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The date was Saturday, January 14, 2023. Thousands of fans packed the Estadio Olímpico in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez to watch their favorite local professional soccer team, the Juárez Bravos, battle it out with the Xolos of Tijuana. From the stadium, El Paso, Texas can be seen, across the Rio Grande, almost as if it were part of just one big city. While the local futbolistas were scoring against their out-of-town guests, all eyes in the stadium turned away from the action on the field and looked up, towards the setting sun. To the right of the gigantic fireball was a metallic disc that looked surprisingly like a classic flying saucer from the 1950s. It was difficult to take photographs of this object as it was so close to the setting sun, but images soon made it out to various social media platforms including Facebook and Tik Tok. The Juárez Bravos posted a photo of the UFO on their Twitter account along with a request of help directed at Jaime Maussan, the man considered to be the grandfather of Mexican UFO and paranormal research. The tweet was complete with emojis of aliens and flying saucers. Translated from Spanish, the Bravos tweeted this:
“Help, Jaime Maussan! A fan sent us this photograph he took during the game vs. the Xolos, where supposedly a UFO can be seen. Is it or isn’t it?” “¿Es o no es?”
Jaime Maussan responded the next day after having his team analyze the photo. Maussan later tweeted this, translated from Spanish: “I believe it is a ship of non-human origin.” He later explained that there appeared to be a forcefield around the craft and that it wasn’t an airplane or drone. Of course, this Twitter exchange spawned lively discussions between believers and non-believers. Some claimed that the supposed forcefield was just the effects of something being photoshopped into a larger image, and the picture of the flying saucer near the sunset that spread all over the internet was a hoax. Others who were at the stadium confirmed that there was something very unusual in the sky hovering over this well-attended sporting event. Still others joked and said that the Juárez team was playing so poorly that they needed extraterrestrial help to win the game, and that was the reason why they beat the Xolos 3 to 0. Twitter bantering aside, this sighting garnered worldwide attention and the story was covered by many media sources that normally would not have reported on such things. This was not the first time that the skies over this gigantic Mexican border town have played host to unidentified aerial phenomena. Ciudad Juárez has a long history of UFO sightings.
Ciudad Juárez is known to many Americans in Texas and New Mexico as “war-EZ” or to college frat boys and others seeking a good time, as simply, “J-Town.” It is the largest city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua with a population of over one and a half million people. South of the city is desolation for many miles in all directions. Juárez sits on the Rio Grande, called in Mexico, the Rio Bravo del Norte, across the river from El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juárez was founded in 1659 by the Franciscans and was called El Paso del Norte, or “The North Pass.” In the 1660s it became the center for evangelization in the region after the construction of the Mission of Guadalupe. In colonial times this town became an important link between the city of Chihuahua and Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1888 the city changed its name in honor of Mexican president Benito Juárez.
In the age of cell phones, there are countless video clips online showing strange, anomalous objects in the sky. Because of the sheer number of people who live in “J-Town,” Ciudad Juárez has been a site of frequent sightings of UFOs especially in the last ten years. UFO researchers like to claim that the history of sightings in this border city began in the spring of 1964. On April 27, 1964, several people reported seeing a strange black object hovering in the sky. Some claimed that it looked like a solid object covered in a black sheet. Others said it looked like a space capsule like the Soviets had been using to orbit the earth at the time, only upright and floating. Still others called it a bruja, or witch, as if it were somehow alive. The object was sighted on the other side of the border in El Paso, too, and a 12-year-old girl described it in the El Paso press this way: “It didn’t have any legs. It seemed to be floating in the air, covered with something like a sheet. It was about 6 feet 5 inches tall, and sort of egg-shaped.” Some people on the US side of the Rio Grande started calling this a flying monster, or simply, “The El Paso Monster.” American military authorities were quick to dismiss the sightings as a parachute or a weather balloon falling to earth. The authorities on the Mexican side of the border made no comments at all and just ignored the event, which was typical for the 1960s in Mexico regarding UFO sightings.
On July 15, 1972, at around 10 o’clock at night, the people of Juárez marveled at what they saw in their northwestern skies. A large disc-shaped luminous object appeared and hovered silently. It slowly crossed most of the sky – going east to west – and then stopped for about 15 seconds to hover some more. Then, it started dropping small orbs of yellow light from its underside. The orbs 
were about one tenth the diameter of the larger luminous disc that some witnesses called a mother ship. After exiting the craft, the golden orbs would fly away and disappear. About a minute or so after the release of the orbs, the larger object just “blinked out” of existence. The next night, in El Paso, a local news channel reported the appearance of strange flashing lights in the sky. It’s unknown whether people on the US side were witnessing the mother ship phenomenon that the Mexicans had experienced the night before.
In late September of 1977, a couple reported seeing a very curious aerial phenomenon in the southeastern outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, along the Rio Grande. Flying overhead silently were two chevron-shaped or boomerang-shaped objects making their way across the early morning sky in unison. They were reported as being orange and red, and appeared to one of the witnesses as glowing as if they were burning up entering the earth’s atmosphere. These boomerangs would blink out or stop abruptly, as if they were stuttering in flight. In the Mexican UFO pulp press at the time, the incident was chalked up to experimental aircraft being tested out of Fort Bliss, Texas, although later references seem to discount this.
On June 30, 1984, in the deserts outside of Juárez, a group of friends reported seeing a huge white light moving toward them. It was in the early evening and the friends at first thought it was a helicopter. The light grew bigger and brighter and then the witnesses realized that what they were seeing was nothing like anything else they were familiar with. The object separated into 4 smaller lights that were not as bright, and then after a few seconds regrouped into the larger bright object that it was before. It then shot off into space, heading north. Again, the Mexican press explained this as an experimental aircraft coming from the American side of the border.
On November 27, 1987, citizens of the northwestern neighborhoods of Juárez reported a large metallic ball hovering overhead. This gigantic ball had a ring of lights around its midsection, described by one witness as looking like a belt. After a few seconds, the belt of lights seemed to rotate on the surface of the metallic sphere. The object made no sound and moved to the west slowly and then to the east. After about 30 seconds, the object started to rise slowly until it got so high that witnesses could no longer see it.
On June 1, 1996, night-shift workers at a maquiladora, or twin plant factory, in northern Juárez near the US border reported 3 blinking lights in a triangle formation over the western sky. One light left the formation and hovered, then rejoined the formation. After the rejoining, the triangle of lights moved in unison slowly off to the horizon. This went on for about 3 minutes until fighter jets appeared and the lights abruptly disappeared. A local Juárez radio station reported it, as did a TV news station in El Paso. The next day, though, the American news station came out and said that these triangle lights were just weather balloons and they apologized for any concern they may have caused with their hasty reporting.
An upside-down V-shaped craft was spotted flying north to south over the breadth of Ciudad Juárez on October 4, 2002. As this incident occurred at the beginning of the age of the cell phone camera, there are a few images of this sighting that are still out there on the internet. It appears that the object was floating across the sky and was covered in a single row of lights on each branch of the V. The lights were blue and the object made no noise as it traversed the night sky. One witness claimed that the craft appeared for no more than 30 seconds before it just disappeared.
As mentioned earlier, into the 2000s UFO sightings in and around Juárez became more frequent, or at least more public, because of so many camera phones and so many people eager to post interesting content to social media. Besides the soccer stadium event referenced at the beginning of this show, the largest mass-sighting over the city occurred on October 26, 2022. Thousands of people reported a bright glowing object hovering over downtown that turned into a trail of light that crossed the sky. Although it was reported in the press, no explanation was given as to what the object actually was. It just became one of many sightings of various shapes and sizes on a long list of anomalous aerial phenomena appearing in the skies over one of Mexico’s largest cities.
REFERENCES
Pulp Mexican UFO magazines from the 70s and 80s
Various online sources
