More Forgotten Saucer Cases of the 1970s
By Scott Corrales © 2020
One cannot help but notice that the more we are faced with the realities of the current UFO landscape (flying tic-tacs, disclosure, the new contenders in the field, etc.) a certain comfort can be found in looking at older cases from a time before social media and Photoshop. It might seem like dwelling in the safety of the past to some; a form of saucerian nostalgia. However, we must always bear in mind the advice offered by J.J. Benítez, the journalist who boasted having traveled a hundred thousand kilometers in his quest to unravel the UFO enigma: it was prudent to allow cases to lie fallow for seven years before investigating them, as this time period would allow any hoaxes to be unmasked, and more importantly, it would allow witnesses to step forward, if they had been reluctant to discuss sightings and encounters at first.
On Sunday, March 25, 1978, four friends went for an evening stroll through the streets on the outskirts of Toluca, a city in the state of Mexico. Shortly after six o'clock, the four friends found themselves engulfed in a sudden cloud of dust. It was not restricted to the area they happened to be in - the dust storm was part of a huge cloud that dropped unexpectedly on the city, much like the dust storms kicked up by the Texcoco Dry Lake which affect Mexico City toward the end of the summer. The four friends crammed into a Volkswagen Bug and decided to go and inspect the scope of the unexpected storm. They drove to a height - a district known as Lomas Altas - which commanded a view of the entire city, enabling them to see the vast black cloud overhead.
The four young men watched the apocalyptic scene from the relative safety of their car. Lightning fell from the cloud as thick raindrops hit the windshield, and an angry wind blew dust, trash and zinc siding around.
Suddenly, the driver noticed at red light in his rear view mirror. At first he thought it might be the light of a patrol car, but could not imagine what a police cruiser would be doing up in Lomas Altas. The radio went dead as the driver realized the red object had no connection to law enforcement. It began rising from the hillside, floating in the air for about five minutes, plainly visible to the fellows in the car. Helpless, they could do little more than stare at the unknown source of light in silence.
The oldest of the witnesses, twenty-two year old José Brito, later explained that it was impossible to get a good view of the intruder due to the dust storm and the 'smoke' that appeared to be emanating from the object itself. One of the side effects of the sighting was the car's AM radio going dead.
In describing the object, Brito said it was roughly the size of a city bus, surmounted by a red chrome sphere; this sphere was accompanied by broad bands of blue light that he took to be viewports of some kind, however, there was no sign of any occupant. A set of 'huge legs' was visible under the object, although the seemed to be suspended in mid-air rather than touching the ground. Even more imposing were the jets of fire issuing from the object's lower section, the source of the smoke that added to the evening's murk.
The youths were spellbound as the object began to drift away, emitting a strange noise described as similar to those produced by jet cars.
"It spun so quickly," Brito told researchers, "that we lost sight of the details. We couldn't see if it had retracted its legs or closed its viewports. All we could see was a source of light suspended in the air."
At this point, the blowing wind became even more intense, sending large rocks flying. At this point, the friends feared that one of these large pieces of rubble would strike the car with catastrophic effect.
Once the strange object departed, the dust storm came to an end and light rain ensued.
Curiosity got the better of them and the young men went out to take a closer look. The felt the ground under their feet becoming hotter as they approached a hollow that contained two clearly visible, smoking burn marks.
The events at the heights know as Lomas Altas were corroborated by a family two kilometers away. Using a theodolite, the father of the family group was able to give a better description of the intruder: it resembled a spinning top that emitted a powerful white and red light.
On October 13, 1970 the main radar at Mexico City's Benito Juárez Airport picked up three objects that eventually hovered above the control tower to the astonishment of onlookers between one and three o'clock in the afternoon. The sightings were corroborated by peasants in the adjacent region and were picked up by the El Sol de México newspaper.
Like a Light Over Troubled Waters
USOs (Unidentified Submarine Objects) were also part of the picture in these saucer-prone times. In August 1971, the "El Debate" newspaper from the Mexican state of Sinaloa published a report involving the crew of a shrimp boat conducting nocturnal operations on the waters of the Gulf of California, near the port of Topolobampo. A bizarre luminous object was seen to emerge from the sea and speed off swiftly into the skies, leaving behind an odd luminous wake.
Ismael Preciado, the boat's skipper, and machinist Ramon Armenta told journalists that the unidentified object glowed emitted a powerful glow - bright enough to light up Farallón Island and part of Topolobampo itself. According to Preciado's reckoning, the light issuing from the object should have illuminated a twenty-five mile radius.
The newspaper report closed by saying that many fishing boat crews had seen similar objects emerging from the sea, leading many to believe in the existence of an 'UFO base' on the seabed.
A UFO in Chains?
The UFO phenomenon was also active in the skies over the state of Querétaro in May 1975. The Diario de Querétaro newspaper ran the story of how 'strange objects' had flown of the town of San Joaquín at an altitude of barely seventy meters on the evening of May 6, 1975 – between 21 and 22:00 hours, according to witnesses.
These witnesses could not be dismissed lightly, either. Among them was Ricardo Ledesma, a deputy district attorney and local tax collector, who told reporters that his wife Consolación had called him to come to the window to see the objects flying over the community. He was able to see the four strange objects which “flew at an altitude higher than that of private planes.”
In describing the altitude, Mr. Ledesma noted that the object were flying at a height usually associated with aircraft participating in an parade or military airshow, but then dropped to some seventy or eighty meters .
Consolación claimed having seen the objects a few minutes longer. “I had the chance to see the objects twice, since they flew around the community a few times. They flew in from the east and returned in the same direction.” She described them as resembling the weighing platforms used in old-fashioned scales, suspended by chains.
Another witness was Manuel Martinez, a local councilman, who added a startling detail. One of the objects, he said, looked like a ‘balanzón’ – a copper pan used by silversmiths - and made a slight buzzing sound.
Ms. Guadalupe Saldívar was also among the witnesses. “At first I saw what lights that appeared to be stars, but as they drew closer and flew overhead, I saw they were circular objects like weighing platforms, with dangling wires, grey in color.”
Just as townspeople were starting to forget the unusual events of the night of May 6, another UFO visited peaceful San Joaquín in the month of June. A vast object, giving off multicolored lights, flew slowly over the town hall, barely skirting over a radio tower. There were multiple witnesses to the event, and the object also had the unusual feature (perhaps never reported before in ufological chronicles) of having beams of light above it that indeed made it look like one of weighing platforms of a set of scales, suspended by chains.
Interestingly enough, the San Joaquín sightings were investigated by the late Salvador Freixedo, the former Jesuit priest, who lived in Mexico at the time. The state of Querétaro was fertile ground for researching the paranormal at the time.
“One day in 1975,” wrote Freixedo in his landmark Defendámonos de los Dioses (Beware of the Gods), “a young man from a humble background told me how, two months before, at night, he had witnessed a UFO flying very slowly and at low altitude over his house (located on the outskirts of town). Excited by what he had seen, he ran after the UFO, following its trajectory into a deep gully outside the city, not far from his home. When he reached the gully's edge, he saw a large lens-shaped object on the ground. emitting a fantastic white light. Frightened by the sight, he crouched amid some shrubs. From his hiding place he was able to see several "midgets" with objects resembling “flashlights” in their hands. These flashlights emitted thin, concentrated beams of light and the "midgets" were having a good time hacking down plants with them, enthusiastically, cutting one down after another.
“After a while, my friend, who had remained concealed and motionless behind the shrubs, saw the object change colors and moments later, begin to ascend very slowly, balancing itself repeatedly some five meters over the ground until it shot off heavenward. While engaging in this back and forth motion, the object struck a large cactus and toppled it.
"Months later, when I accompanied the young man to the site, I asked him to show me where the cactus had been felled. We headed in that direction, and sure enough, there lay a large, half-desiccated cactus. In spite of the time that had gone by, we were able to see without any difficulty the large rounded imprints of more than one landing on the gully floor. Later on, back at his home, the young man gave me fused rocks that he had collected from the landing marks while they were still hot; he had placed them in a jar, and after a while, the inside of the jar had been covered in a yellowish dust that resembled sulfur. All these details are more or less common to many other UFO landings, but what was new to me here was the half-desiccated coyote I discovered not far from one of the landing sites. What attracted my curiosity were certain strange characteristics that could be made out along the animal's carcass. Strangest of all was the fact that the entire body had been wrung, much like a rag is wrung to extract water from it. Yet in spite of this, its bones remained unbroken. Furthermore, it was also interesting to see that no ants or any insects whatsoever could be found beneath or around the carcass, while there was a good amount of the animal's flesh still stuck to the bones. It had dried up in an unusual manner, without rotting and disintegrating as is commonly the case with animals that have died in the field.”
A Lucky Location Shot
Perhaps no other case of this time period was as sensational as the Puebla UFO Crash – an incident that occurred on July 29, 1977 – involving the acrobatics of a trio of ‘fireballs’ seen over different parts of Mexico and even recorded by a professional film crew. One of these objects reportedly exploded in mid- air, scattering debris all over the Sierra de Puebla, the forbidding mountainous region that makes up a considerable part of that state.
The initial witnesses to the events were students in Mexico City standing in line to take admissions test in the National Education School at six o'clock in the morning on July 29. Shortly after, the Hoy Mismo television broadcast told viewers that reports were coming in from about 'three lights in the sky flying from south to north in the vicinity of the Estadio Azteca toward Ciudad Satélite'. The control tower of the UFO-prone Mexico City International Airport, however, poured cold water on the sighting, saying their radars weren't picking up a single thing.
A more detailed report, however, was provided by Mr. Carlos Tejeda, who said that "one of the UFOs consisted of two stages - the first was a metallic spearhead, the second was a mass of light that couldn't be clearly made out, and left something like white smoke in its wake." This initial telephone report would soon be followed by others, including a mass sighting by employees of an air cargo company, and this was just the start - the next three days would bring a tidal wave of new sightings from one part of the country to another.
As fate would have it, a film crew taping an exterior shot for the motion picture Picardía Mexicana in southern Mexico City would capture the objects in flight. The crew had been assigned with a 'darkness into dawn' shot and their cameras were properly set up for the occasion. Their cameras managed to pick up the three objects which appeared to be engaged in acrobatics. The unit director, Abel Salazar, told his cameraman not to lose the object from sight. On the exterior set were some major figures of Mexican cinema at the time, such as Vicente Fernández and Jacqueline Andere, who also witnessed the even. Salazar would later observe that while unsure if the objects were 'UFOs or not', they did leave behind them a 'wake of stars'.
As if proof of the event on film stock wasn't enough, the airline Aeroméxico's operations center in the city of Zihuatanejo, issued a precisely-worded wire: "Radio operator Hernández Moncada 11552 (5 o'clock local time) saw three UFOs flying from north to south at approximately 16,000 feet. A shining round mass was flying in a straight line with two smaller masses behind it 'as thought trying to stop it'. These two lights made a 180 degree turn and returned at prodigious speed. Stop. Large mass exploded into four parts without losing its size, continuing its trajectory while leaving a luminous wake like a comet's tail for five minutes. Stop. These events were confirmed by TWR (tower) Dispatcher in ATOINTL (Zihuatanejo International Airport), Mister Daniel Alvarez." - a startling official admission of UFO activity if there ever was.
Mexico City’s “El Diario de la Tarde” informed its readers that Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 371 reported seeing a UFO some five hundred kilometers away from Mexico City, from where it had taken off earlier. Over the rainforest-draped mountains of Oaxaca, the airliner’s crew said the UFO ‘was starting to disintegrate’. Further confirmation was received from other civilian aircraft aloft at the time.
Efforts at finding the debris in the vegetation-covered mountains proved fruitless until researchers received a letter in August 1977 letter from schoolteachers in the state of Veracruz, advising them that a strange piece of metal had fallen in the town of Jopala, Puebla. "One of these sparks [referring to the sparks emitted by the disintegrating UFO] was recovered after it touched the ground. It is a piece of sheeting whose material is unknown to us. It is being kept by the authorities of the municipality of Jopala, who told us the fragment was still hot when they collected it." The schoolteachers also noted the belief that more fragments could be found in the general area.
So far the story has all the makings of an X-Files episode. Researchers ventured into the inhospitable, canyon-ridden region of Puebla only to find that the residents of Jopala were not inclined to part with their piece of unusual debris. The authorities yielded to a request to see the fragment, which proved to be a very heavy piece of metallic sheet. In the end, the municipal president agreed to part with a small fragment which was later submitted to analysis, revealing it was high-purity steel of some sort…such purity that it was not employed anywhere on the planet.
Skeptical sources suggest the fragment of enigmatic metal belonged to a Soviet satellite - Cosmos 929 - but fail to account for the sightings taking place throughout the country. Unless Soviet satellites were in the habit of chasing each other in the skies over Latin America?
Bikers and UFOs in the Desert
Northern Mexico was not exempt from its share of UFO sightings, especially in the wide open spaces of Chihuahua and Coahuila. One of these events took place in the evening of October 16, 1973, a few kilometers north of the city of Monclova in the locality of Pozuelos – a moniker it earned by being the site of a series of wells that supply the city. It is worth noting that October ’73 was the busiest month in the “Year of the Humanoids”.
A firefighter named Humberto Corona was on his way to Pozuelos to service a number of pumps in that locality. His nocturnal labors were suddenly interrupted – as in any good UFO case – by a sudden flash of light that filled him with fear. He disconnected the pump he was working with, finished the required task, and promptly hopped on his motorcycle, speeding away from the place. Turning his head, however, he realized that the bright source of light was following him. He accelerated down the bumpy road, hoping to avoid the unknown quantity. Before he knew it, matters were worse – the light was now directly above him.
Realizing that escape was not possible, Corona jumped from the motorcycle and ran down to a sandy arroyo nearby, hiding behind some brambles. From this precarious place of safety, the man looked back at the road, his motorcycle and the source of light.
The light – he could now tell – had its origin in a strange flying vehicle that now hovered over the motorcycle, bathing it in an eerie glow. The vehicle produced a reddish beam of light that scanned every inch of the fireman’s bike. This analysis, in Corona’s estimation, took about five minutes.
Once the scanning operation was over, the UFO rose into the air and vanished into the blackness of the desert night. Warily, Corona emerged from his hiding place, not entirely trusting that the intruder was gone for good. He picked up his motorcycle, managed to kick start it, and sped away at full speed back to Monclova.
His story appeared in the local La Opinión newspaper, whose readers wrote in to substantiate his experience with their own stories – testimonies of encounters with the unknown in the desert.
Activity over Chiapas and Tabasco
June 1973 was a busy month for the newsrooms in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, where local residents claimed having seen unidentified flying objects.
According to these reports, the objects were circular and emitted multicolored beams of light, following a specific route northward from Chiapas to Tabasco, specifically near the town of Macuspana, where evidence of landings was observed in the form of the characteristic burn marks associated with UFO CE-2 events.
Reports of CE-3s were also included; as residents of Macuspana allegedly had sightings with giant ufonauts (described as standing three meters tall and with clawed feet like roosters) that terrified the locals. These reports claimed that approaching the nightmarish beings and their vehicles was impossible, since any approach within forty meters of them would cause the landed UFOs and their occupants to ‘vanish’ from sight (camouflage?
Or was the entire unlikely experience a projection of sorts?) becoming visible once the foolhardy human had retreated to a respectful distance.
Conclusion
These ‘missing events’ from the chronology of cases in the 1970s ranges from the thoroughly documented - the footage from the Picardía Mexicana motion picture – to the purely anecdotal, such as the towering Macuspana aliens, although gigantic saucer occupants have been reported in Spain, Brazil and Russia over the decades.