Bolivia: A UFO Incident in 1930
In an article titled “Ovnis en Jujuy” a few years ago, the editors of Gaceta OVNI magazine, while discussing UFO-prone northern Argentina, allowed for a slight trans-border detour to discuss unknown phenomena in Bolivia. One of these cases was the story provided by a young woman named Dina Angulo, concerning the UFO experiences of her grandfather near Villazón, Bolivia, some seventy years ago.
In the spring of 1930, Ms. Angulo’s grandfather lived on a remote farm in a mountain valley near the community of Tupiza, a hundred miles away from where the 1978 Tarija UFO crash occurred. Part of the hard, unrelenting life of an Andean farmer required going to find his animals along steep mountain trails to bring them home and to butcher. As ice from the thawing glaciers caused rivers to swell, the farmer found himself cut off by a swollen river, requiring him to spend the night under the cold stars. Accompanied by his dog, the man erected a hasty shelter and lit a fire, and soon found himself surrounded by the very goats and jackasses he had gone to find.
Suddenly, Ms. Angulo’s grandfather saw the entire mountain landscape lit up by a powerful light. He had never seen such brightness, not even by daylight. Terrified, he ran off to find cover under some low lying trees. His animals scattered in every direction while the odd light source engulfed everything in its supernatural radiance. Some twenty meters away from his place of concealment, the farmer was able to see four humanoid figures, which he described as nimble and able to make long jumps. The light suddenly went off and the odd little men vanished with it. According to Dina Angulo, her grandfather was found two days later, rooted to the site in fear, gripped by a nervous condition. It was only with the passing of time that he was able to recall the details of his ordeal, which predated the start of the modern UFO age by seventeen years.
he editors of Gaceta OVNI also mention another Bolivian UFO hotspot: the salt desert known as Salar de Uyuni, a vast uninhabited expanse between the Cordillera Real and the Western Andes. According to locals, there is a “dark depression” somewhere within these salt flats that appears to be a focus for intense light, and strange luminous bodies can be seen entering and leaving the desert at this point.
[Note: I can't find any record of this having been published on Inexplicata before, but if it has, my apologies - Scott Corrales]