A Contrarian Viewpoint: Argentina’s Alleged Abduction in La Pampa

A Contrarian Viewpoint:  Argentina’s Alleged Abduction in La Pampa

By Luis Burgos (FAO-ICOU)

A Chronology of the Event

Irma Rick, the protagonist of the case, lives with her husband in a rural setting some 20 kilometers from the town of Jacinto Arauz (La Pampa), the setting of the episode in question. On Tuesday, November 16 2021, her husband went off to work at another property in the small hours of the morning. At 0700, the woman, cellphone in hand, notices a sort of “interference” on the device, while hearing the noise of a powerful wind. At that time, the power went out and she went outside to “investigate” – she walked some 10 meters and loses her memory and the notion of time. She only remembers seeing a bright white light that did not allow her to open her eyes in the normal manner. After the event, she claimed not having seen any light whatsoever, as many news outlets had said at first, and as it was sold to the public.

Hours later, upon the husband’s return, he called her cellphone and no one answered. He phoned relatives and a search began, with the corresponding report to the police concerning “finding her whereabouts”, an operation in which regional police elements took part. In the late afternoon, the husband received a call from his wife’s phone, but all that could be heard was an acoustic sound similar to the wind or “a turbine”. The official search continued throughout the night without yielding positive results.

Wednesday, November 17

At 05:10, at daybreak, the woman “appears” sitting down on a rural road, with hands outstretched toward her legs. She slowly regains lucidity and tried to contact her three sons who live in Arauz, using the texting function on her phone. They, in turn, reply with a video call that has relative success in determining her geographic position. The woman subsequently took photos of the surroundings and sent them back so that they would know where she was. Time went by, and approximately 10:30 a.m. – five hours later – she was found by police in the vicinity of Guratraché, some 60 kilometers from where she had ‘vanished’. She is taken to the local hospital and later the Hospital at General Acha. Dr. Juan Bautista Méndez of the public prosecutor’s office intervenes at this point.

According to the protagonists, the search and rescue personnel said that she presented “a profile of uncleanliness and odor” and a computerized tomography is performed at the hospital. No injuries or spousal abuse are detected, except for a mark on her scalp, posing no risk whatsoever. From the legal perspective, the case is closed with her being found safe and sound. The woman, however, pleads to know what happened to her.

Preliminary Conclusions

There is no question that the case requires special treatment by being linked – inexplicably – to the UFO phenomenon by the media, ufologists and peddlers of mystery. Someone threw the first stone and got it rolling.

The journalistic uproar caused by the event drew the attention of the United States, Russian and Europe, according to sensationalist media.

Were NASA, the Pentagon or the KGB getting ready to fly to Argentina? No, nothing of the sort. It drew the attention of UFO groups or researchers abroad, much like a case overseas may draw our own attention. These days, with social media plagued by users, everything connects instantaneously. But when words go unmeasured, they feed a popular fantasy craving mystery. And so it goes.

Among the few “reliable” abductions in our country, there are certain items of physical evidence that back the abductee: ground traces, witnesses, injuries, symptoms, etc. In this case, there is nothing at all beyond the alleged abductee’s story. No official on site investigation took place (scans for radiation, electromagnetism, location of strange marks or prints, animal symptoms, etc.). The response by the police-legal system was regrettable, no matter how one looks at it, regarding the investigation carried out around the house and the place where she appeared. Even more so was to see a television channel engaging in its own UFO circus, contaminating the scene and stopping at nothing to “draw attention with anything that will produce more ratings.”

In ufology, we always say that time is on the side of the researchers. Letting years or even decades go by is a salutary practice. Very juicy elements emerge, especially if the witness ‘changes the story or introduces new elements.’ If this happens, the case would begin to wobble, in street parlance.  More so when the witness has recurrent UFO experiences. For example, following an anomalous experience involving the phenomenon, he/she contacts the UFO researcher once more, adding a new contact, an new encounter, and so forth. In this case, the element working against the woman is that she is the same person (Irma Rick) who acquired certain notoriety in the press in 2002 with an unusual claim, as we shall see:

To Irma Rick, a farmer from Jacinto Arauz, La Pampa, June 19, 2002 had been a day like any other. However, the evening turned into something verging on a nightmare.

The time was approximately 04:30 hours (on the 20^th) when unable to sleep due to an injury to her finger, she decided to get up.

“I was wandering around the house when a very bright light began coming into the house, making me think it was a car. It was bluish and came in through the cracks. I opened the door and saw a device floating in the air, above the silo,” she said.

“It was round, judging by the light I could see, and very bright. I could see everything clearly, and it hurt my eyes. I was feeling silly at the moment,” she explained “Suddenly a creature descended. It was elongated, white and transparent. It looked slender and had a sort of head in its upper section. I didn’t notice any hands, feet or eyes. It just hanged there and didn’t move anywhere,” she added.

Rick says she was focused on the strange being for some five minutes until she dropped her flashlight.

“I crouched down without taking my eyes off it. I picked up the flashlight, which was off, and watched it for a few seconds or another minute. Suddenly, it dived into the light and went inside it. The light turned off and I didn’t see where it took off to.

“I closed the window and went outside, thinking there I needed to look at something. I looked upward in an effort to make out a tiny light, but couldn’t see anything else,” added Rick.

The 36-year-old farmer says that she was the only person awake at home during the phenomenon’s appearance, noting that she reacted 20 minutes later, realizing her children were sleeping there, and went to wake them up.

“I couldn’t sleep anymore after that. It’s something that paralyzes you, because I didn’t think to call the children and didn’t remember anything else.”

“The next day, the police climbed to the top of the silo and said the bird droppings were burned. Pigeons no longer stop there like they used to. That’s the only trace they found. “Subsequently, after saying that she was unafraid, she described what happened to a pig she keeps some 50 meters from the house.

“It wasn’t in its usual spot. We walked to the back with the child and couldn’t find her. We searched and she was hiding in a corner. She got up but didn’t come over to eat immediately, as always. Something odd had happened.”

To date, looking through our database to locate in Argentina (and very likely anywhere in the world) an abductee who was taken with a cellphone or that humanoids should have allowed it.  This is a key and basic element used by the police and the authorities of any country to ‘solve’ crimes, thefts, kidnappings, drug trafficking, etc. Current technology allows for the capture of GPS signals through a geo-location system, Wi-Fi, towers/antennae and radio frequencies, enabling a detailed knowledge of the suspect’s whereabouts, as well as calls made or received previously. In the case of this lady, her cellphone, whose battery was remarkably unaffected inside a UFO, was activated on 3 occasions. Twice on Tuesday and once on Wednesday. That is enough. If the prosecutor in charge did not keep her cellphone, she should have turned it over to him in good faith, and the case would’ve been solved in a matter of hours or days. That way, she herself, her relatives, the media, and ufologists, would know whether the protagonist was kidnapped on the Moon, Mars, and underground bunker in an American desert or in Guatraché o Macachín. Very simple, very neat, but there must be – I repeat – the will of a single party. We have the elements to say that this is – from a legal standpoint – one of the easiest UFO cases to solve, which cannot be said of others. Tracking the cellphone becomes the key that opens the door to the truth. What would have happened if the lady hadn’t taken her cellphone with her? It was simply her word against anyone caring to refute her. Therefore, was not surrendering the mobile unit the great failure of the case? Time, once again, is in our favor. And Irma Rick has the last word.

Finally, it is striking that this case presents ‘condiments’ drawn from three other cases that happened to take place in that province, such as the cases of Julio Platner (Winifreda), Raul Dorado (also in Jacinto Arauz) and Sergio Puchetta (in Dorila). There is a very specific extraction of each of these which make up the landscape of Irma Rick’s alleged abduction. Highly suggestive.