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It was January soon after the holiday of Tres Reyes, or Three Kings Day, and Mexico was slowly getting back to work. The year was 1954. Armando Zurbaran was driving along the mountainous roads between Mexico City and Acapulco late at night in hopes of arriving at the coast before dawn and meeting up with a business partner the next morning. Today, the trip on the modern-day toll road between the two cities would take less than two hours. Back in the 1950s, however, the journey took about six hours and was quite perilous. The old road had many dangerous switch-back turns that cut dizzyingly through the sparsely populated mountains. At around 2 am on that fateful night back in 1954, Armando felt what he called, “a hypnotic state of lethargy,” while driving, and he decided to pull his car to the side of the road. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head to try to chase away this strange sleepy feeling. When he opened his eyes, Armando was amazed at what he saw in front of him in the middle of the road. It was a large, luminescent metallic disk and on either side of the object stood several strange-looking individuals. Armando would later describe them as being tall and wearing one-piece outfits that looked like overalls or some type of work uniform. These suits were cinched by a very large belt in the middle.
All of a sudden Armando felt powerless and got out of his car and walked to the large metallic disk almost as if in a trance. As he got closer to the craft, he got a better look at the men around it. In addition to their strange clothing, these tall men had long blond hair, light eyes, and feminine – almost angelic – facial features. To those who research the UFO phenomenon, these beings are classified as “The Nordics,” and are one of the more benign alien species. The Nordics often show up in Mexican UFO reports. In fact, what might be the very first close encounter ever recorded in Mexico happened in August of the previous year, 1953, near the Mexican border with Texas. For more information about the 1953 case of the Salvador Villanueva Medina encounter with the Nordic aliens, please see Mexico Unexplained episode number 61: https://mexicounexplained.com//alien-abduction-salvador-villanueva-medina/
Armando stood beside the large shiny saucer and the tall blond men escorted him inside. He experienced a slight buzzing sound as he entered the craft. When aboard, the humble Mexican man had many questions. He turned to the person who seemed like he was in charge, perhaps the ship’s captain. Armando plainly asked this question, “Why have I been chosen for this honor?” The response of the captain astonished him. The blond man looked him squarely in the face and answered in flawless Spanish. He said:
“You are neither the first nor last earthman to be chosen for testing. Our task, slow though it may seem, is designed to persuade. We choose the likeliest, most malleable persons for contact, so that they might better transmit our messages.”
This captain gave no further details, no indications as to what those messages were or what timetables they were working with. When he said that their task was “slow,” he didn’t clarify if he meant their operations were being carried out across decades or centuries. Armando had more questions, but they were tempered by what he was seeing in front of him on a screen on one of the walls of the ship. The alien visitors were showing Armando scenes from his very own life, small incidents and distant memories. The fact that these beings managed to present these images to him indicated to Armando that they had been watching him throughout his life. The demonstration over, the tall blond men gave the Mexican a tour of their ship, complete with a question-and-answer session. Armando’s first question was whether or not the ship was still on the ground. One of the beings answered in a soft voice that not only were they not on the ground, they were flying through space at a high velocity and were already very far from earth. Armando asked why he didn’t feel anything, why there was no movement he could sense, and one of his fair-haired hosts explained to him that the ship used a highly advanced “gravity repulsion system.” The ship also scanned the space in front of it as it flew and automatically destroyed any debris in its path that might cause a hull breach or some other in-flight accident. Armando walked over to a small circular window and asked if he could see earth. All he saw out the portal was a gray-like mist. Armando asked if they were able to see their home world from their vantage point. They told him they couldn’t. Unlike the aliens in the Salvador Villanueva Medina case, these beings did not claim they were from the planet Venus. In fact, they refused to tell Armando their exact point of origin and indicated that their home world was in another solar system. Armando asked if they were going to visit their planet. He was given a flat out “no” soon tempered with a hint of a possible future encounter in which he would be able to take another saucer ride to see their world.
So, instead of traveling to the beings’ planet they just cruised in space for what seemed like days. Armando had some interesting experiences and later recounted them to UFO researchers. Even decades later he remembered details very vividly. Here is his description one of the spacecraft’s bathroom showers, in Armando’s own words:
“I shall never be able to forget it. That bathroom was a new and unimaginable experience for me. Standing upright, facing an angle of the wall filled with tiny holes, I was covered in warm air, and as it grew stronger, it became transformed into damp air, impregnating my skin like a warm, wet breeze. When I was completely drenched, I was offered a sort of liquid soap, which I rubbed all over myself, from head to toe. Standing once more before the warm air sprinklers, I felt the soap begin to evaporate and my skin become completely clean. The air then ceased to be damp, turning dry and warm instead of becoming colder until agreeably cool.”
Armando ate with the crew and slept in their quarters. The Mexican was surprised at how closely the blond aliens’ food resembled food on earth. They started the day with breakfast which consisted of two liquids. One was a fruit juice made of tropical fruits that Armando was familiar with like mangoes. The other drink served in the ship’s mess hall was a type of milk, but it didn’t come from a cow. It was made of plants that grew on the surface of the planet and in the oceans. The captain told Armando that this milk drink was the principal source of nourishment for his people and was served at most meals. In other meals Armando ate grilled meats, various vegetables, cheeses and even butter. When he asked how the crew of the ship received their provisions, Armando was told that it arrived onboard, “via telepathy.” This confused him, but some researchers have interpreted this to mean that the crew manifested it or imagined it all into being using some sort of mental faculty or technology that earthbound humans do not possess.
Over the course of the few days on the spaceship the captain shared many things with Armando regarding the aliens’ society, religion and history. People on their world lived to be about 250 years old. The elderly and children were held in high esteem. Cooperation had replaced competition long ago and each occupation was treated equally. The society’s structure was based on their religion. At the heart of their religion was a creator who had ruled over them for over 3,000 years called “The Master.” The other name for this “Master” was “The Beloved Number Nine.” Keen alternative researchers have tied in this reference to “The Beloved Number Nine” with the alleged secret American Cold War experiment from 1952 called Project Penguin. Project Penguin, headed by paranormal researcher and parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, sought to investigate paranormal phenomena for possible US military application. During the project’s course of research, it supposedly made contact with a supreme entity which called itself “The Nine.” This entity claimed that it was an eternal presence that has always watched over mankind. It’s strange that such a similar reference appears in Armando’s UFO account two years after Project Penguin’s experiments and the US military’s first supposed contact with non-physical beings.
The tall blond men returned Armando to his car. It was dark outside and since he had been away for days, he didn’t know the time nor the day. He continued along the road, headed for Acapulco, wondering what his business partner would say about such a massive delay. How would Armando explain his severe tardiness? When Armando arrived at his destination, he was surprised that he was a few hours earlier not days later than expected. In fact, the drive that would have taken him several hours only took around 90 minutes.
The story does not end in January of 1954. Some 15 years later, in 1969, Armando would have another strange otherworldly encounter. While driving outside of Mexico City, Armando would stop to pick up a hitchhiker, a tall, pale man with shoulder-length blond hair. The hitchhiker told Armando that he was a member of the crew of the craft he boarded on that road to Acapulco back in 1954. Armando did not tell researchers the purpose of the meeting or what was discussed in the car. The second meeting is a mere footnote to the original story.
With regard to this case, researchers are quick to point out that this incident happened during a rash of sightings of strange blond beings associated with the classic metallic flying saucers. The mid-1950s saw similar encounters in Europe and the United States. Are these cases interconnected? Are these sightings so similar because they have a common origin, meaning, that of the US military or American intelligence agencies? Or was this a very vivid dream of a man who pulled his car to the side of the road in the wee hours of the morning? Armando Zurbaran has since passed away. What happened on a lonely roadside near Acapulco in January 1954 may never be completely understood.
REFERENCES
Lowth, Marcus. From Deep Within The Archives Of UFO Insight: History’s Most Bizarre, Outlandish, And Controversial UFO And Alien Encounters! Doncaster, UK: UFO Insight Publications, 2019. Buy the book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2NjUyaK
The “Think AboutIt” web site (November 2019) and UFODigest.com archives.