Varginha 1996: Former Brazilian minister urges the US to release its files
A former Brazilian minister is asking Washington to make public what it knows about the 1996 Varginha UFO case. Most claims about the case, which happened three decades ago and is often called Brazil's Roswell, still rest on statements by witnesses and a documentary film; no official document confirms them.
On January 20, 1996, three women, Liliane Silva, Valquiria Silva and Katia Andrade, spotted a creature walking on two legs in the city of Varginha in southeastern Brazil. It had brownish, oily skin and three bumps on its head, its eyes glowed red, and a smell reminiscent of ammonia hung over the area. They later recounted their experience in UFO investigator James Fox's documentary "Moment of Contact." "What we saw wasn't human and wasn't an animal either. Nowadays I do think it was a being from another planet," Liliane Silva said in the film.
Seven days before the sighting, several local residents reported unusual lights and a cigar-shaped object flying low over the fields near the town. According to witnesses, the air force shot down the craft, and two beings – one alive, the other dead – were captured by Brazilian authorities and then handed over to the US government. This claim was made by unnamed military personnel who appeared in the film and in television reports at the time, without independent confirmation.
A politician now calls for disclosure
Aldo Rebelo, who was a federal deputy at the time of the events and later became head of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and president of the Chamber of Deputies, called on the United States to release its files in a statement to the New York Post on October 3. According to him, the case was accompanied at the time by a serious military investigation, with statements from military personnel and doctors, some of which are public while others remain classified. Citing President Donald Trump's disclosure effort, Rebelo believes that if Washington were to publish more documents, Brazil could also share its classified materials related to the Varginha case. The politician is running for the Christian Democracy party in the Brazilian presidential election that begins on Sunday, as a longshot candidate.
What do we know, and what don't we?
We know for certain that in January 1996 several residents of Varginha reported unusual lights and then a strange creature, and that the case has since been preserved in a documentary film and press material. What we do not know is whether any craft actually crashed, and whether there was a living or dead being that was handed over to US authorities: no publicly known document points to this. The air force did not respond to the New York Post's request for comment, and among the declassified records the US government has released so far there is none that would support a US role in the Varginha case.
The sober take
The most dramatic elements in the article – the downed craft and the transfer of the beings captured alive and dead into US hands – rest solely on witnesses' recollections and on claims by unnamed military personnel who appeared in a documentary film. No publicly known official record supports them, either on the Brazilian or the US side, so the case is better treated as a still-unresolved legend than as a verified event.