A MUTILATION WITNESSED
At about 02.15 on 12 January 1997, Piedro Viera (pseudonym), a former police officer, was driving from Caguas to Humacao, on Route 30, which adjoins the southern borders of the El Yunque National Forest, when suddenly he saw a light in the sky, coming from the direction of El Yunque, growing larger until it appeared as an object shaped like an upturned saucer. ‘It came closer until it was about 200 yards away from me, then stopped,’ he told me. ‘So I pulled up at the side of the road, where there were some cows in a pasture.’
It was about 150 feet in diameter, with around 12 to 15 square lights or windows. A blue-green conical beam of light came down from the craft and engulfed two of the cows, one of which was levitated towards the craft. The cow vanished suddenly when it was about five feet from the underside. Then the craft began to move away slowly in the direction of Humacao.
Viera tried to follow the disc in his truck. At that moment, a black 4X4 pickup came along and two men, dressed in black military-style clothes and caps, came out and ordered him to switch off his engine and remain where he was for at least 10 minutes. ‘Why?’ asked Viera. ‘Just stay where you are and allow us to continue what we are doing,’ came the reply.
The men returned to their pick-up and followed the craft. After 15 minutes, Viera proceeded on his journey. Soon, he came to a Brahman cow, lying at the side of the road, similar to the one he had seen earlier. ‘It had apparently been dropped from above, because two of its legs were badly broken,’ he explained. ‘There were about five straight incisions along the side, one going up to the chest, and a circular hole in its rump. But there was hardly any blood . . .
Viera impressed me as an honest witness. Even prior to publication of his story by Jorge Martin, he began to receive threats, which continue to this day.
He is certain these threats come from American federal agents.
A VISIT TO AN ALIEN BASE?
One night in June 1988, Carlos Mañuel Mercado claims to have been visited by three alien beings in his home in Cabo Rojo and taken by saucer to their base in the Sierra Bermeja, adjoining the Laguna Cartagena.
The beings were similar in most respects to the stereotypical ‘Greys’, except that they had some bumps on their facial skin. When they addressed him, he ‘heard’ them, though their mouths did not move. All three were dressed in tight- fitting, sandy-coloured one-piece suits. Mercado was taken outside his house and down the road to some open ground, where, he says, a domed, disc-shaped craft stood on three legs. Entering the craft via a stairway leading to an opening underneath the central section, he found himself inside what he assumed was the flight deck, with other small beings and a taller being, ‘a little more humanlike’, the same size as Mercado (five feet nine inches), dressed in a white robe. After the taller being assured Mercado that he would come to no harm, the craft took off and Mercado says he was able to watch through the portholes as it headed towards the Sierra Bermeja, only a few miles away.
‘As the craft approached the El Cayul mountain,’ Mercado told me, ‘I saw this brilliant light, something opened up, and the craft went in there, through a sort of tunnel and into a large cavern. We all got out of the craft. It was very brilliantly lit inside the cavern and I was given some sort of glasses to wear. Everything seemed to be made out of aluminium. “I’m going to show you how advanced we are,” the taller being said to me. ‘There were many barracks-like structures and hundreds of the little aliens, some wearing a type of cap, working as if on production lines, assembling machinery, and there were many crafts: saucer-shaped, like the one we went in; boomerang-or triangular-and hexagonal-shaped.
The tall being then addressed
Mercado:
As you can see, we have a base here for the maintenance of our crafts’ systems. We have been here for a long time and don’t intend to leave. We want the Earth people to know that we mean no harm, that we don’t mean to conquer you either. We want to reach out to you to establish a direct relationship which will be beneficial to both parties. ‘Why me?’ Mercado protested. ‘I’m a simple man, and no one will believe me.’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ came the response. ‘People will hear you, as well as many others we are contacting and bringing here to show them the same. When [educated] people hear what you simple people — as you call yourself — are saying, they will know that you are telling the truth.’
Mercado was then returned to his house. ‘Are you certain that this wasn’t just a dream?’ I asked Mercado, during an interview at his house in Cabo Rojo in 1997. ‘Sometimes I wonder if it was a dream, but it was all so very real,’ he replied. ‘I certainly don’t remember falling asleep. I was watching TV when they came to the house, and when I returned at 3.00 a.m., I told my wife about it.’ ‘What do you think they are doing here?’ ‘My feeling is that they are investigating how they can survive here,’ came his very interesting reply. ‘Do you think the base is still there?’ ‘I feel they’re probably still there. There’s so much still happening.’
Jorge Martin knows another resident of the area — a high-ranking military officer — who claims a similar experience. ‘Everything he says corroborates the details given by Carlos Mañuel Mercado,’ Jorge reports, ‘especially the place where the mountain slope opens down to the purported base in El Cayul mountain.’
I have been to the Laguna Cartagena and Sierra Bermeja areas on many occasions, and my disappointment at never having seen anything unusual there is always mitigated by the beautiful scenery. I can well understand why the putative aliens might want to stay there. And thus far, the little grey men have kept the place green.