Several countries have a case of sightings of UFO who seems to dwarf all others in terms of fame and controversy; In United States of America there is the Roswell crash and England Close Encounters in Rendlesham Forest.

In Latin America, Chile occupies a prominent place where the bizarre story of corporal Armando Valdés, and seven soldiers of the Chilean army, has long dominated the local UFO scene.

The accident occurred in 1977 in a desolate mountainous desert area called Pampa Lluscuma, near the town of Putre, in the northern Chilean region of Tarapacá.

The Cabo Valdés kidnapping in Chile

This case occurred in one of Chile’s so-called hot spots for UFO sightings, but what sets it apart from all the other close encounters is that the star witness, Corporal Valdés, apparently experienced physiological and motor effects after disappearing for fifteen or twenty minutes,

They say about his abduction that he moved inside a huge luminous globe that floated near the soldiers. The corporal reappeared shocked.

The strangest thing about the story is that, upon his return, Valdés had a five-day beard and his wristwatch had stopped after the brief experience, but his calendar showed five days in the future.that is, it marked April 30, 1977 instead of the actual date of April 25.

These effects made the case truly unique. Furthermore, the Chilean military has not disavowed the incident and, on the contrary, it allowed the publication and dissemination of interviews with Valdés and the soldiers.

The Valdés incident sparked an unprecedented outpouring of public interest in Chile and, to a lesser extent, abroad, where it was reported by the French news agency Agence France-Presse and the US newspaper National Enquirer.

Where the kidnapping of Cabo Valdés took place

It happened in the Chilean army blockades at Pampa Lluscuma, a mountainous site in the desert of northern Chile. The closest city is Putre, in the foothills of the Andes, about 150 kilometers west of the port of Arica.

The UFO was first sighted at 3:50 by a soldier on duty in a stable, who immediately alerted his boss, Corporal Valdés, and the other six colleagues.

The UFO, according to reports, hovered close to the ground at a distance of about 500 meters from the soldiers. At around 4:15, the corporal decided to investigate himself. He disappeared for fifteen minutes, returned at 4:30 and immediately lost consciousness.

The UFO remained in place until dawn and lifted off at 6:35am.

Among the witnesses of the sighting is Corporal Valdés, who was 23 years old when it all happened and had five years of service in the Chilean army. Valdes was accompanied by seven conscripts from the Rancagua regiment

The initial investigation into the sighting was conducted by Pedro Araneda, a teacher at a school in Putre. Araneda was the first person to meet the bewildered soldiers when they returned to Putre after their UFO encounter.

Araneda quickly returned to the crash site with witnesses, where he proceeded to record a lengthy interview with all of them. He then said: “I was surprised by the corporal’s appearance. He had six to seven days of beard. He knew that soldiers have to shave every day. It was obvious that the soldiers had had some sort of extraordinary experience.”

To this day, Araneda’s classic interview remains the only original and comprehensive source on the case. After what happened, the corporal did not speak to the media for several years.

Was the case of Cabo Valdes real?

No significant new evidence about the case emerged until the late 1990s, when a pair of soldiers were tracked down by ufologists and eventually interviewed for a UFO series broadcast on Chile’s national television network TVN.

In 2002, two Chilean researchers, journalist Patricio Abusleme and skeptic Diego Zúñiga, launched a new investigation. They located most of the original witnesses and some of them agreed to be formally questioned.

It was in the course of this investigation that Valdés launched an explosive story in a taped interview with Abusleme, retracting a crucial part of the story.

The corporal continued to support the story of the ball of light hovering near the soldiers, but told Abusleme that it never disappeared inside the UFO.

He claimed he left the soldiers to urinate and then stood behind a wall for the key fifteen to twenty minutes of his alleged disappearance.. He now he says that he decided to play a trick on the soldiers by pretending to be missing. He explained the beard growth by saying he hadn’t shaved for several days. He also said that his wristwatch didn’t work and that the date change was just a coincidence.

However, Valdés’ confession is not as simple as it seems. On the one hand, the other soldiers continue to support the original version. In addition, there is an additional factor: Valdés became a devout evangelical Christian many years ago, a member of the Union of Biblical Centers of Temuco, of which he is now bishop.

It can be argued that Valdés’ denial is based on his religious faith, a position that Abulesme himself considers possible. However, the debate on his kidnapping is still open and generates controversy.