For those who believe in aliens and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), the city of Roswell, USA is considered a “holy land”.

Every July, thousands of people flock to the city of Roswell, New Mexico, USA to attend the annual UFO Festival, commemorating the event that was allegedly covered up by the US government about the crash of a flying saucer. aliens here in the summer of 1947.

According to Al Jazeera, during the festival, this quiet city suddenly becomes unusually bustling, with costume contests, lights, stalls and many souvenirs associated with outsiders. planet.

In Roswell, everything has an extraterrestrial appearance, from lampposts to coffee shops and fast food restaurants. Roswell also has a museum and international UFO research center.

“It’s hard to imagine what this place would be like without that ‘flying saucer’ crash,” said local resident Janet Jones.

Events of 1947

Most people here believe in the story that in 1947, a farmer named Mack Brazel accidentally came across strange debris on his farm and brought them to a nearby military airport.

Here, an air force officer issued a statement confirming that a “flying saucer” had been found. On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record published a shocking headline: “Roswell Army Airfield seizes flying saucers on a farm in the Roswell area.” And from here, the story spread throughout America.

Although public interest quickly dissipated after that, when the US Air Force issued a statement confirming that it was just fragments of a weather balloon, by the 1970s, the heat of the incident was renewed. blown up by “flying saucer scientists”. They asserted that the claim that the balloon crashed was just a story created to cover up the truth, and that the government had found the alien body.

“Before 9/11, it was the topic with the most conspiracy theories,” said history professor William Dewan, at the University of California, who is doing a PhD on the UFO phenomenon. According to Mr. Dewan, distrust of the government is a factor contributing to the explosion of conspiracy theories about UFOs.

In the 1990s, the US government revealed that the object found was not a weather balloon fragment, but a type of reconnaissance device, part of a top secret US Air Force project to detect nuclear explosions. core. This statement further opened the way for controversy and conspiracy theories, as well as public concern.

UFO fever in America

After the Roswell incident, UFO fever flared up in the US when pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing 9 flying objects near Mount Rainier, Washington state in 1947. Fearing that what he saw was a weapon of abroad, Mr. Arnold reported the incident to a local newspaper. He described the objects as moving “like a disc being moved across water”.

This description was later misquoted by the press, and many articles appeared with headlines such as: “Idaho pilot discovers supersonic flying saucer”.

According to sociologist Robert Bartholomew, the negligence of reporters has planted in American public opinion the belief that UFOs exist. Since then, UFO sighting claims have become more and more frequent.

The US government, air force and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also investigated these claims. “Scientists say those things don’t exist, or there’s no definitive evidence. But people constantly claim to have seen them,” Mr. Bartholomew said.

Countless surveys conducted since the 1950s show that Americans strongly believe in the existence of aliens. A 2013 survey by the Huffington Post and YouGov found that nearly half of Americans believe UFOs have visited Earth.

Decryption

According to history professor William Dewan, belief in aliens is like “mirrors in a funhouse, distortedly reflecting ourselves. If we look at folklore, flying saucers are like beings.” saviors, or destroyers”.

Sociologist Bartholomew believes that the UFO fever coincided with a period in which the West became increasingly afraid of secret weapons and the risk of atomic war.

The idea that there is a connection between claims of UFO sightings and military and nuclear facilities is best demonstrated in New Mexico. This state appeared in countless high-profile cases related to aliens, after the incident in Roswell.

“The state of New Mexico’s association with the UFO phenomenon is closely related to Roswell, but in fact, it is also the location of Los Alamos National Laboratory – a nuclear weapons research complex, test site White Sands missile test, along with Holloman and Kirkland air bases,” said Nick Pope, who worked at the British Ministry of Defense. “All of these sites are associated with American technological achievements during and after World War II, and all of them have been associated with UFOs in some way.”

After the incident at Roswell, many people reported seeing UFOs above and around Los Alamos. These incidents are summarized in many declassified documents, recording the accounts of many soldiers, security officers and scientists here.

“New Mexico is located at the center of a military industrial complex. It is also where the Trinity nuclear test site is located,” Mr. Dewan said, and said that conspiracy theories about UFOs can reveal some of the culture and American society.

According to Mr. Dewan, the Roswel fever illustrates the fact that technological secrets hidden by the government have created conditions for people to express their very real fears. “The question is: are Americans’ paranoia not without cause? How much of the history of recent decades remains a state secret?”.