Operacao Prato

The flap began in the neighbouring state of Maranhao in April 1977, then moved west toward the Amazon delta. By August, small luminous objects, often cylindrical or disc-shaped, were descending on villages at night and directing beams of concentrated light at individuals. Victims described paralysis, severe pain, inability to speak, head pressure, and extreme chills during the event. Afterwards: burns on the skin, puncture marks, extended weakness and illness, and in some cases symptoms consistent with blood loss.

The Operacao Prato documents contain witness-coded testimonies from victims across the region. A woman identified as Beatriz Almada da Costa, 32, was struck three times by reddish light that penetrated her roof. She experienced paralysis and screamed for help. Abel Soares Trindade, 28, was hit by bluish light coming through his roof tiles. He described semi-paralysis, his head feeling as if expanding, his throat blocked. The hoarseness lasted days.

Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, the medical doctor stationed in Colares, treated approximately forty burn victims. In her 1993 interview with journalist Bob Pratt and researcher Daniel Rebisso Giese, she stated that two patients died.

In October 1977, several mayors in the Para region wrote to the Brazilian Air Force. Their villages were under attack by UFOs and their residents were being injured. Brigadier Protazio Lopes de Oliveira authorised a covert intelligence investigation from the Belem air base. Captain Uyrange Hollanda, officially the chief financial officer but covertly head of the A2 intelligence branch, was chosen to lead it. He arrived in Colares with six sergeants. Their equipment: a theodolite, cameras, and tape recorders.

The team spent four months in the field. They interviewed hundreds of witnesses across Colares and approximately thirty surrounding villages. They observed UFOs themselves on numerous occasions. They took hundreds of photographs. They filmed several hours of motion picture footage. Some films show objects appearing to descend into or emerge from the waters of Marajo Bay.

In January 1978, Brigadier Oliveira ordered the investigation closed. Hollanda and his second-in-command, Sergeant Flavio Costa, compiled a final dossier: approximately 500 pages of documents, several hundred photographs, motion picture film, maps, and sketches showing UFO flight paths. The dossier was sent to Air Force Headquarters in Brasilia and classified.

Over the following years, photocopies of documents and at least 18 photographs began circulating among Brazilian ufologists. Bob Pratt, a US journalist who visited Brazil 14 times between 1978 and 2003, received his first batch of leaked documents in 1991. He accumulated approximately 400 pages across three deliveries.

In 1997, Hollanda, now retired as a lieutenant colonel, decided he was no longer bound to silence. He gave a series of interviews, including one to Pratt and Cynthia Luce. He spoke openly about the investigation, confirmed the authenticity of the events, and expressed his own conviction that the objects were real and operating intelligently. In October 1997, approximately two months after his final interview, Hollanda died. The archive records the cause as suicide.

On 20 May 2005, Brazilian ufologist A.J. Gevaerd and approximately six other researchers met with three senior generals at military headquarters in Brasilia. The generals acknowledged that the Air Force had tracked UFOs systematically since 1954. They permitted the ufologists to examine approximately 110 photographs and 160 documents from the operation. They pledged to assist in further declassification.

Nine years after Colares, Brazil experienced a second defining moment. On 19 May 1986, 21 UFOs were tracked on radar across much of the country. Six jet fighters were scrambled from bases near Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia. For several hours, jets chased what witnesses described as balls of light. Four days later, the government held a nationally televised press conference. Air Force Minister Octavio Moreira Lima said simply: "Technically, there is no explanation." No further official statement followed for nineteen years.

The Operacao Prato dossier comprised approximately 500 pages, several hundred photographs, and hours of motion picture film. Of these, 110 photographs and 160 documents were examined by civilian researchers at the 2005 Brasilia meeting. Eighteen photographs had leaked to researchers over the years, including one taken at 03:25 on 11 December 1977. The motion picture footage, purportedly showing objects entering and leaving Marajo Bay, has not been publicly released.

Separately, Dr. Carvalho's medical records documented at least 40 burn victims treated at the Colares clinic. The Air Force team photographed those injuries. Daniel Rebisso Giese, a biologist based in Belem, conducted the most sustained civilian research into the events, interviewing survivors over many years and publishing his findings in "Vampiros Extraterrestres na Amazonia."

The Operacao Prato medical record is unusual in the UFO injury literature because the witness statements, the contemporaneous medical documentation, and the institutional response all aligned in a way that has rarely been achieved in cases of reported UFO-related injury. Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho was the medical doctor stationed at the Colares clinic during the second half of 1977. She treated approximately forty patients with burn injuries that she could not attribute to known accidental causes.

The injuries shared a consistent pattern. They were typically small, circular or oval burns, often appearing in pairs or in regular geometric arrangements on the skin. Many were located on the upper torso or face. Patients reported that the burns had appeared during night-time encounters with luminous objects that had hovered over their homes and directed beams of light at them. Several patients reported additional symptoms consistent with significant physiological stress: severe paralysis during the encounter, headache and head pressure, throat constriction, and post-encounter weakness lasting days to weeks.

Carvalho's 1993 interview with Bob Pratt and Daniel Rebisso Giese provides the most extensive medical testimony in the case file. She confirmed that two patients died during the attack period from injuries she believed were related to the encounters. The Air Force team that arrived in October 1977 photographed the injuries of multiple patients. Those photographs were included in the Operacao Prato dossier and were among the materials examined at the 2005 Brasilia disclosure meeting.