1987-1997: Puerto Rico’s Incredible Decade
By Scott Corrales
(c) 2010
[ Author's note: This feature appeared originally in the United Kingdom's sadly defunct UFO MATRIX magazine and formed part of my regular Orbis Tertius column
-- its title being a nod to that extraordinary Argentinean author and
translator, Jorge Luis Borges. The "incredible decade", too, is a nod to
M.K. Jessup and his description of abnormal activity in the late 19th
century. Some of the information presented may be "old hat" to readers
of my work in Tim Beckley's UFO UNIVERSE or FATE magazine, but it might give new readers an appreciation of what was going on two decades ago in the Caribbean. -- SC]
Looking back at major outbreaks of UFO activity always has a
dream-like effect. In later years it becomes hard to believe that
perfectly ordinary parts of our world can be swept up in a frenzy over
unusual activity, bordering on hysteria. Perhaps for this reason, the
Spanish-speaking countries have used the term “psychosis” to
characterize the atmosphere surrounding a saucer flap, for example. The
image that best characterizes this is the tabloid cover photo of a
police officer and a knot of teenagers looking up at the night sky, with
the screaming headline “¡platillera psicósis!” referring, in this case, to the 1991 UFO events in Mexico City.
Similar circumstances occurred in Puerto Rico, an island known for
its heavy UFO activity, usually centering on two specific areas: El
Yunque Rainforest in the northeastern corner of the island, within a
stone’s throw of the capital city of San Juan, and the island’s
southwestern corner, where unusual events centered around the
communities of Cabo Rojo and Lajas. Unidentified flying objects had made
themselves at home in the Seventies, resulting in localized “flaps” the
received worldwide attention, and even prompted politicians to call for
an official study into the nature of the phenomenon. The leading theory
explaining the recurrent UFO appearances over that particular zone
involves the unusual magnetic fields found in the vicinity of Maricao
State Forest, which has been a notorious materialization point for
unidentified vehicles over the years. Laguna Cartagena is in the state
forest’s vicinity, and excessive interest in Laguna Cartagena prompted
police and Civil Defense authorities to cordon off the area and have
discouraged investigators from visiting the area, citing “disruptions to
the lagoon’s fragile ecology”.
The southwestern corner of the roughly rectangular island has for
centuries been the stage for paranormal events. In the 1600, the Blessed
Virgin appeared in the town of Hormigueros, where many Lourdes-like
cures have taken place; in 1953, a boy named Juan Collado had been
visited by an entity claiming to be the Virgin, who instructed him to
tell his parents and other adults that she would re-appear near a well
on a given date. Thousands of people from around the island flocked to
the site of the “miraculous” well, standing in hurricane-season rain to
wait for the Blessed Virgin to appear. The situation, reminiscent of
Fátima in 1917, led to many sudden healings, and although there was no
“miracle of the sun”, many observed a glowing UFO land upon a hill not
distant from the well. In spite of the torrential rain, the UFO managed
to set the dense tropical vegetation on fire. In 1974, a UFO flap
coincidental with the wave taking place stateside produced hundreds of
sightings, abduction reports, mysterious human disappearances, numerous
mutilations of cattle and, oddly enough, the Blessed Virgin staged a
reappearance, producing more miracles. The Eighties, however, were quiet
– a silence that was in step with the lack of UFO activity worldwide –
and many researchers who had been active during the previous decade
returned to “civilian” life.
Dawn of a New Saucer Age
An incident in Cabo Rojo on May 31, 1987 served as the metaphorical
starters pistol for the resurgence of a decade of UFO and paranormal
activity in the island. Puerto Rico’s south-western coast was rocked by
an explosion and an earthquake at a reported depth of some 80,000 feet.
Witnesses reported plumes of bluish smoke emerging from cracks in the
ground along with a series of aftershocks. Seismographs soon issued
conflicting reports: originally, the tremor’s epicenter was under Laguna
Cartagena at a depth of 8000 feet. Later, it was moved out to sea,
somewhere in the Mona Passage.
The earthquake had a most unusual aftermath: those living in the
immediate area of Laguna Cartagena were evacuated by military personnel
while figures garbed in decontamination gear conducted a thorough survey
of the area, including samples of earth, water and vegetable matter.
The day following the event, rural residents saw what appeared to be a
military helicopter hovering above the lagoon, lowering what appeared to
be sensitive equipment into the water. This unknown instrumentation
package proved to be of great interest to someone else: on June 3, 1987,
at 10:30 p.m., a cylindrical object resembling a giant hot-water tank
with red and blue “navigation” lights on either end emerged from the
Caribbean and positioned itself directly over the lagoon, to the
consternation of onlookers. The silent UFO repeated its manoeuvre at the
same time of night on June 4th and 5th. Unidentified flying objects in
myriad configurations would become, from then on, a staple of
south-western Puerto Rico
Whatever the strange objects in the sky were, and whatever
unexplained intelligence was behind them, returned to the scene with an
intensity that exceeded earlier flap events. The phenomenon was now
chronicled in the press – daily papers and specialized publications
alike – and recent sightings, encounters and abductions competed for
space with older stories that could now finally be told as experiencers
felt encouraged to share them with the public. And some of the newer
cases were mind-boggling: jet interceptors absorbed by menacing,
behemoth triangular craft, the whereabouts of their pilots unknown;
diminutive humanoids reported at road crossings, streams, beaches and —
most disturbingly — bedrooms; rumors of an increase in activity by U.S.
military personnel and Federal agents aimed at maintaining a “cover-up”
merged seamlessly with intense official action against native terrorist
groups (the so-called “Macheteros”) creating a palpable atmosphere of excitement tinged with fear.
In October 1988, a witness living in La Parguera, globally famous for
the microscopic marine life that causes its bay to become
“phosphorescent” on moonlit nights, reportedly saw a gigantic UFO “as
large as a 727” airliner, studded with lights, hang silently in mid-air
before sinking quietly into the nearby swampland. Melvin Rosado, a
resident of Lajas, saw something even more disturbing on one of the
hills that comprise the coastal range known as Sierra Bermeja. From his
home overlooking the hills, he witnessed an event that falls squarely
within the confines of “high strangeness”: he claims to have seen a
structure resembling “an elevator” emerge from the ground, and that four
humanoids stepped out of it. The humanoids were escorted by a small
hairy hominid which Rosado described as “moving like a robot” which
would follow indications given by one of its “handlers.” The witness
added that the metallic elevator box appeared to become transparent at
one point, as if shielded by a “cloaking device.”
Vanishing Jets and Official Legerdemain
These spectacular (and admittedly questionable) events, however,
could not compare with the aerial phenomenon supposedly seen in the
night sky over the town of Betances and over the Sierra Bermeja region.
Well over 100 witnesses on the evening of December 28, 1988 were treated
to the sight of Navy jets, allegedly F-14’s, manoeuvring around a
mammoth triangular UFO shaped like a guitar plectrum and with blinking
lights.
Harassed by fighters diving and spinning around its massive structure
in an effort to force it down, or else follow a given trajectory, the
giant UFO turned around with uncanny ease as one of the jets blocked its
flight path. The massive intruder remained motionless, suspended in
mid-air, like something out of a high-budget science fiction thriller.
What happened next is unclear, but there is unanimity among the
witnesses that the whine of the F-14 Tomcat’s engines was extinguished
after closing in on the floating UFO. Whether it collided and
disintegrated, or whether it was absorbed or “captured” by the UFO is
unclear. The second interceptor vanished as well. The colossus then
proceeded to split in two ) and each half took off in a different
direction, one toward the southeast and another toward the northeast.
This case was vividly described by Wilson Sosa, an onlooker turned
researcher, before the those gathered at the 1991 International UFO
Conference in Laughlin, Nevada.
Officialdom did not delay in offering rebuttals about the strange
going-on in South-western Puerto Rico. Aníbal Román, Civil Defense
Director for the Mayagüez Region, reassured the population over a radio
broadcast that neither UFOs nor strange lights were being seen in the
south-western corner of the island. A vast effort was undertaken to
demonstrate that the “cause” of the lights seen in Laguna Cartagena was
attributable to lights of the Candelaria neighbourhood of Cabo Rojo
reflecting upon the lagoon’s waters: The Puerto Rico Electric Power
Authority (PREPA) left hundreds of homes without electricity for thirty
minutes on October 2, 1991. Ramón Montalvo, an engineer at the PREPA
plant in San Germán, claimed that the unusual lights vanished from the
darkened sky “the minute the power was cut off.” Lt. Rafael Rodríguez of
the Lajas police argued that the blackout proved the lights believed to
be UFOs were merely the reflections on the lagoon’s surface.
Although authorities went to the extreme of placing a series of large
reflectors on the crest of Mt. Candelaria, the experiment was an
abysmal failure: no-one saw the expected reflections, despite the
official affirmations. Any individual armed with a map could have told
that the lights of the Candelaria neighbourhood (20 miles away) could
not possibly account for the situation being experienced on an almost
daily basis by the residents of the Lajas Valley.
In late January 1994, a Californian cable TV crew visited the island
to prepare a documentary on the strange goings-on that had caused such
sensation in earlier years. The crew, led by interviewer Tom Zennes,
spoke to Israel Acosta Meléndez about a sighting occurred on January 16
of that year. Acosta claimed that he and a group of friends had seen a
large blue light illuminate the night sky near Lajas, adding that the
light remained at some distance above them for a long time before taking
off toward an unknown destination at high speed.
Acosta told Zennes that he had also had the opportunity of witnessing
a circular, brass-colored vehicle that crossed the sky from Lajas to
Cabo Rojo. The object had at least a dozen lights running along its
sides. The Lajas resident had grown accustomed to these sightings and
felt no fear of the unknown objects, although the same couldn’t be said
for his trusty horse. He recalled heading for Cabo Rojo on horseback one
day when he saw a UFO hovering briefly on the horizon before splitting
into three parts. Acosta’s mount was so startled it nearly threw him off
the saddle.
On November 27, 1994, a UFO described as having a triangular shape
crossed the heavens at 5:00 p.m. witnessed by Aracelis Valentín, a
resident of Mayaguez’s Jardines Housing, who was “astonished” by the
sight.
Mrs. Valentín explained that the UFO, which was “shiny and metallic,”
moved south from a northwesterly direction. “I was there with my 2-year
old son, when I saw an object resembling a stingray,” Aracelis averred
during an interview with a journalist. She pointed out that the unknown
vehicle was very large and clearly visible in the clear skies. As in
other UFO cases, the craft allegedly sighted by Mrs. Valentín made no
sound whatsoever. She insisted that it could not have been an airplane,
helicopter, or balloon, since the object in question was incredibly
bright and moved at a breathtaking rate of speed. “The phenomenon
frightened me considerably,” she told reporters from a local newspaper.
The Mayaguez resident was by no means the only one to report UFOs:
unknown to her, an entire neighborhood had sighted a triangular UFO a
week earlier in the town of Añasco, located to the north of Mayaguez.
According to one of the residents of Añasco’s Daguey suburb, the
triangle “…crossed the skies silently, leaving a trail of light similar
to a fluorescent lamp,” as it crossed the evening skies on November 23,
1994
One resident claimed to have seen the triangular UFO vanish rapidly,
heading southward from the North. The object itself gave off a brilliant
light and flew at a low altitude, which enabled the witness and three
relatives to see it clearly. “At first I thought I was seeing white
pigeons flying in formation, but I later realized it was something none
of us had seen before,” said the witness, a government employee, who
insisted on anonymity when interviewed by reporter José Victor Jiménez.
“I don’t want my sanity called into question, but my immediate family
and other neighbours saw the very same thing.” The regular sightings
were a certain omen that the sightings were coming back with renewed
intensity, with regular reports appearing throughout the Christmas
holidays and into the new year.
World attention was suddenly thrust upon Puerto Rico again on May 6,
1997, when reports of a UFO crash near the town of Lajas (famous for the
Laguna Cartagena incidents in the late 1980s and early Nineties) at
3:25 a.m. erupted on the news wires and on the Internet, producing
renewed interest in the island’s UFO landscape. All accounts coincided
on the fact that something had happened near Lajas, producing an intense
brush fire in the habitually arid region, but the source of the fire
became a bone of contention: one band of ufologists claimed that a
spacecraft had hurtled out of the sky and exploded, causing the
conflagration, along with reports of Federal agents who denied the local
police access into the area. Another ufologist appeared on television
denying that there was anything to the event aside from a meteor impact
which triggered the fires, and suggested that the celestial event was
being manipulated by a band of government-infiltrated saucer fanatics to
discredit UFO research on the island. To everyone’s surprise, an
astronomer took the side of the pro-UFO faction, insisting that a meteor
of that magnitude would have left a tremendous crater, possibly
obliterating Lajas and the neighboring towns.
A Military Solution?
On May 7, 1997, Univision’s Spanish-language Primer Impacto program
presented a dramatic roundup of the events surrounding the mysterious
Lajas incident: the interviewers reported claims that the Army had
reported to the area to collect debris from the impact site and that the
consternation among the locals was clearly visible. It was also pointed
out that unusually heavy UFO activity had been reported over Puerto
Rico’s southern tier, and that a woman from the city of Ponce had taken a
video of a silvery, rhomboidal object crossing the skies.
Lucy Guzmán, an investigator affiliated at the time with the Puerto
Rican Research Group, based in Hato Rey, P.R., posted a radio news story
to the Internet which indicated Lajas mayor Marcos Irizarry’s belief
that the explosion and subsequent fire had been caused by U.S. military
experimentation in the area. Irizarry added in the newscast that a
growing number of local residents were coming forward with accounts of a
glowing object that fell from the sky, and that three distinct
explosions had been heard. An area radio station also experienced
technical difficulties shortly after the detonations occurred,
suggesting the possibility of EMP (electromagnetic pulse radiation). The
defunct San Juan Star (the island’s only English-language newspaper at
the time) briefly mentioned that one resident, Francisco Negrón, said
the fire burned with an unusual redness, which almost bordered on the
supernatural. Tipping its hat toward the non-meteoric theory, the U.S.
Coast Guard suggested that “an airplane crash” may have occurred at that
time.
An interesting feature appearing in the distinguished Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (May/June
1997) discussed an interesting addition to the U.S. nuclear arsenal:
the earth-penetrating B61-11, a twelve-hundred pound warhead that
replaced a number of older nukes. Whereas older nuclear devices had to
delivered by a bomber due to their considerable weight, the lighter
B61-11 could be dropped by a jet fighter. Capable of perforating the
ground, this improved weapon of destruction employs “ground coupling” to
produce a shockwave capable of demolishing subterranean facilities.
While such capabilities may have called for by military planners bent
on destroying superhardened Soviet command posts deep under ground, the
end of the Cold War and the standing down of forces on either side has
made such a sophisticated weapon redundant. But in spite of this
lowering of tensions, there were tests of earth-penetrating nuclear
warheads in 1988 and 1989 having far greater yields than required. Could
the UFO enigma play a role in such an arbitrary decision?
UFO investigators have repeated their belief that a subterranean
“base” of some kind exists in the southwestern corner of Puerto Rico,
either in the vicinity of the Sierra Bermeja mountains or offshore.
These assertions have been generally supported by the considerable
number of UFO/humanoid sightings in the region. Spurious maps of such an
underground base (staffed by a joint complement of humans and aliens,
as in the best tradition of early 90′s “Dulce Base” accounts) were even
circulated, showing underground “saucer hangars” and a submarine
inexplicably “parked” in an underwater cavern.
The article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which
pointedly described the B61-11 as a “mystery weapon”, indicated that
planners have actively considered the use of small “dial-a-yield”
warheads against Third World countries, particularly in their
ground-penetrating capacity. Could we speculate that Puerto Rico may
have proven an interesting test site, not only for its unique position,
straddling the First and Third Worlds, but also for the perceived
problem that hides beneath it surface?
Saucers or no saucers, it is a fact that thirteen Puerto Rican
military facilities (the number has gone down in the past years due to
base closings) have been used for the storage of nuclear weapons ranging
from underwater demolition mines to more sophisticated nukes — all of
them under the generic cover of Advanced Underwater Weapons (AUW). This
situation is explained in William Arkin and Richard Fieldhouse’s
masterful Nuclear Battlefields (Ballinger, 1985). Even
though the island falls squarely under the jurisdiction of the Treaty of
Tecamachalco, which declared the island a “nuclear-free zone” along
with the rest of Latin America (a special protocol of this treaty deals
exclusively with the Puerto Rican situation). Antisubmarine bombers,
armed with nuclear weapons, had made use of the defunct Roosevelt Roads
Naval Base during wartime as their base.
Incident at Adjuntas
While la zona suroeste of the island commanded the lion’s share of
ufological and media attention, a fascinating sub-plot was taking place
at Puerto Rico’s heart, where the arid Caribbean environment gives way
to sharp, verdant peaks. The mountain community of Adjuntas, part of the
island’s coffee-growing belt, had attracted the attention of mysterious
lights for decades. A 19th century town with a population of 35,000
scattered throughout the surrounding municipality, is located to the
northeast of the city of Ponce, following the tortuous curves of Rte.10
and the narrow defiles on each side of the road. A community firmly
rooted in the culture of Puerto Rico’s central mountainous region, it is
largely known as a coffee-growing region. It is a little known fact
that during the 1870’s, the island’s coffee was the most prized variety
in the world, far exceeding the beans supplied by Brazil or even the Far
East. The café society of 19th century Vienna was fuelled by coffee
beans harvested in central Puerto Rico.
Almost twenty years later, the island-wide reactivation of mysterious
forces caused lights to manifest again, this time in a very specific
location: the test-pits for potential mining operations in central
Puerto Rico, known to contain considerable quantities of copper and to a
lesser extent, gold. It has been speculated that this mineral wealth
has attracted non-human interest as well, or that it serves as a beacon
for anomalous activity. Elderly residents of Adjuntas’ Barrio Pellejas
alleged that bizarre vehicles and even stranger-looking “people” could
occasionally be seen in the region containing the copper mines. In an
interview, Mrs Rafaela Hernández indicated: “My father would tell us
that there was something strange there, a great mystery. That those
people supposedly from another world had a base there, and that late at
night, saucers would land and a great glow could be seen down there.” At
the height of the 1991 flap, it was said that some of the enormous
steel plates employed to cover some of the copper test pits dug by
Kennecott during decades past had been torn asunder by an unknown force,
possibly beams emanating from UFOs. Photo and video evidence alleging
the destruction of the enormous steel plates covering the test pits was
circulated around this time. The Adjuntas events reached such intensify
that Rigoberto Ramos, the town’s mayor, felt the need to contact
President George W. Bush to apprise him of the situation:
“Adjuntas is a little town in the Central Range of Puerto Rico,
and at this moment, we are very intrigued by some unusual events that
are affecting our daily lives.
Some years ago, we noticed the presence of Unidentified Flying Objects
(UFO) in our skies. At first, we did not give great importance to this
matter, but lately these things have appeared again and our citizens are
distressed over this. Many, many persons have witnessed the presence of
these objects in our surrounding space (evidence of these apparitions
is included).
Our purpose in writing you is to ask for your help to clarify what is
really happening by ordering an investigation so that the people in our
community can keep calm.”
Interestingly enough, another mayor of Adjuntas had had his own UFO
experience: In October 1972, Roberto Ramos, had his own sighting of
unidentified aerial vehicles one night in the Barrio Garzas section of
his community. A disbeliever of such manifestations, the mayor actually
prided himself on his utterly rational approach to anything vaguely
inexplicable. But sitting in the front passenger seat of a roofless
jeep, along with other passengers, he was left speechless when three
disks crossed the firmament right over their car. Ramos would later
describe the objects as a trio of light-emitting disks, changing colour
and intensity as they crossed the sky. As they flew overhead, there was
no doubt in Mayor Ramos’s mind that he had witnessed an unexplained
phenomenon.
In November 1992, journalist Julio Victor Ramirez reported on a
fascinating – and frightening – incident in the mountain community:
uncommonly large luminous objects were reportedly descending on a hill
known as El Gigante in the precise sector of the municipality where the
mining test pits were located. The witnesses to the event included
members of the local police department, who would subsequently retell
the experience to radio personality Edwin Plaza: “That thing had a set
of lights beneath it, and a white ray of light issued from its bottom,
lighting up the hill.” Despite its tremendous size, the vehicle made no
sound whatsoever.
According to the law enforcement agents, the massive luminous object
had appeared in the early hours of the evening, bathing the slopes of El
Gigante in white light. The unknown object reportedly had lights
underneath it and the source of illumination came from a single beam
projected against the hillside. What made this sighting interesting – as
if its magnitude were not sufficient to make it important – is that the
object’s beam was apparently seeking a particular location: an
agricultural school on the slopes of El Gigante that looked into
“improved cattle ranching techniques”. With what we know about the
presence of the UFO phenomenon in the world-wide epidemic of cattle
mutilations, is it unreasonable to suspect a connection in this case?
Within a few years, the UFO sightings in Adjuntas would give way to
the earliest reports of the paranormal predator known as “el
Chupacabras” in the mountain municipalities of Orocovis and Morovis.
Conclusion
Unusual activity in Puerto Rico remained steady even as the Nineties
gave way to the first decade of the new century, but never again reached
the fever pitch of the 1987-1997 period. Using past performance as an
indicator, there will certainly be similar bursts of activity in the
future, but as always, specifying the exact moment is an elusive art.
The UFO situation on the island during the Nineties, however,
differed significantly from all the past waves by a significant new
addition: the role of “alien abductions” and the appearance of the
diminutive “Greys” instead of the taller, more clearly humanoid-looking
aliens of decades past, conforming to a worldwide pattern. Although
significant cases were reported during this period, the abduction
phenomenon did not reach the magnitude that it achieved on the mainland
U.S. or elsewhere. In retrospect, there appear to have been more
encounters in broad daylight (or even moonlight) with non-human entities
than bedroom visitations. The start of the Chupacabras mutilations
effectively ended the initial “phase” of abnormal activity, and few if
any UFO reports were collected during this period – a fact that repeated
itself in Mexico in 1996, with the onset of mutilation activity in that
country.
Perhaps the most salient feature of the Puerto Rican wave of the
1990s was the amount of domestic and international media coverage it
received. Local researchers were interviewed by news outlets from Spain,
the United Kingdom and Japan (NHK television produced one of the most
complete documentaries ever on the subject) and hosted visits by
Stateside personalities such as Jacques Vallée, Linda Moulton-Howe and
Timothy Good. Less fortunate, perhaps, was the trivialization of the
UFO/paranormal events by commercial interests.
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