Lallá BarrettoPhoto: Wagner Santana.
Our main interest in Ufology is the extraterrestrial origins of humanity and the ancient civilizations. But Ufology is surprising and can take the researcher far from his initial interest.
We happened to hear the communication from a person who claimed to have coexisted – together with his parents, eighteen brothers and fifteen other families, all related – with a very intense light on the island where they lived, in the municipality of Palmeirândia, inland of the state of Maranhão.
I then interviewed matriarch Dona Iris Abreu and her children, Lidia, Sonia and Lionel, residing in Rio de Janeiro. That light, the so-called “Star” or “Apparatus” seemed to live in that sky, because it was always seen up there, detached from the other stars. But it also grew before the witnesses until it became a ball of light, or fire. The witnesses oscillate between defining it as light or fire, due to the lack of an adequate word for the phenomenon they used to see.
I was informed that although the light reached people, touching them, there is no news of anyone who had been burned or attacked by it, in this locality.It grew to about a meter in diameter, neither hot nor cold, and also without any noise.
The light established a pattern of behavior in interaction with the reactions of the island’s inhabitants. This interaction lasted for about ten years and on a daily basis, according to witnesses, having started to manifest itself in the early 1970s, remaining until the installation of electric light, at the end of the decade.
The 1970s reminded us of something about a military operation that would have taken place in Pará. I also learned that official documents had been released as a result of the “UFOs freedom of information now” campaign, led by the Brazilian Commission of Ufologists (CBU).
Effectively, we found the casuistry, registered in those official documents – we also consulted the different UFO groups in the northeast and north of the country. These are cases of sightings, light attacks and unknown objects throughout the region, in the 1970s. In 1976, we have the Barroso Case, in Ceará. Vitório Peret, one of the greatest Brazilian ufologists and a tireless researcher of Operation Prato (Saucer Operation, literally in Portuguese, Operation Plate), told us that as far as he knows “the attacks of light beams caused several fatalities from Caranguejos Island on, in Maranhão (1977), when among three fishermen one of them died and the other two suffered severe burns. In the Bequimão region, also in Maranhão, several farmers had been found dead after the population observed strange lights in the sky the night before. Then, the death of a resident in the municipality of Viseu, on the border of Maranhão with Pará, was associated with the unexpected arrival of a huge luminous object in the late afternoon flying low on the beach street.
Hollanda, commander of the military operation, told us during a vigil that he saw the medical report of this case, which pointed out sudden death due to a violent scare. Then there were the cases of 80 victims treated by Drª Wellaide, among whom two women had burns, holes in the breast region and other tests that she had performed herself. ” The study of the victims has not yet been done, in addition to the precarious conditions of the health post, it is necessary to conduct a survey in Colares, in order to establish the approximate number of victims, as well as people contacted by other forms of communication, which could characterize a large-scale contact”.
Operation Prato was then the military mission sent to investigate these multiple and numerous UFO events, which began to concentrate in a terrifying manner in Colares Island, Mosqueiro and Vigia, in the state of Pará, between September and November 1977, within a context of sightings and contacts that had been happening since the beginning of the decade from Ceará, Piauí, Maranhão, up to Pará, where they were systematically observed and recorded, generating the recently released documents.
The violent nature of these phenomena – at the historic moment of the military dictatorship in the country, with the repression of the Araguaia guerrilla – led military squad of Operation Prato to take heavy weapons and modern equipments. They hoped to find there, not flying saucers, but an attempt to infiltrate guerrillas in northern Brazil. The military team was convinced by the investigation itself that they were facing something totally out of any expectation, faced with the action of a technology that did not exist on our planet, at that time and even today, probably of extraterrestrial origin.
It was a secret mission, the existence of which was denied by the military government of the time and by the governments subsequent to the country’s re-democratization. The enormity and multiplicity of events were similarly discredited with public opinion, and called , derogatively, “chupa-chupa” ( “suck-suck”, for the victims claimed that when the light touched them, it left a wound that bled) ,and were soon forgotten after the sensationalist moment. I say to the rest of the country only, because UFO demonstrations have never stopped happening in the region. The way of operating changed. Not getting into people so aggressively.
The manner in which Operation Prato was summarily closed by The Brazilian Armed Forces adds another unique feature to the case: it was aborted because the military, given the incredulous way in which their own comrades in uniform received the news about the investigations, decided to respond to what they interpreted as attempts for contact by the unknown intelligence that operated there. They were willing to go to the final contact. When Captain Hollanda warned his superiors of this decision, he was summarily prohibited from pursuing the purpose and the Operation ended the day after the interview.
What to thing about the statement of the also great ufologist, researcher since the very beginning of these events, and still studying the subject today, and one of those responsible for the release of OP documents, Ademar Gevaerd, when he said, in the program Linha Direta ( September 30, 2013), that Operation Prato was the “only documented occasion when the armed forces of a country were directly involved in a process of approximation, identification and possible contact with non-terrestrial, non-human beings, coming from other parts of the universe.” What does it mean for Ufology the release of documents of such a nature?
The Official Documents:
The investigations of Operation Prato generated 2000 documents, 500 photographs and 16 films, according to a statement by the commander of the operation, then Captain Uyrangê Hollanda. Only a few hundred documents and photographs have been released, but all films have disappeared. Today it is taken for granted by the researchers that these films were sent to the USA.
Even though it is only a small part of the documents generated, what these documents already pose as a challenge to the researcher is enormous! Reading documents accompanied by photos and sketches is almost like showing a spectacular film! It unfolds before the eyes amazing and unknown facts, because the UFO phenomenon allows to observe all its facets there.
First of all, these documents are material evidence of the reality of the phenomena that occurred. The multiple observations are recorded in the form of verbal reports, photographs and sketches, which makes these documents a rare and unique set of diverse UFO observations recorded using the same methodology.
This multiplicity of terrifying events had the scope that can be seen below, on the map of Hélio Amado R Aniceto.
And they shone in the sky with the frequency below, for ten days, according to the RSC, Reports and Observations 1977.
Contact:
The diversity of events leads us to take a closer look at the nature of the contacts engaded between an alleged extraterrestrial intelligence and the populations of the Colares region. We also recognize, by reading the documents, a diversity of forms of communication, such as the exchange of light signals and telepathy, even the sighting of beings. So, we have reports, photos and sketches of these events, all of this, as a witness of a great project of one, or several intelligences, which we suppose extraterrestrial, aiming at the study of riverside populations.
This is one of the questions that must be examined in the documents, to know whether it was one, or several intelligences that interacted there. This seems to have been the conclusion of researchers, such as Vitório Peret. He maintains that the difference in the mode of operation shows different intelligences engaged in a common research project of the human population.
Nine different objects were identified by the military mission. The most interesting thing is that the multiplicity of objects seen goes hand in hand with a great incidence of a form of contact, which we could call “mechanical contact”, that is, the contact with what we suppose to be scientific experiments in order to study the riverside populations. These “mechanical contacts” left visible and documented sequels. No detailed examination of the objects, their functions and the marks they have left, has yet been made in the official documents. Incredibly, Operation Prato’s documents may be the only record in the world casuistry of different objects engaged in scientific experiments, and recorded using the same methodology. It is a fundamental study to gather more elements about the question that is always recurring in Ufology: what do they want from us?
Another form of contact, still within the logic of studying a human population, is abductions. There is no record of any direct abduction report in the documents released. However, we have several indications that this occurred, as in the testimony of Paulo César dos Santos (Jornal O Estado do Pará, 11/10/77, Official Documents): “I was in my living room watching television, when I felt the need to go to the kitchen. That was when I saw a bluish light coming through the house gaps, trying to take me into space. I was quite terrified by what I saw. I started screaming for help. My mother, who was at a neighbor’s home, when she heard my screams, came running thinking it could be a thief. Seeing me almost speechless she ran into the yard and also had the same sensation that I had and saw the bluish light that chained her, wanting to pull her into space, like a magnet. ” The bluish light seems to be almost always associated with abduction, and it would be very interesting to check in the documents if it is always like this, and if that same light is found in another type of contact, for example.
Watching television, lying in bed, turning on the kitchen light, or simply walking on the street, the daily activities of the population of this region of Brazil have been modified by the massive interference of the UFO phenomenon. There was contact with individuals, but also with almost the entire population.
According to the testimonies, impressive, social relations were modified for the population to defend itself mutually from luminous balls of varying sizes, flying over the small town at low altitude, even ships, also at low altitude, as if looking for certain residents. The invasion of privacy was such that these lights came through the cracks in the roofs and windows of the houses, to reach the witnesses inside the houses.
The entire population gathered in three houses or at the church of Nossa Senhora do Perpétuo Socorro. They prayed and sang religious songs. In the street, mortars and rockets were launched to ward off the phenomena. These actions by the population were relatively effective, often pushing away these events, which evinces a communication of the active intelligence with the inhabitants as a whole. This is an important issue for us to better understand the nature of the contact that was made there.
In addition, we have another dimension of the question, also recurring in Ufology, of whether the contact will be with constituted authorities, like “take me to your leader”. Was Operation Prato a missed historic moment to a contact between beings from another planet and the constituted human authorities in our country?
Let’s go back to the historic interview made by Ademar Gevaerd and Marco Antonio Petit with Col. Hollanda, a true guiding thread for anyone studying Operation Prato. Marco Antonio Petit asks Uyrangê Hollanda: “Did you notice any kind of interaction between what you were doing and the phenomenon itself?” Uyrangê replies: “This question is very interesting. It seemed to us that they were absolutely sure about where we were. They didn’t look for it. They were on top of us. After some time we were there, after a month, the things came over our team, they knew what we were doing. You could move around: you were here, you were going somewhere else, that’s where they were going. As if they were aware of our movement. They knew for sure where we were and what we were doing. ”
There were also many moments of communication between the phenomena and the military mission. Cel. Hollanda tells one of these, which seems to have been of a telepathic order: “Pay attention: we had the information that in Mosqueiro Island, at a place called Baía do Sol, things were happening. Mosqueiro is very close to Colares, it is another island. There is the Laura Channel, between Mosqueiro and Colares. As we were investigating everything, we headed to Baía do Sol. I was always questioned by the agents, who had more faith than me, that it was happening that when I got there, I already got in on the act. They asked me “but, Captain, don’t you believe in anything?” “For me, we are seeing a lot that we need to know what it is. I didn’t see saucer, I didn’t see proof that keeps me satisfied.” One of them, Officer Flávio, even joked with me, saying, “Don’t you want this thing to go for a ride above you, turn on the lights, just for you to believe?” I replied that this would be interesting. “A light appeared, which came in a north / south direction, towards us, at medium height, stopped, made a circle around it and then left. The team laughed at me and the sergeant asked, “What now, boss?”
Interview by A.J.Gevaerd and Marco Antonio Petit with Uyrangê Hollanda:
Interesting testimonies, related to the transmission of knowledge, were collected by the Amazon Ufology group, in a recent research trip to Colares. Two of the witnesses interviewed, who were children at the time and asked for secrecy regarding their names, went into adulthood to study physics, the other biology, to understand the events they experienced then. We believe that many other people have been touched by the desire to know due to the contact with the UFO phenomenon, which is another interesting contact dimension. The phenomenon encourages people to go and investigate.
These are just some examples of the variety and complexity of the contact to be investigated in the Operation Prato documents.
The Contact Geopolitics:
The contact issue also leads us to examine the politics that come into play in our relations with extraterrestrials. First, the oldest and best known, the policy of covering up the existence of extraterrestrials in our world, in general. The cover-up has been led by the USA, and much is speculated about American interference in the Operation Prato activities. Brazil would have cooperation agreements with the American investigation of the UFO phenomenon, due to the technical inability to carry out detailed laboratory analyzes. It would deliver documents in exchange for funding for research in other sectors. That is how we were left without the films produced by the military mission, also, as far as we know, we were not notified of the results of the analyzes made occasionally on this material by the Americans.
Although Col. Hollanda claims to have no knowledge of American military missions in Brazil at the time of the OP, many indications of this appear in history and in the documents themselves.
Nobody knows yet for sure, for example, the involvement of four enigmatic characters: Father Alfredo de La Ó , Colares parish priest, an American that used to carry a gun, and had high-tech equipment for that time; Elisabeth B. Queminet, the mysterious woman from the Middle Island, disappeared as if by magic from the hands of the police, after being questioned by several strange events in the region; American astronaut Fred E. Coattes, who left a room in his house with walls covered with formulas, which remain to be determined whether they are mathematical, physical or biological, or any other type of cryptographic notation, in addition to people’s signatures; and the ufologist, also an American, Bob Pratt, whose presence was noticed in the region, as soon as the most significant facts happened. The action of these four characters is at least intriguing, and their presence in Colares at the time of Operation Prato needs to be better studied and clarified. Espionage and fiction film, only for real.
The documents show traces that this American intervention may have been effective. We found a witness’s account of a being sighting , presumably an extraterrestrial being, translated into English, by hand, in the document itself, suggesting a hurry to communicate what happened to the Americans?
It also touches on the political question, knowing whether the phenomena were hostile or not. Witnesses experienced them as events of extreme hostility and violence. Vitório Peret ponders that the indications demonstrate that the lights and objects created a situation of panic, conducive to blood extraction and perhaps some other fluid or energy that we ourselves are unaware of in our biology. But that, after the fright and the occasional sequels, the person recovered his or her usual tone. In his opinion, if the lights really wanted to do any harm, due to their technological superiority, they would have annihilated Colares human beings.
Why Colares?
Today, researchers like Vitório Peret and Armando Monteiro, as well as the island’s inhabitants themselves, conclude that the events recorded by the military mission were activities related to the installation of one, or more than one, underwater extraterrestrial base, in this region where there would be one or many communication portals with interstellar or interdimensional worlds. If they were settling in there, the knowledge of the riverside population, the testing of different forms of contact, and everything else they exhibited, starts to make perfect sense. Were they settling in our world? After the events paroxysm, these same events continued and continue to happen, but in a much more distant and discreet way. Once the underwater bases were installed, the lights entered into the landscape, although they are always perceived by the population as extraterrestrial and not human. They are in the everyday landscape, but they are not part of it. The population never really got used to the lights, but today they live with them, in a much more peaceful way than in the past. Studying their activity through the documents is to gather knowledge about what they needed to know about us at the time of this installation. Various forms of contact were put into effect, in Colares and its region.
The intelligence behind the phenomenon responded to the observers’ thoughts, characterizing an obvious will engaged in the contact. Active member of the Brazilian Commission of Ufologists, that obtained the release of the documents, I then asked Marco Antonio Petit if the OP records could bring informations wich they wanted to communicate to us, with their daily exhibitionism. He replied that the aliens “knew perfectly well that they were being documented. More than that: they acted explicitly to be documented in the most varied ways, and with the most different equipment. But this aspect is restricted to collaboration for the generation of films, photos, recordings containing sounds emitted by UFOs, etc.” Without a doubt, the documents released are the result of this interaction, and knowing this is an invitation to study these records.
The UFO phenomenon is impalpable by nature, but it has been recorded for almost forty years in the region. The Brazilian ufology is then in an interesting and challenging epistemological situation: it has what we can call “evidences” of the real existence of the phenomenon – insofar as the documents result from an official mission of the Brazilian government -, in addition to reflecting the interaction of the UFOs in its own register, which allows us to suppose that the documents bring some kind of knowledge transmission.
Colares today:
The witnesses from Maranhão led me to study Operation Prato and, as a consequence, to the privilege of interviewing Vitório Peret at length, one of the greatest Brazilian ufologists, an incomparable human figure for the generosity and manner in which he shares his knowledge. One day Peret tells me that he was going to take a vigil in Colares, if I wanted to go too. I said yes, right away! Preparing for the trip, I talked to a UFO researcher who asked me if I was apprehensive. Only then did I realize that I was about to embark on an unusual adventure, which could confront me with events far beyond my own imagination.
Then I remembered the three UFO vigils I took in Itaipu, at the meetings of the World Ufology Forum. Two led by Marco Antonio Petit and Toni Inajar, and the third by Carlos Odone. These references showed me that I was a little off the mark that one needs to have in order to favorably integrate a vigil. I went to talk to Toni Inajar, who gave me all the essential tips, with a little shock treatment, when telling me to be prepared, in case it was necessary to defend myself, either from humans or from extraterrestrials!
It was a magical four days in Belém. Discovery of a civilization, of another country being pure Brazil. Adventure led by dear friend Walcyr Monteiro, great writer and folklorist from Pará, with whom I shared long conversations, glasses of wine and the wonderful cuisine of Pará. And Belém was just a June fest and presentation of the popular theater, called “Bird”, a comic operetta. Talent, grace and beauty.
I met what I would know to be the “Amazon Ufology” group, at Círio de Nazaré Church, in Belém, from where we left towards Colares. I then met another great researcher, the Paraense businessman Armando Monteiro, who has also been studying Operation Prato and its great promoter for almost forty years, as he has been producing most interesting videos on the different aspects of the military mission and since then recording UFO events in the region. Leaving Belém, we took the most award-winning photographer Wagner Santana, who has a particular intimacy with the phenomena, since his mother was chased by the light, and he has been making a photographic record of his own experiences.
From then on, the talk was only about Ufology. We soon recognized ourselves as “cousins”, on a study and research trip, but also a lot of fun! Five minutes of crossing the Guajará-mirim river, bordered by a gash of sand and the Amazonian forest, green and dense, and we arrive at the entrance arch, which welcomes people to Colares. The breathtaking beauty of the island shone in the sun in all the shades of green, red earth, the Amazon trees, which I did not know, and made the ancestral indigenous note vibrate. “Tajapanema wept in the yard, Tajapanema wept in the yard … the dolphin doesn’t sleep at the bottom of the river …”, I kept humming Waldemar Henrique, all I knew about Pará, until civilization came to fill my senses, like a colorful sight. The state of Pará is a civilization. Almost another country, such is the strength of the cabocla (mixed white and indian) cultural identity. This identity is carefully cultivated by people from Pará, who love their particular way of living.
It draws attention, for example, the happy neglect that people from Pará in general, and the Colares people in particular, have for material comfort. We are left with the impression that they are poorly adapted to houses and furniture, as if these things did not correspond to the comfort of traditional dwellings, of a good cotton hammock, of the family living all together, of the haute cuisine on the table, which they have printed on soul. They have abandoned what modern man longs for as comfort and they prefer the art of living in harmony with nature, and they have not the smallest modern comfort to offer
Our inn was said to be the best on the island, also due to its location on Humaitá beach, right in front of the supposed portal, the UFO route in our world. Staying at this inn is then like buying a box at the Sambódromo ( Carnival parede ground) for watching Rio Carnival. But the owner of the inn doesn’t care about that. He presented our rooms. Mine, on the ground floor. When I opened the door, I really didn’t believe it: a place suffocating with mold, with dirty and dusty walls, a lamp hanging from the ceiling, an air conditioner (there was!) with bare wires, and a bed, which seemed weird and which was most weird when I went to examine it closely. I decided to start by cleaning everything. A big insecticide tube was used in this operation, along with a spray to purify the air. The bathroom, because it was a suite, underwent the same drastic measures. When I return to the room, a huge cockroach was walking on the bed !!! The only woman on the research team had to swallow the cry: “cousins, a cockrooooach !!!”, thinking that if the fellow ufologists were called, they would never admit me to a vigil again! With courage I made the said thing go to the ground, then I poured another half an insecticide tube on it, and it continued to happily move the little Amazon legs. Because there is the habitat of that force of nature, indifferent to everything that is most toxic in the human market.
This is the major obstacle to the development of ufo-ecological tourism, which, however, seems to be logical for the economic development of the island, which today lives mainly from fishing. Apart from drawings and caricatures of ETs in several commercial establishments, and a Carnival Block (a street group) that parades at Carnival with an extraterrestrial theme, nothing more indicates any interest of local people in developing this type of tourism. And Colares has no vocation for a spa, as its beaches are unsuitable for swimming because they are the habitat of stingrays. No beach, but with many rivers and igarapés (Amazon forest typical streams), amid the lush beauty of the island. But there is a lack of prepared guides who know the ecology of the place and the events that happened there, as Colares has become a dangerous place, with a poorly guarded coast, where all types of traffic occur with impunity, and where the precautions suggested by Toni Inajar can, yes, become necessary.
We were then accompanied by Eden for the vigil at Machadinho Beach. On the way, remembering the vigil with Carlos Odone, I tried to enter a meditative state. We arrived at the end of the afternoon, the green of the forest was already dark, waiting for the night, the sky and the sea streaked with gold and silver. Twisted trees planted their powerful roots in the sand, lending an unusual and mysterious air to the place, as if the landscape of another planet. The meditative state is strangely favored by the very strangeness of the place. Nothing escaped the look of Wagner Santana, who took emblematic photos of the place, in that special twilight of vigil.
After a thin light rain, the clouds opened right over us, showing us the most beautiful Colares sky depth, stars galore. We saw lights with different behaviors, however very far away, but we were able, due to the applications, to discard satellites, the international station, and other celestial objects. Many watches will come.
Amazon Ufology:
All the work that we have been exposing throughout this article was carried out in a team, by researchers from the Amazon Ufology group (Vitório Peret, Armando Monteiro and Wagner Santana) iwhich I was fortunate to integrate permanently since this trip. On this occasion, the Amazon Ufology group made an unprecedented interview with Mr. Rosil Aranha de Oliveira, boatman and guide of Captain Hollanda, who never gave interviews, advised by the mission commander himself, to avoid problems for himself and his Family.
This interview is already available for the UFO community on the Amazon UFO website.
And, , another unprecedented interview with ufologist Daniel Rebisso Giese, pioneer of the Operation Prato investigations, but he has been away from Ufology for a long time.
The trip also had the effect of revealing our creativity. Each of us returned with new perspectives of study and research, on the various aspects of Operation Prato, which we will make available to everyone as they are being elaborated. And we take the opportunity to invite all researchers interested in Operation Prato to join our research group on one of the greatest ufological events on the planet.
*English version – Francisco de Assis Barretto.
- Article by Lallá Barretto – Ufo Magazine.
- Interview with Lallá Barretto – YouTube.