“What happened yesterday in the Mexican Congress was a spectacle, with information that is not necessarily verifiable, the product of fanaticism that is more about media spectacle and political gain than explaining the phenomenon of possible life beyond our planet,” says Raúl Trejo Delarbre, researcher at the Institute for Social Research and a doctor in sociology from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at UNAM. “And, above all else, it is a matter that is beyond the scope of Congress.” After the hearing, Ryan Graves, the retired US Navy pilot lieutenant who was among the attendees, expressed his disappointment and described the events as “a huge step backwards” and an “unsubstantiated stunt.”
In the Mexican Congress, the phrase “we are not alone” echoed in the chamber. Pilots and air traffic controllers, who consider themselves privileged witnesses, along with astronomers from institutions such as Harvard, as well as experts and politicians from Japan, Argentina, France, Brazil, and Peru, testified that they face “frustration, harassment, and threats” when they dare to report unexplained discoveries found in the skies or the depths of the sea.
“Congress exists to legislate. What is the Mexican state going to legislate in this area? It is absolutely ridiculous,” says Trejo Delarbre. “I believe that this hearing should be understood in the context of the enormous misdirection of the majority party that dominates the Mexican Congress, that is, Morena and its allies; the extreme irresponsibility of Congressman Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, who on other occasions, but never in such a clumsy way as this one, has used his seat in Congress to fulfill his personal whims. The one who benefits from this is Mr. Jaime Maussan, who has for several decades been profiting from a personal business built around the social interest in so-called UFOs.”
Maussan’s path to the Mexican Congress began in the United States, when the US Congress held its own hearing on UFOs and opened the door for the same to happen in Mexico. Maussan also has many friends, among them Gutiérrez Luna, who has described the country’s Chamber of Deputies as the “house of the people.” At the hearing, Gutiérrez Luna said the audience would “hear evidence that has awakened a great, great, great, great, great interest in the part of the public.”
The origins of this hearing, said Gutiérrez Luna, can be traced back to when Maussan approached legislators to explain that in other countries, UFOs were already being talked about in legislative bodies. “Jaime Maussan is a renowned journalist and researcher who approached us,” he said. “If you swear to tell the truth in this exercise of legislative power … you promise to tell the truth about everything that is discussed here today,” Gutiérrez Luna said when leading the participants in the hearing as they were sworn in.
“The Mexican Congress has the power to deal with any matter for the purpose of enlightening and guiding society, but above all and fundamentally to legislate,” Trejo Delarbre says. “Legislators supervise other powers, manage society’s needs, but first and foremost they make laws. This meeting was convened as a public hearing for the regulation of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in Mexico. That is nonsense. How can one regulate what is anomalous and unidentified? The title of the hearing already indicates that it shouldn’t be taken seriously,” he adds.
