Mr. Guillermo Daniel Gimenez is an author with essays published in most Spanish and Latin American sites on paleoastronomy and UFOs. He is also director and co-moderator of Planeta UFO Thanks to our friend Sandra Rodriguez, from Puerto Rico, for sharing her interests and helping us get in touch with researchers in Latin America.

The year 1978 marked some significant chapters in the UFO chronicles of the Republic of Argentina. The entire region of Necochea, in the southeastern end of the Province of Buenos Aires also echoed these manifestations of UFOs, landings and even encounters with the occupants of these objects.

But there was an incident of significant characteristics that took place in late August of that year some 56 kilometers from the city of Necochea, more specifically in the locality of La Dulce, a rural community located northwest of the city in question.

The incident was important not only because of the events that transpired, not only due to the presence of a large object over the ranch, but also the presence of amorphous entities that surveyed the location. But let us see what the TELAM news agency had to tell us around that time:

Necochea, Sep. 7 (Télam) - Two small lights descended from the strange object and reached a shed. They later moved swiftly and something like two silhouettes or hard-to-define figures emerged.

That is how the story begins, as experienced by the Arias family, today the publishers of the local newspaper Ecos Diarios.

The family, made up by Manuel Arias and his wife Leonor Turiella, said that on the night of August 31, 1978 shortly before 10 pm, there was a blackout. Suddenly "we felt drawn by an extraordinary source of light originating from a sector of the ranch" - which they occupy in the town of La Dulce.

[The couple ] was able to see "a very large object, similar to a grain storage silo, either stationary or suspended in the air some 800 meters from the house." Two lights broke away, according to the Ariases, which "also appeared to float in the air. " The newspaper adds that another neighbor, Lorenzo Parrachini, as "a singularly bright object suspended over some trees when the city was plunged into darkness due to an blackout. I went to find other witnesses, but since I couldn't find any, I returned to the site just in time to see how the light went away, giving off some greenish flashes. The time was 23:15."

Drivers on Provincial Route No. 88, according to the appear, also saw the strange object."

This is the information provided to us by TELAM. An incident that captured public attention and also that of the UFO community due to the presence of strange amorphous creatures - seldom seen in the Argentinean Republic.

La Dulce, Ground Zero

As stated earlier, La Dulce is 56 km northwest of the city of Necochea, 48 km along Provincial Route No. 56, with geographic coordinates of 38º 20´ Latitude South and 59º 12´ Longitude West, at an elevation of 88 meters above sea level. Its name commemorates Nicanor Olivera, owner of the La Dulce Ranch, which took its name from a lagoon located in the vicinity. His children founded the train station and in 1908, Nicanor Olivera yielded property for families to occupy and for the town to be laid out. It is surrounded by fertile soil that enables it to have a large agricultural yield (wheat, corn, sunflower) and good cattle pastures.

The UFO and the Amorphous Entities

At 21:55 hours on August 31, 1978, a storm lashed the area. At that time, Mrs. Leonor Beatriz Arias (neé Turiella) was taking a shower and was startled by a sudden blackout. She was forced to leave the bathroom and head to the kitchen to find a dressing gown. It was there she noticed that a strong light was pouring through the window to her house.
Her husband, Manuel Arias, 55, had gone to bed to due to the blackout and did not see the light coming in through the window in question.
Leonor remarked: "The glow was hard to describe, but its intensity gave me the sensation of having gone right through my body."
The phenomenon was like a compact beam of light, iridescent white in color that poured through the window blinding her. "When I tried to see myself, I couldn't," Mrs. Arias would later remark. The light appeared to be coming through the walls of the house. Its point of origin was from the exterior, piercing the farmhouse's right corner. Outside the farm, there was a large dark object suspended, oscillating, over a group of 6 silos located some 30 meters away from the house.

Mrs. Arias decided to wake up her husband, who moved quickly toward the window. Both were now witnesses to the [object's] maneuvers. The object was moving away from the house, flying over some cultivated land 80 meters away from the witnesses.

It continued its horizontal trajectory slowly, perhaps at 15 meters over the surface, until it paused over a eucalyptus grove some 800 meters away.

This object had an estimated diameter of 8 meters. It was dark, had an oscillating motion, and seemed to be solid, according to Manuel Arias, Leonor's husband.