HISTORICAL

Operação Prato — For months, residents of Colares island in Pará reported being attacked by beams of light from luminous objects. The Brazilian Air Force investigated under Operação Prato and documented dozens of medical cases.

Throughout 1977 and into 1978, residents of Colares — a small fishing town on Ilha do Colares in Pará state, northern Brazil — reported being attacked by unidentified beams of light from objects hovering over the village at night. Dozens were burned, more than thirty hospitalised, and at least two reportedly died. The Brazilian Air Force opened the only officially declassified large-scale UFO investigation in Latin America, codenamed Operação Prato. 【Background】 Colares villagers fished the Amazon estuary by night and slept in stilted wooden houses. From mid-1977, multiple residents began describing what they called "chupa-chupa" — literally "sucker-sucker" — boxlike or cylindrical objects that hovered above homes and projected concentrated beams of light directly at sleeping people. Witnesses reported small burn marks resembling needle punctures, accompanied by trembling, dizziness, and prolonged anemia. 【The Encounter】 By September 1977, the local hospital in nearby Belém was receiving multiple patients with consistent burn patterns, low haemoglobin counts, and persistent fatigue. Father Carmine Salvio of the local Catholic mission documented the village panic. Villagers slept in groups, lit bonfires through the night, and abandoned outlying houses. 【Investigation】 In October 1977 the Brazilian Air Force's IV Comando Aéreo Regional dispatched a team led by Captain Uyrangê Hollanda Lima. Over four months the unit gathered 500 photographs, 16mm film, 15 hours of audio testimony, and 2,000 pages of reports. The team itself observed numerous objects. The investigation was abruptly closed in 1978, but the dossier was partially declassified in 1997 after persistent requests from researcher Ademar Gevaerd. 【Modern Assessment】 Skeptical authors have proposed mass hysteria amplified by remoteness, lightning-related skin lesions, or mosquito-borne anemia. However, the convergence of medical documentation, sustained military observation, and multiple-witness accounts has kept Colares as the strongest collective UFO injury case on record. Captain Hollanda himself spoke publicly about the encounters before his death in 1997, stating his team had documented "something real and unexplained." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Prato

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Source: Wikipedia