UFOs in the Desert

Some of the earliest reports of UFOs in the area can be traced to eyewitness reports of incidents that occurred during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1921). One such report, collected in Prof. Santiago Garcia’s Los Ovnis en Mexico (Posada, 1972) comes from a peasant named Matías López, 79 at the time of the writing, who recalled seeing fireballs in the heaven over San Pedro, Coahuila when he was only fifteen years old. His elders said that the fireballs “were the fires of the end of the world” which would consume our planet completely, in step with some religious beliefs. Similar bolides have been reported elsewhere in Mexico, even by the military, as can be attested by the 1967 incident involving the warship Guanajuato.

“But as it so happened, the world didn’t end,” the old desert farmer told García, and the balls of light kept appearing. I became very familiar with ‘em, ‘cause I’d see them at night when I was rounding up the cows and putting them in their pens. Others would cross themselves, and some would run into their houses, but I stayed nice and still in the field, to watch those things that were pretty to see, in parts.”

As to the size of the objects, Mr. Lopez indicated an apparent size of twelve meters, red in color and changing to yellow, and emitting “spurts” of sparks everywhere. “They moved up and down, risin’ and fallin’, and they made a ton of noise. Fine whistling sounds and then loud reports, like lightning.”

In October 1970, Professor García interviewed Guadalupe Becerra, a young witness to the local high strangeness, in the town of La Goma, Durango. The twelve-year-old told him that luminous phenomena were still to be found in the area: “I saw a bright light in the sky, looking like a wheel. It came down little by little toward the mountain they call La Ballena (the Whale) and the light was so strong that I shut my eyes because it was setting me on fire. That thing came down little by little over the mountain and stayed there for a while.”

The object increased its brilliance and rose rapidly into the sky, becoming smaller “like a star, and then I never saw it again.” A phenomenon similar to what was described by Ms. Becerra occurred thirty-seven years later in Maxala, Guerrero, thousands of miles distant.

A truly spectacular UFO sighting was reported one evening in September 1976 around 8:59 p.m. when residents of Ceballos noticed the overwhelming presence of a giant object on the outskirts of their community. At least two dozen residents gathered on Ceballos’s main street to watch the “craft” hanging in mid-air, as if waiting for its cue. The baleful machine, if machine it was, was estimated at some 300 meters long and with an overall rectangular shape. Lights surrounded the object, changing from green to blue to white, pulsating to a dull, humming sound coming from deep within its recesses. The eerie situation was made worse by all the dogs in the town suddenly howling and barking in unison.

Jose Madero, an elderly and decidedly valiant local, thought the intruder might be a balloon or dirigible of some sort, and approached it. He described it as being silvery in color when seen at close range, almost like steel. Eventually, the object rose into the air and headed toward the Zone of Silence.

People are Strange When You’re a Stranger

Strangeness is not restricted to the objects that are seen in the sky by cattlemen and desert ranchers: Sometime in 1975, an enterprising couple drove into the Zone of Silence in a brand new Ford pickup to gather unusual rocks and fossils, which can be found in great abundance. As they busied themselves in their activity, they noticed that a desert rainstorm was heading toward them. Hoping to avoid getting caught in a flash flood, they wisely packed their vehicle up and sped off, but not fast enough to avoid the relentless rain: the track ahead of them turned into a swamp: the pickup was quickly trapped, and began to sink into the soft terrain.

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