Peru's Air Force Revives Its UFO Office (DIFAA)

Peru's air force had looked at the sky before. Its first UFO office, the OIFAA, sat inside DINAE, the Fuerza Aérea del Perú's directorate for aerospace interests. AFP and the Guardian dated it to 2001. La República said 2002. Its best known case came from Chulucanas, Piura, in 2001. Foreign Policy described eight red-orange spheres that hundreds of witnesses said moved intelligently for more than five hours. Then the office fell silent. AFP and El Comercio said it had closed five years before 2013 over "administrative problems."

September 2013. On Cerro Marabamba, near the Kotosh archaeological complex outside Huánuco, visitors, tourists and locals began reporting lights. A group of journalists filmed nine of them on the hill. Diario Correo called Huánuco "the main city for UFO sightings."

The Al Sexto Día team from Panamericana TV went to check. By day they saw luminous objects moving along the horizon. By night they found a brightly lit object, "even more brilliant than the stars." It moved irregularly across the sky. It gave off diverse colors. It was not stationary. The crew held a camera shutter open to trace its path. Then they walked to the spot to rule out reflections from glass or shiny surfaces. They found only stones and open terrain.

Down the coast lay Chilca, "a beach resort 59km south of Lima." Paulina Jimenez, 82, told the Guardian that about 16 years earlier she had seen "a huge number of flashing lights" over the bluff above Yaya beach. Residents say there is an alien base under the sea offshore.

October 18, 2013. At DINAE headquarters on Av. Arequipa in Miraflores, Lima, the office came back as the Departamento de Investigación de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos, or DIFAA. Col. Julio Vucetich explained why: "increased sightings that are occurring in the country and that people are reporting to media." He added: "We want the population to know the institution that will investigate their information to provide a response. This didn't happen before."

The civilian advisory board included Julio Chamorro Flores, a radar specialist and founder of the OIFAA, and astronomer Barthelemy d'Ans Alleman. The public could report by hotline, email or Facebook. The first event was a talk on "The Nazca Lines and Extraterrestrial Beings."

Then the colonel spoke for himself. He had personally seen what he could only call anomalous aerial phenomena. "On a personal basis, it's evident to me that we are not alone in this world or universe."

In February 2014, Defence Minister Pedro Cateriano framed the office as airspace security: "Any aircraft navigating national airspace with illicit, anomalous flight whose nature is unidentifiable represents a threat to civil and military air safety." HuffPost compared DIFAA to Project Blue Book and the Ministry of Defence. On Metabunk, users suggested drug flights and drones. Mick West suggested pelicans, which "appear as bright blobs from far below." The skeptic blog El Lado Oscuro blamed an earlier daytime clip from Huánuco on loose balloons or a hot-air balloon. No DIFAA findings on the 2013 wave have surfaced.

Chilca now promotes itself as a UFO district, with tours and a festival at Punta Yaya. Anthony Choy later became a lead investigator at DIFAA. In 2014, Vice journalist Darren Loucaides watched a light at Marcahuasi that "spells a wobbly W." In February 2020, a bright light that flashed at about 200 people during a Yaya beach vigil turned out to be a person on the hillside with a powerful flashlight. The Marabamba lights still await a published answer.