a gangway whose handrails consisted of the very cables supporting it." The two little men boarded, inviting Villanueva to follow them; however, he turned around and ran a short distance away, watching from there as the craft rose slowly—with a pendular motion, "or like a dry leaf falling in reverse"—until, at a height of a few meters, it began to glow intensely, then shot upward at dizzying speed, accompanied by a faint hiss, and immediately vanished from sight."

(Cr: Antonio Ribera, Platillos Volantes en Iberoamérica y España)