Plan 9 From Outer Space

Weird Scenes Inside The Mexican Congress

It seems like this last week, there were two stories that pretty much dominated the Mexico news cycle: one of them is actually interesting, the other is just plain weird. Today, I've decided to write about the weird one. Lucky you.

Last Tuesday (September 12, 2023), Mexico's federal congress held it's first ever public hearings on the topic of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (UAPs, formerly commonly referred to as UFOs, or Unidentified Flying Objects; but that phrase has been deemed not geeky sounding enough, so now we have UAP). Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Mexico's congress and creatures from outer space. So yes, the congress is holding these hearings in order to formalize language that will go into its new Aerial Space Protection Law - a law that, if approved by Mexico's congress, will be the first federal law in the world (our world, a.k.a. "earth") to formally acknowledge the existence of alien life.

But that's not even the weird part.

But before getting to the weird part, I just want to state for the record that I do not presume to believe that life doesn't exist beyond our planet. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I'm fine either way (although I kinda hope that there is alien intelligence beyond earth; I'd hate to think that humans are the only intelligent life in the universe - although I'm pretty sure that dolphins and octopi are orders of magnitude more intelligent than us).

Now, getting back to the weird part. As part of these hearings, Mexico's congress actually entertained a gentleman by the name of Jamie Maussan. Maussan is a somewhat well known journalist and researcher in the field of unidentified phenomena. He frequently appears in Mexican media to present his findings as a result of the "research" he is doing into alien artifacts he claims to have observed and/or be in possession of. So, in the midst of the pomp and circumstance of Mexico's congressional hearings, in walks Maussan with a two boxes containing the mummified remains of two alien bodies that were "recovered" in Peru. He claims to have carbon-dated the mummies at Mexico's prestigious Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and that the results demonstrate the mummified bodies to be 700 and 1,800 years old. Below is a photograph of one of these mummified remains:

I don't want to dedicate a bunch of digital ink to Jamie Maussan, so long story short: Maussan has a long and rich history of having his assertions and artifacts quite summarily debunked by actual scientists, and last week's odd presentation is no exception. The alien looking remains are almost certainly pre-Columbian human remains that have been altered by removing various bones and by introducing the remains of animals as well. This is a tactic that Maussan is quite (in)famous for. Even YouTubers have gotten into the act of debunking Maussan's claims, shooting videos demonstrating how the mummified "aliens" are made.

Jamie Maussan wasn't the only star of the congressional show. Other experts and witnesses were brought in, including Ryan Graves, who is the executive director of the Americans for Safe Aerospace organization. After Maussan's stunt, Graves expressed dismay over the entire proceedings, calling the inclusion of Maussan's mummies "shameful".

Various staff and professors at UNAM also denounced Maussan's claims; UNAM, for its part, has been defending themselves against Maussan's chronic chorus of "gosh, even UNAM has tested and concurs with my theories" since at least 2017.

Meanwhile, mainstream press from Vox Media to Popular Mechanics to NPR to the Smithsonian Magazine has been in a flurry of activity filing stories about Maussan's appearance at Mexico's congressional hearings. And now here I am doing the same 🙄.

At the end of the day, we are left with just one mystery: who the heck even let Maussan into the room?