Rio Rancho hosts 3rd annual UFO conference
RIO RANCHO — If ever there were a great place to spot a UFO, it might be the northern outskirts of this city, where the skies are wide open and far from the light pollution of Albuquerque. So it makes sense that the New Mexico chapter of the Mutual UFO Network — a group that, according to its website, is dedicated to “resolving the scientific enigma known collectively as unidentified flying objects” — would host its third annual conference here at the V. Sue Cleveland High School. By Saturday afternoon, nearly 300 people, 50 more than last year, were at the conference to hear from national experts on unidentified flying objects, declassified government files and extraterrestrial life. Members of the audience, diverse in age and culture, debated one another between sessions and sometimes crowded around the speakers. Guadalupe Sotelo even grabbed a quick photo with keynote speaker Stanton Friedman, who wore a tie with a solar system pattern. Sotelo said he wanted the shot because Friedman, a physicist whose work includes a documentary titled “UFOs are real,” is famous. Part of the appeal of attending the conference is being among like-minded individuals, said Natalie Benavidez, a New Mexico resident who went to the conference with her son. Of course, those attending know their beliefs might make some people laugh, but they’re largely unconcerned about the outside skepticism. “They’re said in denial,” Benavidez. During her childhood in California, she spotted what she said was a UFO, a bright, glowing, flashing light outside her window. She has lived in New Mexico for 30 years and has yet to spot another one, but she still believes. Mariah Taylan, 25, of Albuquerque said that, given the vastness of the universe, she is convinced that UFOs exist. She wears a T-shirt featuring Giorgio Tsoukalos, a TV personality perhaps equally famous for his belief in aliens and his shock of almost vertical-standing hair. “There’s nothing that’s going to change my mind,” Taylan said. “The fact that I accept it is all that matters to me.” Conference speaker John Greenewald Jr., from California, runs the website theblackvault.com, a collection of declassified government documents, many of which deal with UFOs. It’s time consuming, he said, and he works two jobs to support what he calls his “passion project.” He said he is aware that some people might dismiss his work, but he added that people who say “don’t bother me with the facts” are “not my target audience.” Many of the believers interviewed Saturday said that
definitive proof of UFOs would change everything. Benavidez said people would finally realize where technology comes from. And Greenewald said the one-two punch of encountering extraterrestrial life and the governments’ attempts to obfuscate that fact would send society reeling. Taylan said the discovery would upend everything. “It questions everything we have known our entire lives,” Taylan said. “Knowing and confirming alien existence would not only rattle religion, but I think it would rattle us to our core as far as our beliefs and everyday activities. It wipes the slate clean for all of us.”