Who actually reads all the deadly-dull stuff in the old Project Blue Book files? I mean really. That’s why, every now and then, even a diligent researcher like Frank Warren can get caught flat-footed.

Recently, the editor of the UFO Chronicles ran across an unexpected photo while snooping around for something else. There’s no accompanying caption, no context other than an allusion to Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico, in 1967. As Warren points out, it appears to have been shot from the air, which raises a question: Did an Air Force pilot squeeze the trigger? And what was this image doing there? Did somebody screw up?

Enter the 21st century: Earlier this month, Chilean-American journo Antonio Huneeus broke the latest south-of-the-border news about how Argentina’s air force just opened its Commission for the Investigation of Aerospace Phenomena, or CIFA, in Buenos Aires. Argentine air force spokesman Capt. Mariano Mohaupt made the announcement sound like no big deal. “The intention,” he said, “is not to prove that there is life in other planets, but to confront from a scientific perspective these unknown phenomena and arrive at the truth, because undoubtedly they are the reason of our study.”

This actually sounds sane, and if your Spanish is better than mine you can check it out at http://www.cefaa.cl/web/home.html. Anyhow, Argentina now joins South American neighbors Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador in official UFO government research. So isn’t it reasonable to assume that their respective militaries, given the decades of encounters that have apparently led to these sanctioned studies, have also compiled gun-cam archives of UFOs? Imagine how releasing such footage could affect the cause of transparency. Were there a coordinated effort among those countries to do just that, imagine the pressure it might put on the Pentagon.

Argentina’s move begs a larger question, which De Void posed to Huneeus: Why is South America more receptive to scientific inquiry on these matters than Uncle Sam?

“Latin countries are just culturally more open to UFOs and other paranormal phenomena,” Huneeus replied. “There is less of a cultural stigma or taint about them, which makes it easier for governments to create these agencies and to maintain good relations with the local UFO communities. Perhaps the Catholic background has something to do also. Catholics in general (as confirmed now even by the many recent statements from Vatican astronomers and theologians) don’t see UFOs or aliens as a threat to their faith like most American fundamentalists do, but look at them with wonder or just something interesting and less controversial. It’s also noteworthy that the director of the Vatican Observatory, the Jesuit Father Funes who made the famous ‘the extraterrestrial is my brother’ interview in L’Osservatore Romano back in 2008, is Argentinean.”

Makes sense. Protestants, care to sound off?