A few weeks ago, Brazil was once again a hotbed of UFO activity. Mysterious lights were seen by thousands of people in the Rio de Janeiro area and captured in multiple videos.
This new flap of sightings over Brazil started May 15 and continued for several days. In the videos, blue, red and yellow orbs can be seen moving around the sky, and one video shows the lights arranged in a triangular formation.
Stunned residents can be heard trying to identify the lights in the sky, before several of the lights appear to land nearby.
Another video shows a group of five illuminated spheres in the night sky. Others posted footage of a floating red orb, as well as strange flashing lights on the horizon.
There was also an alleged crash of a UFO in Magé followed by an avalanche of social media comments on Twitter and reddit regarding loud explosions and gunfire, military cordons, and alleged warnings that the army was arresting anyone who approached the site where the sightings were taking place.
UFOs have a way of stirring up the hornet’s nest.
Like most mass UFO sightings, the ones in Brazil were probably a mixture of credible and fanciful reporting. But that doesn’t diminish the importance of this flap or Brazil’s long and storied UFO connection.
Why Brazil?
Like foreign exchange students flocking to Brazil to learn Portuguese, UFOs have been a more or less permanent fixture in the skies over Brazil since the modern era of UFO sightings got underway during the 1940s.
There are many famous Brazilian cases from the famous sighting over Trindade Island of a Saturn-shaped UFO, photographed by Almiro Baraúna aboard the navy vessel Almirante Saldanha, to the internationally renowned case of Antonio Villas Boas, who was taken aboard a landed alien craft and forced to copulate with a female extraterrestrial entity. The menu is long and varied, and the veracity of many of the accounts is confirmed by both Brazilian and foreign researchers, UFO study groups, as well as professionals of the most varied fields.
The extraterrestrial party kicked off July 23, 1947, when topographer José Higgins was working with many laborers in Bauru, São Paulo. Suddenly, they heard an extremely sharp sound. Some moments later, they saw a lens-shaped object landing near them. The workmen ran away leaving Higgins alone. The man reported that three humanoid figures emerged from the UFO and spoke to him in an unknown language; after about a half-hour, they returned to the UFO which then took them away.
On May 5, 1952, journalist Joao Martins and photographer Eduardo Keffel claimed to have seen a flying disk in the vicinity of Barra da Tijuca. Keffel took some photographs of the UFO, which were published by the magazine O Cruzeiro.
The year 1957 was an especially active one for UFO sightings – and more.
On Sept. 13, 1957, journalist Ibrahim Sued received an envelope containing a letter and three fragments of metal. The author of the letter wrote that he saw a UFO, which exploded in the sky over the beach of Ubatuba; he collected some fragments and sent three of these to the journalist together with the letter.
Sued sent the fragments to a laboratory, which analyzed them and discovered that they consisted of pure magnesium. James Harder and other ufologists came to the conclusion that the fragments of Ubatuba had an extraterrestrial origin.
Then, as previously mentioned, there was Antonio Villas Boas who claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials Oct. 16, 1957. Though similar stories had circulated for years beforehand, Boas’s claim was among the first alien abduction stories to receive wide attention.
A few weeks later, two sentinels at the Itaipu Fort, (Praia Grande, São Paulo) suffered moderate burns after being hit by a heat wave from an unidentified flying object, which allegedly came descending from the sky. The entire electricity of the fort, including the emergency circuits, went down during the incident. Afterward, Brazilian Army and United States Air Force (USAF) personnel, along with investigators of the Brazilian Air Force, flew to the fort to interview the soldiers.
Major UFO events were also reported over Brazil in 1958, 1966, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1986, 1996, 2008, 2013 – and now, 2020.
Roswell 2
In many ways, Brazil’s UFO history mirrors the UFO flaps over the southwestern part of the United States during the same timeline.
Brazil’s most famous incident (like Roswell’s) involved a crashed spacecraft and live aliens. Way the story goes, according to numerous witnesses, an unidentified flying object crashed near Varginha, Brazil, Jan. 20, 1996, in which two alien beings had survived.
Like Roswell, there is a high level of credibility attached to this incident.
The honesty of all witnesses involved, coupled with the strange comings and goings of military vehicles in and out of the area, made many suspicious. These vehicles were said to be carrying bags that seemingly contained a “precious cargo” which was deposited at the local military bases.
This was compounded by the testimony of some military authorities that obviously wished to remain unidentified. These facts were enough to convince the renowned Brazilian investigator, Ubirajara Franco Rodrigues, that a UFO had actually crashed in the area and two of its occupants had managed to survive and, though perhaps badly hurt, roamed about the neighborhood, ending up in the hands of the military.
One of the occupants of the crashed spacecraft was reportedly taken to a hospital for treatment and operated on while the military stood guard.
Before being nabbed by the Brazilian military, one of the extraterrestrials was allegedly seen by a trio of young women who decided to take a shortcut home through a vacant lot. In a clump of weeds, they said they encountered a creature like nothing they had seen before.
“It wasn’t a man or an animal — it was something different,” said one of the women, Katia Andrade.
The being had oily, brown skin and rubbery limbs, and bright red eyes. It also appeared to be injured, laboring to walk while holding onto a nearby wall.
The Brazilian press also reported the death of one of the men who helped apprehend the extraterrestrials. Apparently he was a young man in his early 20s who died a very strange death after his immune system completely shut down.
The incident had enough validity to it that even the Wall Street Journal reported the odd encounter between humans and extraterrestrials in Varginha. The National Geographic also looked into the matter and released a short video of an interview with the three women who witnessed the non-ordinary being.
Having been a journalist most of my life, I think I’m pretty good at spotting bullshit. After seeing the National Geographic interview, I suspect the three women witnesses were telling the truth.
UFOs: The Indelible Impact
Those who still believe UFOs aren’t real (probably because they have never seen one) might think UFOs have no impact on them – whatsoever. But nothing could be further from the truth. After 70 years of sightings, UFOs have significantly influenced artwork, publishing, music, movies, advertising, aircraft design and architecture.
If you’ve ever been to Roswell, New Mexico, you can’t miss the commercialization of UFOs. Everything from street lamps to McDonald’s is themed up to remind visitors of Roswell’s UFO history.
Something similar has been happening in Brazil. The epitome of this movement is Oscar Niemeyer’s stunning architectural work, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Niterói. Saucer-shaped, the modernist structure, which has been likened to a UFO, is set on a cliffside, at the bottom of which is a beach. In the documentary “Oscar Niemeyer, an Architect Committed to His Century,” Niemeyer is seen flying over Rio de Janeiro in a UFO, which then lands on the site making it clear about the origins of the design.
Governments have also fallen under the spell of UFO mania. After years of misinformation and UFO denials in order to prevent mass panic (so they said), most governments have loosened the reigns and have become more interactive with the public. The United States, one of the last government holdouts regarding the admission of UFOs, broke that barrier in April by releasing videos of UFOs shot by Navy pilots. The significance is monumental. The pentagon is now basically saying, yes, UFOs are indeed real.
Ten years ago Brazil’s government crossed that line of obfuscation after high ranking ministers and even a Brazilian president admitted to observing UFOs. The government ordered its air force to officially record any sighting of unidentified flying objects.
A government decree said all military and civilian pilots as well as air traffic controllers should register any UFO sightings with the national aerospace defense command. The information was then intended to be stored in the national archives in Rio de Janeiro where it would be made available to researchers, including those seeking evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Anything unusual that is seen, photographed or video filmed in Brazil’s air space now has to be reported and catalogued. But the air force added it would limit itself to collecting information, and would not be chasing UFOs.
A decision that, to me, seems pretty intelligent.
While it’s clear that Brazil has become a popular destination for UFOs, what’s not so clear is why Brazil?
Every May 1, several thousand self-proclaimed Brazilian mystics of the religion known as the Valley of the Dawn gather in silence at a temple outside the Brazilian capital of Brasília. They claim to have an extraterrestrial connection in order to jump-start human evolution.
Valley of the Dawn adherents “manipulate” cosmic energies to heal themselves and others. They describe themselves as members of a spiritual tribe called the Jaguars, who are the reincarnated descendants of highly advanced extraterrestrials sent by God some 32,000 years ago to jump-start human evolution.
Normally, the May 1 Day of the Indoctrinator ceremony attracts Jaguars from across the globe, as well as spectators and journalists. However, this year, the May 1 gathering did not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Is there some enigmatic energy channel over Brazil that connects humans and aliens? And was there a cause and effect between the most recent UFO flap and the disappointment of Valley of the Dawn members for not being able to generate healing energy during the global health crisis?
One thing for certain, Brazil is on the radar of ufologists around the planet anticipating the next stage in the UFO saga: globally recognized contact.
It’s true. I was in Brazil recently. Everyone there has seen a UFO — or two.