Silent Round Craft Startles Mayagüez Photographer on University Campus

MAYAGUEZ, PUERTO RICO — A professional photographer in Mayaguez said he captured a strange flying object on film, according to a 1973 article in San Juan's El Nuevo Día, republished this month by the blog Inexplicata in a new English translation. The paper's headline announced that the saucers had arrived.

According to the article by Carlos M. Morales, photographer William Rosario was on the campus of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez around nine o'clock on a very clear Wednesday morning. He was preparing to photograph a college building when a craft appeared suddenly, moving swiftly from north to south. He had barely time to focus, the paper reports, and managed two shots before it vanished toward the horizon.

Rosario described a round object that made no sound, executed a sudden 45-degree turn and flew at about the altitude of large commercial aircraft. He was candid about his own leanings. By the paper's account, he said he never believed in the flying saucer business and could not say he was a believer now, but he could not explain what he saw.

The article states that Miguel González, also a photographer, corroborated the sighting, as did university employees Elizabeth Nieto and Nancy Velez. The two women were reportedly unsettled, and the photographers sought to calm them by suggesting the craft might be a new U.S. Air Force prototype, though they admitted they were as uncertain as anyone.

The report adds a wider note. Frank Gaud, an Associated Press reporter in Mayaguez, relayed that several witnesses in the Cabo Rojo coastal area said they had seen luminous objects for some months that appeared and disappeared. María and Nelson Morales of the El Combate sector told the paper that on Wednesday evening a large object with a powerful light passed over their homes and hovered above the black buoy a mile offshore. They could not identify it, calling it only strange.