Mexico: A Sighting Predating Kenneth Arnold?
Is it possible that a Mexican miner, far from home and completely ignorant of the phenomena he was witness to, could have beaten Kenneth Arnold to the title of first witness of the modern UFO explosion?
An intriguing affidavit, dated July 18, 1957 and featured in the appendix section of Trevor James Constable's They Live in The Sky (New Age Press, 1958), sworn by Pierre Perry, president of Arizona's Copper Mountain Mining Corporation, tells the story of how Mr. Perry was on his way to inspect a certain mineral deposit to the north of Prescott, PA on a broiling hot summer day in 1943. Journeying along with Perry were an anonymous prospector and Isidro Montoya, a Mexican miner. The story that follows should by all accounts be a classic in the annals of ufology:
While fording the Agua Fría River on horseback around 5 p.m., Montoya, who was in the lead, shouted: "¡El diablo, el diablo!" (The Devil)
"Overhead," states Perry in his affidavit. "a most terrific drama was unfolding that lasted only a few minutes. A military plane was in sight, so where the two large unidentified flying objects that looked like balloons without baskets. They were luminous and bright as the sun. The UFO's stood still as if waiting for the plane to approach, the pounced towards it. At the same time, they projected a violent luminous ray that could be compared with the large beam of a lighthouse."
What followed was no less spectacular. The cohered energy beam hit its target and brought it down. The three onlookers saw the pilots eject from the plane, but another beam from the unknown craft caused the parachutes to catch fire and the men plummeted to their deaths. "The two bodies were later found," adds Perry.
While unnerved and muttering orisions, Isidro Montoya was by no means a stranger to such visions. After crossing himself, he reportedly told Perry: "El diablo, señor...I have seen the same thing many times, señor..."
The affidavit goes on to indicate that a third spherical intruder joined the two existing UFOs and the trio vanished south toward Mexico at breathtaking speed. The men on horseback turned back to notify the authorities, but military vehicles had already been dispatched. Perry's party guided the recovery team to where they had seen the stricken aircraft crash. "Parts were scattered all over the mountainside."
It is interesting to note, among the cases of these early days of Mexican ufology, the collision of an experimental V-2 rocket on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez on May 29, 1947. The liberated German projectile was launched from the White Sands Missile Facilty and four seconds into the launch, due to a defective gyroscope, headed southward over El Paso and fell in the Ciudad Juarez cemetery. Ironically, this would prove to be but the first of many rocket launches gone astray into Mexican territory.
By 1949, stories about a "flying saucer" collision in Mexico had become widespread. A man named Ray Dimmick told Californian newspapermen that "a shining disk" had collided against a mountain on the outskirts of Mexico City and that he himself had seen the wreckage of a "space craft" some sixty feet across. To add spice to his account, Dimmick alleged that the hapless saucer's dwarfish pilot's remains had been collected and preserved for future study. This Mexican crash would go on to be come part of the vast corpus of such events collected by other UFO researchers such as Kevin Randle.
The 1950's dawned upon a world terrified by the seemingly ubiquitous presence of Communism, the very real possibility of atomic annihilation, and the persistent reports of strange vehicles seen in the skies over the northern hemisphere. On March 3, 1950, a Mexican aviation official engaged in a routine tour of inspection of the airports in the northern regions of the country when he saw a curious yellowish disk suspended at an estimated altitude of15,000 over the city of Chihuahua's airport. A press report indicated that two airplanes--whether military or civillian--tried to intercept the object but were unable to reach it.
By mid-March, the saucers were over Mexico City itself. On the 14th, many hundreds of witnesses reported seeing four flying saucers over Mexico's interantional airport, creating a sensation across the city. Activity reached its peak on March 21, when the El Nacional newspaper reportd that an unidenfied object was seen so clearly over Mexico City that movie camera operators were allegedly able to capture it on film. Sensational claims continued to emerge, such as the supposed collision of a saucer in the Sierra de Moronesa mountains of Zacatecas--an impact that caused the earth to shake.
People from all walks of life were beginning to report strange objects during this period. A professional wrestler known by his stage name, Aguila Blanca ("White Eagle"), was in his hometown of Querétaro one evening in 1956 when he decided to go to the movies. As he walked across a public park toward his destination, he became aware of a strange light hanging motionless in mid-air, which almost immediately descended upon the city to remain suspended at 200 meters over the ground. According to the wrestler, he was able to make out a series of lights resembling portholes around the structure, which he estimated to be some 50 meters in diameter and made of metal. The object remained motionless for approximately 10 minutes before heading away.
In 1957, when most ufologists were still debating the wisdom of publishing reports indicating that UFOs could in fact land and leave ground traces, Mexican newspaper El Universal Gráfico published a comprehensive account on the alleged landing of a discoidal object in the community farms of San Juan de Aragón, an event witnessed by farmer Gilberto Espinoza. Although the incident had taken place in November of the preceding year, the newspaper ran its story in January 1958. An early UFO pursuit occured on December 12, 1957, when a Douglas DC-3 belonging to Aerolíneas Mexicanas was intercepted by a "speeding saucer" over San Luis Potosí. Passengers aboard the aircraft were apparently petrified with fright as the pilot, Capt. Gilberto Alba, cooly put the DC-3 through a series of evasive manuevers.
(Excerpt from "Forbidden Mexico" by Scott Corrales)