It all started in the early hours of January 8, 1979, when a Military Police vehicle was surprised by a call for help from mechanic Sérgio Pregnoletto, visibly shaken, who said he was being chased by a mysterious light in the heart of the city.
The mechanic’s report stated that a very bright luminous object appeared over his car as he was preparing to enter the garage of his home.
“It was almost like it was daytime,” Pregnoletto said.
Fearing for his family, he went looking for help. The luminous object flew over Nogueira Padilha Avenue, leaving the driver of the vehicle in a panic.
The victim was attended to by the police, who immediately began a round to verify the facts and ended up seeing the object. Transmitting the alarm to the other radio patrols on duty, within a short time, eight Military Police teams were involved in the operation.
An intense movement followed that ended in front of the São Domingos quarry, next to Mariquinha Hill.
In a statement to journalists, military police officers Pandulfo and Costa stated that they sent light signals, with the vehicle’s searchlight, towards the object and the object seemed to respond, changing the intensity of the lights when the searchlights were turned on.
The strange object remained in place until daybreak, when it inexplicably disappeared.
The day after the first appearance, the news had already spread and the place became a center of attention for curious people and scholars from various locations.
On January 10, 1979, Cruzeiro do Sul Journal reported that the mysterious light had been seen again roaming the Sorocaba sky.
“This time the apparition was preceded by strange phenomena such as a luminous explosion in the vicinity of the Itupararanga Dam and a blackout, which twice left the city in the dark”, the newspapers reported.
The news also said that the lights appeared in the same place as before, the São Domingos quarry, and that more than 50 people were present to observe them.
Witnesses to the mysterious phenomenon reported to newspapers that the object moved very slowly and seemed to have emerged from the ground itself, remaining suspended over the hill, and its lights, blue, yellow and sometimes red, were so intense that they obscured vision.
“It appeared unexpectedly right after an explosion without noise and with a lot of light. Then, the city’s lights went out and not even ‘Light’ (the city’s old energy company) was able to come up with a convincing explanation for the phenomenon”, said one of the witnesses present at the scene.
Finally, on January 13th of that year, more than 5 thousand people came to Mariquinha Hill to see the object.
Around a thousand vehicles, including cars, buses and trucks, were stopped at kilometer 95 of the Raposo Tavares highway, waiting for the UFO. But, that day, it didn’t appear there, but at Ipanema Farm, in Iperó, about 30 kilometers away from Sorocaba.
“It was observed by an entire team of highway police, miles away,” said the newspapers.
Three weeks after the incident, binoculars and telescopes disappeared from stores and the newspapers said that the facts had already come to NASA’s attention.
Even the supermarket ‘Vem-Ká’, on Nogueira Padilha Avenue, which had been flown over by the UFO, joined the bandwagon and launched an advertisement taking advantage of the “ETs interest in their low prices!”
A year before the Mariquinha Incident, the first UFO study group was formed in the city, in the house of professor Renato Lourenço. The group called itself the Associação Sorocabana de Exobiologia and had approximately 20 members. Sometimes the meetings took place on the premises of the Quinzinho de Barros Zoo, with authorization obtained from an employee who was part of the team.
Still in January 1979, curiously a week after the events that occurred in Sorocaba, the highest English court, the House of Lords, opened a historic discussion on the issue of UFOs.
In the same curious way, two months after what happened in Sorocaba, the 1st National Congress of Ufology took place in São Paulo, held between March 15 and 17, 1979, bringing together the greatest researchers from Brazil and the world, with emphasis on the now deceased North American astrophysicist J. Allen Hynek, from Project Blue Book, considered the greatest world authority on the study of UFOs.
The Mariquinha Incident marked the memories of the people who had the chance to witness it. So much so that on January 9, 2009, exactly 30 years after the event, a meeting was organized at the Sorocabano Reading Office, to remember the case.
“The meeting brought together reporters, witnesses of the time, scholars and those interested in the topic. We were able to hear several testimonies from people who, at the time, did not want to appear. In fact, this is a dilemma that the ufologist has to deal with. We lost fascinating stories because many people, fearing that they will appear ridiculous, prefer not to speak out”, said ufologist Jorge Facury Ferreira.
For him, we are not alone in the universe and our planet is a route for beings with high consciousness. “Just like us, there are the good ones, who just observe us peacefully, and the bad ones, who interfere in our environment in search of material for research on our race. I believe that one day, we will meet.”
