Estancia La Aurora: The Tonna Case

Estancia La Aurora belongs to the Tonna family. It sits in Paysandú Department, by the Río Daymán on the Salto border. The family says it all began in February 1976. Ángel María Tonna thought his chicken coop was on fire. He ran out into the night and found the old ombú tree burning. A strange light had come down from the sky with pendulum-like movements. It tore the tree apart and left a deep hole at its centre. Some animals died. Then Tonna saw a very powerful light rise into the air and enter another, even larger one.

February 13, 1977. At 05:30, 18 year old Julio César Rattín saw a light-emitting disc suspended over a copse of eucalyptus trees about 150 metres away. It lit a broad swath of countryside. The next night, at midnight, the power failed. Elena Margarita Rattín, Tonna's wife, went out to check the generator. She saw an intense glow over La Aurora.

Then came the close encounter. February 17. Four in the morning. Tonna, his children and some farmhands saw a strong light coming from behind the shed where the feed was stored. A very bright luminous object came down over a corral. A disc, about 3 metres across, some 15 metres up. It moved slowly in a zig-zag, then vanished toward a eucalyptus grove.

"The cows were frightened and stampeded, trampling one of the workers; the dogs howled in terror and we couldn't contain our astonishment," Tonna said. He had raised his arm to shield his face from the light. A skin eruption followed, with burns that kept returning for about two years.

Researcher Pablo Villarubia Mausó later catalogued the traces. Horseshoe-shaped prints formed a ring about 3 metres across. The grass burned, and a different species grew back. There was calcined rock with a glassy surface, melted fence and cut wire. A police dog died three days later. A pedigree Normandy bull died about a week later. Several sheep died with burned patches around the withers. A pedigree stallion survived, but was left sterile. Dr. Juan María Menoni placed burned bark on 35 mm film. When it was developed, strange spots appeared.

El Pueblo, of Salto, broke the story on 19 and 20 February 1977. Investigators followed, from Jorge Monsalve to the US ufologists James Hurtak and Bob Pratt. CRIDOVNI, the Uruguayan Air Force's UFO commission, was founded only in 1979. Its president, Ariel Sánchez, made about 10 visits. His verdict: "a very large electrical storm that produced a lightning bolt that burned the area." The commission also classed the events as ball lightning.

Author Eduardo Cuitiño pointed to the iron in northern Uruguay's subsoil and to natural electromagnetic phenomena. CRIDOVNI founder Germán Vázquez said the site was being exploited, and that visitors' expectations were shaped by suggestion. Tonna said Neil Armstrong had visited privately. Documents from Armstrong's press office cast doubt on it. His only documented visit to Uruguay was in 1966.

Reports say the activity went on for about 15 years, growing more frequent in the 1980s. In 1987 the Gruta del Padre Pío was inaugurated on the estancia. The Catholic Church briefly suspended liturgy there, so that devotion would not become mixed up with UFO belief. The estancia has been closed to the public since the early 1990s. The grotto is still open, and free.

El Observador compares La Aurora to Roswell. No photograph of the object was ever found. One blog called it the photo nobody took.