The unsettling thing about the annual UFO festival in Roswell, N.M., recently detailed in a New York Times report, is that it reminds of our federal government’s current demonization of “illegal aliens.” At Roswell’s carnival, the cosplay of attendees dressing up as visitors from outer space—little green folks; “people of color!”—feels a little like some frightening invitation to be riddled with bullets by ICE thugs.
The event is the result of Roswell having come to fancy itself the nation’s UFO capital, playing on the 1947 “Roswell Incident” in which a discovery of metallic and rubber debris, apparently from a military balloon, triggered speculation of a flying saucer crash there.
I spent my high school years during the mid-1960s in Hobbs, N.M., roughly 100 miles away but connected to Roswell by our sports teams’ regular duels, without the “Incident” ever coming up in conversation. It wasn’t until the 50th anniversary of the happening, in the late ‘90s, that the then-mayor of Roswell helped launch the commemorative UFO fair that now draws tourists from across the country. They participate in “Incident” tours, check out the local UFO museum, take in a laser-light show and a parade, wear funny bulbous glasses and, in some cases, arrive in cars modified to look like flying saucers.
And—sign of the times—many deal in conspiracy theories that U.S. officials aren’t telling us what really happened 79 years ago, harboring suspicions that the deep state is hiding a long-ago inability to secure the intergalactic border, that some Commie plot may have consisted of hiring spacemen to invade our homeland.
It has been reported that Steven Spielberg’s fascination with that still-mysterious event has influenced his film work, including his latest science-fiction blockbuster, “Disclosure Day,” though other reviews cite, as that movie’s genesis, Spielberg’s stargazing when he was growing up in Arizona, one state to the west of New Mexico.
I shot a text to my old Hobbs High School buddy Larry Schear about the long-ago UFO situation, based on the fact that Larry attended the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell—on his way to the Naval Academy and his real-life Tom Cruise-like stint as a Top Gun. No revelations there; Larry did not remember “anyone at NMMI talking of the UFO Roswell incident,” nor or any knowledge of it in our Hobbs High days. It was just a vague thing in the distant past, no more personally impactful than the failure of the Spanish Armada.
I’d guess I spent maybe half a day in Roswell back then, when our football team finished the 1964 season there—a loss—and I sat on the bench. A year earlier, on the evening that President Kennedy was shot, the decision was made to go on with our home football game against Roswell—also a loss—after we were assured that Kennedy “would have wanted it that way,” though it occurred to me that Hobbs officials could not have discussed that with the President either before, and certainly not after, his demise.
Beyond that, the only specific memories of Roswell were of its high school basketball team defeating our Hobbs lads two consecutive years in the state tournament—each time by a single point! So, no special warmth for the inhabitants of that burg.
Anyway, here’s the tale of the ’47 Roswell Incident to be found on Google and other depositories of history….
The Roswell Daily Record of July 8 headlined:
RAAF Captures Flying Saucer
On Ranch In Roswell Region
Subhead:
No Details
Of Flying Disc
Are Revealed
The U.S. Army Air Forces’ original announcement of finding said “flying disc”—the debris discovered by a rancher was actually 75 miles north of Roswell—was retracted within a day. The wreckage may have been from linked balloons and assorted equipment that was part of a top-secret program to detect Soviet nuclear tests, or perhaps was merely from a conventional weather balloon. Some 30 years later, a retired U.S. Air Force officer said the weather balloon was a cover story and that the debris was on extraterrestrial origin. (E.T., call home.)
A 1980 book added speculation of involvement by multiple governments, of grey aliens—What? Not green?—fueling the conspiracy theorists (dogs chasing their tails?) that the military in fact had discovered a craft from outer space and captured its occupants.
Interplanetary and ufology intrigue aside, there is a haunting, earthly 2026 reaction at work here, best expressed in the cartoon of two obviously extraterrestrial beings, standing outside a sign for “Roswell,” pondering a close encounter. One says to the other, “Let’s give it shot. I hear it’s a sanctuary city.”