Salvador Freixedo: A Child Healed By God

 

 Salvador Freixedo: A Child Healed By God 

The following case may provide the key to a fundamental explanation of the religious phenomenon. Naturally, there are many other aspects of the religious phenomenon to consider, but we believe that this case (and countless similar ones throughout history) contains certain elements essential to a fundamental assessment of the fascinating psychosocial phenomenon known as religion.

It took place in Peru in 1960, in a locality called Bailanca, one hundred kilometers south of Chimbote and in the vicinity of a large hydroelectric plant.

The principal witness (of whom I possess a detailed recording—not only of the event I am about to recount but also of others that occurred before and after in that same region) is a Yugoslav engineer. He was the plant's maintenance chief and a man who was completely skeptical regarding extraterrestrials or flying saucers until the events described here took place. Possessing a strong character and a highly technical profession grounded in the laws of physics, he is the type of person completely averse to tall tales or anything smacking of mysticism or intangible realities.

His first encounter with the UFO phenomenon was a momentary blackout at the plant at midnight. When he stormed out of his office to investigate the cause, he heard one of his assistants, a man named Quirós, say in a terrified, faltering voice:

"Those strange people have come down again!" Just as he was about to ask which people were being referred to, he realized that, despite it being midnight, the area outside the plant was illuminated as if it were broad daylight. He hurried outside to investigate the source of the light and saw a large, lens-shaped craft at the far end of the open area; as he gazed at it in astonishment, he spotted two individuals talking to each other and instinctively realized they were the "strange people" Quirós had mentioned.

Without a moment's hesitation—and in a foul mood—he strode over to them and demanded to know what they were doing there, by whose permission they had entered, and if they were aware of the harmful consequences of a blackout, even a momentary one. They smiled, tried to calm him down, and told him they were not responsible for the power outage.

They spoke to him in a measured tone, constantly trying to dispel the ill humor he was openly displaying—for, as he himself admitted, he had used words "that cannot be repeated in public." They explained that the brief blackout had been caused by a *gallinazo* (a type of vulture or buzzard common in the area) that had bridged two power lines with its outstretched wings. They added that they meant no harm and had been visiting Earth from their own planet, Apu, for a very long time.

Far from being reassured by these explanations, the Yugoslavian lashed out at them again, feeling they were making a fool of him; he told them he didn't believe a word of their nonsense and ordered them to leave the power plant grounds immediately.

Refusing to listen to any further explanations, he turned on his heel and, still furious, headed back toward the building. But before entering, he remembered the strange vehicle he had seen at the edge of the clearing and turned back to check if it was still there, bathed in that extraordinary light.

The vehicle was rising vertically; Upon reaching an altitude of about 1,000 meters, it leveled off, accelerated rapidly, and immediately vanished into the sky above the high peaks.

Despite everything he had witnessed, our man refused to yield his position, though he could not stop turning the night's events over in his mind. Yet, he spoke to no one about it, nor did he alter his thinking or his lifestyle, attempting instead to forget the entire incident as if it had been a dream of no consequence.

Some time later, while hunting deer at altitudes exceeding 4,000 meters in the Andes, he had another encounter—one in which he engaged in a friendlier conversation with them. This second meeting was followed by others, during which he continued to receive new information about the strange visitors' home planet, the formation of the solar system's celestial bodies, and many other topics of interest to him—details preserved on the aforementioned recording.

By then, our engineer had abandoned his hostile attitude toward them and had become convinced that they were indeed non-human beings, even though their physical forms closely resembled our own.

However, I want to emphasize one of his encounters with the "extraterrestrials"—an encounter that, as I mentioned earlier, I consider key to understanding an intriguing aspect of human history.

One day, while our engineer was engaged in his favorite pastime—hunting—and tracking deer and bears at an altitude of over 4,000 meters in a remote area sparsely populated by indigenous people living far from civilization, he stumbled upon a small, enclosed valley surrounded by high hills. He was surprised to see a small group of indigenous people gathered around something he could not clearly make out from a distance. Although he did not speak Quechua and most of the group did not speak Spanish, he approached them to see what was happening. Usually, he was accompanied on his hunts by an employee from the power plant—a full-blooded indigenous man who was fluent in Quechua and served as his interpreter—but on this occasion, he was alone.

As he drew closer, he could see that the group was gathered around a child lying on the ground, bundled in layers of clothing against the intense cold and heavy snow. The boy appeared to be in critical condition; he had lost all color, and every sign suggested he was dying.

The engineer was met with great coldness and suspicion. When he asked through gestures what was wrong with the boy, he was told that the child had fallen from some high rocks and broken several bones. Seeing the desperate situation—and observing the sorrow and resignation of the boy's parents and relatives—he offered to take the child to the nearest hospital, provided they could carry him down to his jeep, which was parked much further down the mountain. The boy's parents were deeply unsettled by this offer of help; when the engineer insisted again that the boy needed to be taken to the hospital—since he was in critical condition and grave danger—they vehemently refused.

Intrigued by their attitude and their opposition to any intervention—despite realizing the boy was critically ill—he asked why they didn't want him taken to the hospital, knowing he would die otherwise. They answered with utter simplicity—a reply the engineer understood, yet one that left him utterly astounded:

"Because 'Papa' God is coming to heal him."

As they spoke, they pointed upward and then immediately toward the child. He tried to fathom what God had to do with the situation while continuing to urge them to bring the boy to his jeep so he could rush him to the hospital. Just as he had decided to leave the boy to his fate, he heard the Indians exclaiming and saw them all gazing at a specific point in the sky. He immediately looked in the same direction and saw a vehicle—identical to the one he had seen months earlier at the hydroelectric plant—plummeting at high speed from above before landing gently a short distance from the group of Indians. They greeted it with shouts of joy; it was clear from their faces that this was exactly what they had been waiting for.

Several individuals—like those he had seen on previous occasions—stepped out of the craft. Among them was a woman who, like her companions, wore a loose-fitting mesh suit. They made their way to the boy and, with his parents' help, immediately carried him to the craft, where he remained for about fifteen minutes. After that time, the boy stepped out of the craft’s hatch on his own and ran toward his parents, leaping about and throwing stones to show them that he had not only regained his full strength but that his arm was completely healed. All the indigenous people erupted in shouts of joy as they crowded around the boy, touching him to see if he was truly cured.

The pseudo-extraterrestrial explained to the engineer how they had performed the operation in such a short time. According to her, they had disintegrated all the diseased particles and reintegrated them, putting everything back in its proper place.

I say "pseudo-extraterrestrial" because, as she herself explained, she had been born on our planet; as a very young child—forty-seven years earlier—she had been taken by the people of Apu to their planet, where she had fully adapted and become like one of them.

The strange thing about the case—and what raises serious doubts in my mind—is that she was also Yugoslav, and from the very same region as the engineer, no less! Consequently, the two of them spoke in their native dialect. He did not seem surprised by this at all, especially given the things he had already witnessed—things he could not have even imagined years before.

I confess that it leaves me completely perplexed, for this small detail bears a striking resemblance to other highly suspicious "small details" I have encountered in other cases.

Another circumstance in the engineer's lengthy account that particularly intrigued us was the frequency with which—during his forays into the high mountain ranges in search of big game—he came across groups of indigenous people sitting calmly around extraterrestrials, listening intently to their conversation; the beings, of course, spoke to them in perfect Quechua. It seems that at those altitudes, far removed from our "civilization," the communication between the "gods" and the indigenous people remains just as it was in ages past across the globe, when aboriginal tribes with very primitive cultures regarded them as gods and paid them some form of worship.

The fact that they were waiting with the sick child for the visitors to descend suggests that, in some way, they knew beforehand that "God" was coming—whether because the visitors habitually descended there on specific dates, because they had communicated the time and place of their arrival to the indigenous people, or because the locals possessed a means of summoning and communicating with them. What is certain is that the Yugoslav engineer caught them on several occasions engaging in these gatherings—meetings unknown to the "civilized" population of his country.

In fact, on one occasion when he had stumbled upon them—and even taken part in the conversation—one of the chiefs approached him after the extraterrestrials had departed and he was preparing to descend the mountain. The chief implored him not to report what he had witnessed to the authorities. When asked the reason for this request, the chief explained that if the authorities found out, they would likely send soldiers to investigate the situation; such an inquiry would probably cause their friends from the sky to stop visiting—a prospect that deeply saddened the locals, as they felt protected by that friendship.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, this episode sheds significant light on how we might view—from a fresh perspective—many biblical accounts (particularly those in the Pentateuch) and the sacred texts of the world's major religions. It also helps us correctly interpret the vast array of similar traditions and legends found throughout the histories of peoples across the globe.

[Salvador Frexedo, La Granja Humana [The Human Farm], Ed. Posada, 1984]