TREMOR
On 30 May 1987, local residents near Laguna Cartagena saw a strange ‘red ball of fire’ descend in a controlled manner into the lagoon, making a buzzing sound.
At 02.00, many witnesses sighted a huge, brilliant disc hovering over the lagoon. The following afternoon, thousands of inhabitants of southwest Puerto Rico were shaken by a powerful earth tremor and what sounded like an underground explosion. Initially, the tremor’s epicentre was pinpointed at 13.5 nautical miles below the Laguna Cartagena, between the towns of Lajas and Cabo Rojo. The next day, however, the Puerto Rico Seismologic Service announced that the epicentre had been out to sea, to the west of Puerto Rico, in
the Mona Passage.
On the evening of 1 June 1987, a huge unidentified cylindrical craft, with two spheres at each end, was seen by numerous witnesses in the community of Betances. ‘It was really large,’ said Sra Rosa Acosta. ‘It was incredible. That thing came down and hovered in the air, motionless over the Laguna Cartagena.
Then, about 15 minutes later, it flew up and disappeared to the south, behind the Sierra Bermeja.’
Following the explosion, several fissures, from which issued cobalt-coloured smoke, appeared in different areas of Lajas and Cabo Rojo, as well as the Laguna Cartagena. The lagoon was cordoned off, and men dressed in camouflaged fatigues, plain clothes, or white anti-contamination-type coveralls, were seen taking samples of water, mud, soil and plants. The military prevented anyone accessing the area.
In late 1988 there were two occasions when pairs of US Navy jets were seen to disappear in close proximity to, or possibly to enter, huge, triangular-shaped objects. One of these incidents took place in the municipality of San Germán, the other in Betances, near the Laguna Cartagena.
By this time, many residents had come to accept the existence of an alien base in their vicinity. Reports of UFOs seen by fishermen off the coast also proliferated. ‘Something abnormal is going on down there,’ said one witness, Aristides Medina. ‘On one occasion, I was fishing late at night near Cayo Margarita, and two of them passed under my boat, radiating a blue light. On other occasions I have seen them when they emerge from the water and fly away at great speed, and I have also seen them plunge into the water. ‘