Mexican Congress "Nazca non-human bodies" hearing

Deputy Sergio Gutiérrez Luna of Morena organised the session. It was billed as the Chamber of Deputies' first public hearing on "Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos No Identificados", the Spanish term for UAP. The stated aim was to discuss amending the Law for the Protection of Mexican Airspace so that it would recognise the phenomenon.

Ryan Graves, the former U.S. Navy pilot from the July 2023 U.S. hearing, was there. So was Robert Salas, the retired U.S. Air Force officer tied to the 1967 Malmstrom missile case. Michael Vaillant came for GEIPAN, alongside researchers from Argentina and Brazil and a legislator from Japan.

Tuesday, 12 September 2023. Four in the afternoon. The Salón "Legisladores de la República" in the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro.

Jaime Maussan, journalist, TV presenter and ufologist, testified under oath. Then the boxes appeared. Two small mummified bodies lay in satin-lined, coffin-shaped cases with glass fronts. They had elongated heads, protruding faces, skinny limbs and three long fingers on each hand. They appeared calcified, stood about 60 cm tall in Spanish-language reports, and were named Clara and Mauricio.

"These specimens are not part of our terrestrial evolution," Maussan said. He said they were found near the Nazca Lines in 2017, that UNAM radiocarbon dating showed they were more than 1,000 years old, and that about one third of their DNA was of unknown origin. He described implants of osmium and cadmium, and eggs inside the female body. Beside him, Dr. José de Jesús Zalce Benítez, a Mexican Navy forensic doctor, said he found "no evidence of any assembly or manipulation of the skulls."

On 14 September, the team held a press conference with CT scans and said each body was a single skeleton. A second session followed on 7 November. The bodies were not displayed, but a string of doctors said they were real, once-living organisms. A letter from 11 researchers, described as from San Luis Gonzaga University of Ica, said the same, while making clear they were not implying the bodies were extraterrestrial.

UNAM reissued its 2017 statement. It had carbon-dated one sample only and drawn no conclusions about origin. Astronomer Julieta Fierro said Maussan's data "made no sense." Peruvian prosecutors had concluded in 2017 that such bodies were "recently manufactured dolls." In 2022, Leandro Rivera Sarmiento, named as one of the original finders, was sentenced to prison for damage to heritage.

In October 2023, Peru intercepted two doll-like figures and a three-fingered hand in the post. On 12 January 2024, forensic archaeologist Flavio Estrada Moreno presented the results in Lima. Paper, glue, metal, and human and animal bones. "They are not extraterrestrials; they are not aliens," he said. Those figures have not been shown to be Clara and Mauricio themselves.

Ryan Graves called the display "a huge step backwards for this issue." Anthropologist Guido Lombardi saw "part of an elaborate disinformation project." Wired described an elaborate hoax made of human and animal bones. Maussan replied that critics lacked "a single piece of evidence" against his claims. In 2015, his "Be Witness" alien body turned out to be a human child.

The story did not end in Mexico City. Maussan's 2017 Gaia series on "Maria" and other three-fingered bodies had already been called pseudoscience by University of Kansas anthropologists. Peru's Congress hosted an event on the case on 9 November 2024.