The Cabo Valdés case: Pampa Lluscuma, Putre, 1977

April 1977. Chile's far north was a tense border zone. On Pampa Lluscuma, in the Andean foothills about 5 km from Putre, eight men of the Regimiento Huamachuco camped beside a fire. Corporal Armando Valdés Garrido was the only professional soldier. The other seven were conscripts aged 18 to 22. They were not on a combat patrol. They were guarding more than 300 army horses, in a cold of about 5 degrees below zero.

About 3:45 in the morning. Private Pedro Rosales, on guard, saw a light come down behind the hills with an incandescent flash. Then a second object descended and settled between the hills, about 500 metres away. The men described it as ovoid and violet, with an intense red point at each end. It withdrew, then returned closer, the red points growing as it came. There was no sound. The horses panicked in a deathly silence.

Valdés ordered the fire put out. The light drew back a few metres and stayed there. His men took up combat positions with their weapons. Valdés walked toward it and called out: "¡Alto ahí, identifíquense!" Halt! Identify yourselves. Around 4:15, he vanished from view.

About 15 minutes later, his men said, Valdés came back falling from the sky. He was shaking, as if in a trance, and spoke in a voice that did not sound like his own. "Ustedes nunca sabrán quiénes somos ni de dónde venimos, pero pronto volveremos," he said. You will never know who we are or where we come from, but we will be back soon. Then only "La luz... la luz..."

The men said he had been clean-shaven minutes earlier. Now he had several days of beard. His digital watch had stopped at about 04:30. The calendar read 30 April. Five days ahead.

Pedro Araneda recorded a three-hour group interview with the men that same day. The Chilean Army opened an internal inquiry and delayed releasing the testimonies, editing out details for security reasons. Valdés was examined at the Military Hospital, and psychiatrist Dr. Raúl Molina assessed him. Army psychiatrists concluded that he had hallucinated. The story still reached La Estrella de Arica, El Mercurio, Canal 13 and the APRO Bulletin.

The strongest doubts came from Valdés himself. In 1999 he spoke on TVN of "un momento de sueño e inactividad", a moment of sleep and inactivity. In 2003 he said: "Truly, I wasn't abducted." Later he said he had simply gone off to urinate, and that the beard was five days without shaving. In 2013 he said there had only been a bright light in fog that frightened the men. Yet on Cuarto Milenio in 2009, he stood by the original account.

Patricio Abusleme, who spent eight years on the case, argues that the retraction contradicts the conscripts' testimony and army grooming rules, and points to Valdés's religious conversion. J. J. Benítez put it another way: "The man had an experience, but he doesn't remember it." No source has explained the watch.

Often called Chile's Roswell or its Rendlesham Forest, the case has inspired books, television, podcasts and even an escape room. Valdés, now an evangelical pastor, told his own version in a 2024 book, A la sombra de la verdad. The night on the pampa is still argued over.