Mexico congress examines ‘alien’ bodies in hearing
CLOSE ENCOUNTER The remains of an alleged ‘nonhuman’ being is displayed during a congressional briefing at the San Lazaro legislative palace inMexico City on Sept. 12. —REUTERS
MEXICO CITY—The alleged bodies of two “nonhuman beings” were presented during a congressional hearing in Mexico, generating a mixture of surprise, disbelief and ridicule on social media on Wednesday.
In the hearing on Tuesday on Fani, the Spanish acronym for what are usually now termed unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), politicians were shown two artifacts kept in two small display cases that controversial Mexican journalist and longtime unidentified flying object (UFO) enthusiast Jamie Maussan claimed were the corpses of extraterrestrials.
The alleged corpses had a grayish color and facial features similar to humans. They also have three fingers on each hand and elongated heads. The specimens were not related to any life on Earth, Maussan claimed.
The journalist said they were recovered in Peru near the ancient Nazca Lines in 2017.
Similar such finds in the past have turned out to be the remains of mummified children.
“They are nonhuman beings. We don’t want to call them extraterrestrials because we don’t know,” Maussan said during the session called by ruling party lawmaker Sergio Gutierrez, who defended the event as being in the “public interest.”
Gutierrez said Maussan requested the session after a US congressional committee in July was told by a former intelligence official that humans were not alone in the universe and American authorities were covering up the evidence.
During the hearing, Gutierrez asked the speakers to swear to tell the truth.
Maussan cited carbon dating analysis by the National Autonomous University of Mexico that he said showed “these beings are around 1,000 years old.”
‘We are not alone’
“This is the first time extraterrestrial life is presented in such a form and I think there is a clear demonstration that we are dealing with nonhuman specimens that are not related to any other species in our world and that any scientific institution can investigate it,” Maussan said.
“We are not alone,” he added.
The university’s physics institute confirmed in a statement that it had carried out tests but only to determine the age and not the origin of the specimens.
Its laboratory “distances itself from any subsequent use, interpretation or misrepresentation made with the results it issues,” a statement said.
US pilot’s UAP tales
Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, director of the Scientific Institute for Health of the Mexican Navy, said X-rays, 3-D reconstruction and DNA analysis had been carried out on the remains.
“I can affirm that these bodies have no relation to human beings,” Benitez said.
Lawmakers also heard from former US Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who has participated in US congressional hearings about his personal experience with UAP and the stigma around reporting such sightings.
The Mexican hearing generated both astonishment and mockery, including jokes accompanied by photos of the alien creature in the movie “E.T.”
The event “shows the contempt that this country has for science,” one user wrote on the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter.
Others shared videos of the event with the words “The Martians have arrived,” while there was a tongue-in-cheek call for Maussan to be named “president of intergalactic relations.”
Rigorous scientific approach
In May, the US space agency Nasa held its first public meeting on UAP, and urged a more rigorous scientific approach to clarify their origin.
In recent years, the US government has done an about-face on public information on UAP after decades of stonewalling and deflecting. The Pentagon has been actively investigating reported sightings in recent years by military aviators, while an independent Nasa panel studying UFOs is the first of its kind by the space agency.
Nasa is set to discuss findings from the study on Thursday.
