Fiction or reality? In 1995, the Roswell autopsy on the show “Siglo XX Cambalache” left Argentina spellbound. It wasn't just TV; it traumatized an entire generation of kids. An interview with Alejandro Agostinelli, a participant in that historic broadcast.
It’s a September night in 1995. Unlike its usual schedule, this edition of "Siglo XX Cambalache" airs at 10 PM. The cameras only capture its host: Fernando Bravo, dressed in a suit, with a serious expression and the voice of a classic radio announcer. His co-host, Teté Coustarot, does not participate in the program because, as was said later, she is too shaken by the video they are about to show. Bravo announces that they are opening two lines for viewers to answer the main question of the program. It’s the question everyone is asking at that moment. It wasn’t the first time, but now there is evidence to justify an answer.
There’s an interesting Mandela effect that occurs among the Argentine audience when discussing the Roswell case. Immediately, people think of the “fake” autopsy that appeared on Chiche Gelblung's show “Memoria,” where a fairly accurate replica (reportedly used in several universities to discuss fake news) of the original video was made in an attempt to demystify the footage presented by Telefé that same year. Siglo XX Cambalache had paid $40,000 for the broadcasting rights. Chiche only used $4,000 to replicate the alien and fill it with chicken guts. But the truth is that the atmosphere created while reproducing that material, which had so impressed Coustarot, is what also became etched in the minds of a whole generation of children and teenagers who were watching television at that moment.
Among the countless differences between today’s television and that of the nineties, there was the peculiarity that a phenomenon as strange and divisive as UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial life could be treated with a seriousness that’s hard to imagine today. And this was in Menem's Argentina, with pizza and champagne, odalisques, and Ferraris. However, there was a level of innocence? Illusion? that seems irretrievably extinct. In the broadcast, after a poetic reflection from Bravo about the vastness of the cosmos and the anguish of loneliness in the universe, along with a historical analysis of the phenomenon, two pilots are introduced: Jorge Polanco, a Boeing 727 captain, and Juan Domingo Gaetán, a pilot from the National Gendarmerie. Both in uniform, they recalled the sighting they had been part of just a month earlier over the city of Bariloche. They were not a fairyologist and a man dressed as an ant; they were two serious career pilots who had come to share with a highly-rated national television program how they had encountered an extraterrestrial craft while flying. This is how what would become insomnia material for hundreds of people began to take shape.
“1,532 people called in to say they believe in the UFO phenomenon, and only 131 calls to say they don’t,” the host said after the break. What followed was a recounting of what had happened in the Roswell case. How extraterrestrial crafts had crashed in a small town in New Mexico, and the U.S. military had captured fragments of the craft and the bodies of some of its crew members. Initially, the official version would be exactly that, confirming without hesitation the idea that we were not alone in the universe. Just one day later, authorities stated it had been a mistake. There was no extraterrestrial craft, just a weather balloon. Thus began the great era of cover-ups for all UFO phenomenon researchers. Every strange event was denied by the government, and nothing had happened here; everyone was sent home to live their lives normally.
The alien from Roswell had two distinctive features: a macrocephalic skull and a swollen belly from a monstrous pregnancy. These are the characteristics that would recur in the dreams and traumas of those who tuned into the program with their families.
Then came Juan Carlos Porras, the director of the classic magazine Conozca Más, and Alberto Oliva, the journalist sent to verify the “truthfulness” of the tape. The tape was fortuitously obtained by an English producer named Ray Santilli while he was looking for some Elvis Presley films. Cameraman J. Barret, a former military intelligence operative who had worked on the Manhattan and Trinity project tests, was taken to the outskirts of Roswell where the craft had fallen, a supposed Russian spy plane. Barret's account (“dubbed in Spanish for better understanding”) is almost as terrifying as the autopsy itself. There, he found the extraterrestrial craft and the bodies, still alive, clinging to metal boxes while screaming in pain. There isn’t much more information about these boxes and their contents. The creatures were released and then dragged with ropes to the Roswell base, from which they would never emerge alive again.
But the worst was yet to come, and even later in the night, the final warnings were given. Because yes, both the host and the announcer had warned that what the esteemed viewer was about to witness were very sensitive images, not suitable for anyone impressionable, and to please take precautions… Nobody paid attention. Parents, children, and grandparents remained glued to the television, hypnotized by those images that had been teased before each break. These were different times. Not everyone had cable, and those who hadn’t tuned in out of curiosity did so out of boredom or lack of options. The truth is that, without having the real numbers on hand, we know that the 1,500 people who believed in extraterrestrial life during the second segment would become more than 15,000 before the program ended, and the voices in the studio would debate whether what they had just seen was real or sensationalist fabrication. But beyond the answers they could draw from all this, there was one thing that no one could have predicted: the trauma of a generation that would concentrate all its fear on a corpse that was not of this world.
Victoria Nacucchio
In memory, the video has the background noise of a running 16mm camera, but on Telefé's program, there was a voiceover narrating Barret's testimony and a soundtrack that wouldn’t be out of place in an A24 trailer, with ominous synthesizers and piercing violins.
It starts without preamble, the camera positioning itself over the lifeless body of an entity that is not of this world but grotesquely resembles our physiology: the Roswell alien had two distinctive features: a macrocephalic skull and a swollen belly from a monstrous pregnancy. These are the characteristics that would recur in the dreams and traumas of those who tuned into the program with their families. Or, as some of us experienced, completely alone.
A body that, in black and white, appears albino but is described with yellowish tones. Six fingers on hands and feet. Huge, completely dark eyes, without irises. Very small nose and mouth, and an apparent lack of any reproductive organs that is never clarified, except in the cameraman's narration where a small vulva is mentioned.
The camera, a 16mm Filmo Bell and Howell, difficult to handle in the containment suit, recorded the routine, boring intervention, something that seemed to have been repeated to exhaustion, perhaps not on an extraterrestrial body in the secrecy of a military base, but that felt true. This lack of drama was also accentuated by a certain amateurish tone: we were told, as stated by Barret himself, that due to the movement restrictions of the suit and the size of the camera, they couldn’t focus, resulting in a blurry image during the most critical moments of the filming, such as the extreme close-ups of the body or the viscera, once the medical procedure shifted from observation to scalpel.
Investiganita
Before the intervention begins, the lens captures the first trace of carnage. An injury covers part of the alien's leg, the result of the ship's crash: a serious wound; the skin, the flesh, even the bone exposed, though shaped like some strange cartilage. This wound will be the only source of samples taken throughout the filming. One of the guests, Dr. Eduardo Cammarota, a forensic doctor for the national justice system, will not only criticize the absence of blood and other fluids but will also address the “sui generis” incisions, meaning an irregular method, foreign to the protocol taught in any medical school around the world. In Cammarota's words, there is a sense of caution. After all, those $40,000 paid to Ray Santilli must be justified. But it could also be that the era provoked that feeling of seriousness and professionalism, even in the face of the implausible, the strange, the frankly bizarre. But returning to the wound, it is the only sign that something inflicted some type of violence on the humanoid alien, because the rest of its body, although clearly deformed in our conception of humanity, is in perfect condition, as if it had fallen into a catatonic sleep with its eyes open.
The cuts begin at the neck, a scalpel opens the skin and a trickle of dark, watery blood falls onto the aluminum table. The cut in an x (or “champagne glass,” as Cammarota puts it) and most of the surgeons' work will be called into question when they return to the studio.
Due to the restricted movement of the suit and the size of the camera, focusing was impossible, resulting in a blurry image during the most critical moments of filming, such as the extreme close-ups of the body or the viscera, once the medical procedure shifted from observation to scalpel.
Are these doubts raised by the autopsy video the hallmarks of a widespread hoax or evidence of something done in the most clandestine of shadows? The handling of the body and its viscera with the amateurish care of a neighborhood butcher restocking a fridge, the mix of subterfuge and lack of professionalism from the cameraman, whether due to discomfort or nerves, clumsiness or a good excuse to hide the most difficult elements to represent in an artifice. As the blocks progress and the complete footage from J. Barret is presented, the guests arrive: two UFO phenomenon experts, an enthusiastic journalist on the topic, a pseudoscience specialist, and the aforementioned forensic doctor. All engage with Fernando Bravo in an intense debate that includes both lighthearted and somewhat awkward moments, but always in a tone respectful to today's eyes.
Eyes, a key word to remember one of the most traumatic moments of the night: when the doctors finish opening the body and exposing its organs for the film record, they turn their attention to the face within that immense skull. This is when they carefully remove, considering what came before, a kind of membrane covering those black, abyssal eyes, and it is at that precise moment that the creature blinks. Blinks? Bravo and Cammarota discuss it when they return to the floor. Did they really see that or is it a distortion effect from the tape? Perhaps the shelves where Santilli found the films weren't the best storage place for 16mm rolls from 1947. Maybe it was something stipulated by the sellers of the material: “Note that at this minute this effect occurs,” perhaps the deception was included in the instruction manual. Whatever the case, this moment would be something talked about for many, many years.
Was it proof that this was a real creature? Did Bravo point it out to amplify the marvel they were trying to sell? The truth is that this moment was etched in fire in the minds of all viewers.
The exposed eyes, now without the dark membrane, give a terrifying humanity. The eyeballs almost sinking beneath their eyelids in an agonizing grimace. The extraordinary potential of an extraterrestrial body, coming from a civilization light-years away and technological advancement reduced to a mass of dead flesh and extracted organs as if it were a biological piñata. But it did not move the doctors, who continued with their work until they completed the extraction of something that could be a brain but, in human terms, was an amorphous and repulsive thing.
Ana Iriarte
The last segments of the program combine with the cited projection and the debate we mentioned earlier. It’s interesting how they still divide among ufologists: Luis Burgos (Center for Ufology in the city of La Plata) and Jorge G. Dewey (Earthlab Foundation based in Canada). Burgos is convinced that the video is proof that every close encounter of the third kind was real because the described characteristics of the visitors are clearly similar to those of the creature filmed in 1947, while Dewey only considers the extraterrestrial hypothesis as a third option. First, he talks about a possible patient with Turner syndrome. Second, he discusses some type of biological experiment, a mutant.
At the same time as the recording occurs, journalist Eduardo Marazzi, more enthusiastic about the possibility of other worlds, is interrupted by Fernando Bravo while recounting the experiences lived during a broadcast of the same material on the Brazilian network O Globo, and journalist Alejandro Agostinelli is insulted by the production for commenting that an expert in special effects would be needed to discuss the tape's authenticity. Before and after that, Dr. Cammarota keeps repeating over and over that the doctors working on the extraterrestrial corpse are an insult to the profession and that they don’t even know how to hold a pair of scissors.
They may feel that there is a tonal shift in the narrative of events. It’s to highlight what was happening in the studio and in every home tuning into the program. Although the aura of seriousness was maintained, the exchange in the studio lightened the tension that crept under the skin due to the autopsy, its narration, and the synthesizer music and Gregorian chants, with Bravo urging the guests not to “perform an autopsy with me from the control room.”
Alejandro Agostinelli was not only an expert in pseudoscience: he was a writer for the magazines Conozca Más, Gente, Misterios, and the newspapers La Prensa and Página 12. Skeptical, critical thinker, UFO phenomenon enthusiast. He is the figure that receives the least attention during the debate, and perhaps what was mentioned earlier has something to do with it. I had the opportunity to interview him and ask how that night that marked us was experienced.
Facundo Dell Aqua
How was the appearance of the Roswell autopsy experienced in the nineties? Did you hold out any hope that it was real, or were you always skeptical?
Hope was pretty slim. I had been following the topic in foreign specialized magazines, so before it exploded in Argentina, I knew there were good reasons to think it was a commercial hoax. Since I had worked at Conozca Más, the magazine's director, Juan Carlos Porras, invited me to a private screening, which I attended with biologist Mariano Moldes and Diego Licenblat, an FX expert. We left convinced it was a fraud. Before the Siglo XX Cambalache program, I had already published an article in La Prensa in my section En Trance, dedicated to these topics, featuring Licenblat's damning opinion. My participation in Siglo XX Cambalache led to a very awkward situation. Fernando Bravo asked everyone but me. I had to interrupt someone to give my opinion. During the break, the producer chewed me out: the show had to go on. The idea was for me to speak last, but the floor producers didn't dare to warn me. We didn't come to blows because the physical presence of the show's executive producer was intimidating. I was about to leave, but I decided to stay to expose the censorship live.
Since I had worked at Conozca Más, the magazine's director, Juan Carlos Porras, invited me to a private screening, which I attended with biologist Mariano Moldes and Diego Licenblat, an FX expert. We left convinced it was a fraud.
Skepticism isn't "a position" that a journalist can choose to have or not; it's essential for practicing the profession with dignity and responsibility.
Do you think a similar phenomenon could happen again? What is the current state of the UFO phenomenon worldwide?
More than it could happen, it already has, and it happens all the time. Within the realm of sensationalist media, there have been more grotesque frauds in the 21st century, like the three-fingered mummies of Nazca or the sphere from Buga, Colombia. The promoter of both cases is the Mexican host Jaime Maussán, a kind of Milei of the mystery.
3) Is there a legacy from the Ray Santilli video? Did it change anything in the way the public relates to the idea of extraterrestrial life?
Santilli presented his video when the internet was just starting to take off and social media didn't exist. The legacy is the viral spread of fakes made by anyone or, worse, film documents from the U.S. Navy leaked before being studied by scientists. The possible explanation comes when that material is already part of popular culture. In the 20th century, a dubious or false image would fade due to the inherent weakness of the supposed evidence. Today, the expert verdict is hidden in ungoogleable caves. If there are people interested in establishing the credibility of a supposedly unidentified case, the scientific hypothesis, or the verdict after an investigation, it gets buried in the swamp of misinformation. Most people buy what they want to believe, not what is. It has always been this way, but today it's more true than ever. What is called information is clickbait-worthy informational merchandise, a capital that is becoming increasingly normalized to shield itself from criticism. The mainstream media and platforms only want to monetize; no one cares about seeking the truth.
Dante Sabatto
The generation born in the eighties has always had an interest in the experiences and culture of the nineties, because that’s where we developed our fantasies and built our fears. And the idea of a bunch of kids exposed to something that had no comparison on global television isn’t great in retrospect. With the distance and thanks to revelations that emerged many years later, it’s not hard to notice everything Agostinelli denounced: that the autopsy is a hoax, a fake, a publicity stunt that the most nostalgic treat as a precursor to the “Found Footage” genre, preceding works like “The Blair Witch Project” and perhaps drawing inspiration from tapes like Ghostwatch (1992) or Alien Abduction, The McPherson Tape (1989), although in those cases it was established that it was fiction. Here, the factors of seriousness and professionalism, that we’re talking about journalistic programs or historical archives that didn’t deal with the paranormal or pseudoscience, only intensified the fear. How could we laugh at something broadcast from the shows that adults watched?
Juanma La Volpe
Genuine fear overshadowed any complaints or doubts from our adults. Very few parents or grandparents likely believed that what was on the operating table was anything more than a rather elaborate dummy. However, when the kids went to bed, their minds told them otherwise. Because the footage of the Roswell autopsy affected the childhood generation of the nineties just as the broadcast of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds did in 1938 for CBS, with the difference that Roswell was sold as something real for many years (and, fortunately, did not result in any fatalities).
The Mandela Effect, which we mentioned at the beginning of this note, can make the notion of fear and trauma seem somewhat ridiculous by confusing it with the (excellent) parody by Chiche Gelblung. It’s strange, almost suspicious, that many people contemporary to this episode of global television have suppressed it from their memories. One could say it was a way to push the trauma into a very deep corner of the subconscious; but those who witnessed that broadcast carry it as an indelible mark.
Consulting social media, I received testimonies of all kinds. It’s a topic that deeply interests me, something that has mutated over the years in our minds, taking on other forms and a different sense of threat. Because who can fear a corpse? It’s there, dead, rigid, it doesn’t harm anyone. But the truth is that no one saw the body from the autopsy that night as a dead person. It was very much alive and would live quite comfortably in the back of our memories.
The absence of the internet, the closeness, and the constant exercise of imagination and fables among our neighborhood and school friends, the rumors we invented to the point of believing them, and the power wielded by the television and science fiction magazines created an explosive cocktail for our generation.
“That filthy dummy has haunted me since the night of September 2, 1995, thanks to Fernando Bravo and his Siglo XX Cambalache. I was 11 years old, now I’m 41 and I still look back when I go up the stairs,” writes user @matomosco. And of course, I understand. Who can fear a corpse? I’ve been asking myself that since I was nine. User @CompartiComic shares a bizarre school anecdote: “I don’t know why the hell our 4th-grade teacher decided to show it at school, I asked my mom not to sign the permission slip they sent, I was the only one who stayed in the classroom and didn’t go to the video room.” And now one might think the teacher was a psychiatrist, but again, let’s consider the spirit of the nineties: we were facing a monumental event that could be compared to the arrival of man on the Moon.
The very nature of the footage was too much for the children who witnessed the program: “I didn’t sleep for a year after seeing that, every day I was tripping about abduction. Fatal,” makes it clear @LucitaValentina and @Chaquetumate refers me to a comment on one of their posts from 2020: “How traumatized I was by that, I couldn’t sleep at night and didn’t want to go out to the yard because I thought aliens would take me.” And the body, in its multiple ways of affecting those who saw the autopsy, suddenly became the source of sightings, abductions, and a constant feeling of being watched. A collective psychosis that only affected the youngest in the house, as if it were an extraterrestrial clown feeding on fear in a Stephen King novel.
Juan Ruocco 🧙♂️
The absence of the internet, the closeness, and the constant exercise of imagination and fables among our neighborhood and school friends, the rumors we invented to the point of believing them, and the power wielded by the television and science fiction magazines created an explosive cocktail for our generation.
That night, my grandmother Angélica had gone to chat with Doña Conzetta, the neighborhood storekeeper, old ladies gossiping healthily on the sidewalk when nothing happened at night and people sat in their lounge chairs as if time had stopped. I remember there was no one at home. I sat in front of the television in the midst of that solitude, recording every detail of that experience in my memory. I can’t say my aftermath was different from all the previous testimonies. I didn’t sleep all night, I couldn’t stop seeing that agonizing face, that open mouth that was like a black hole. I only managed to sleep the next day and only because I was going on vacation to Pinamar with my grandfather Osvaldo. Only because it was daytime and I was sleeping in a moving car. I was 8 years old. It wasn’t until the last months of my 39 that I would gather the courage to write a piece about this and face the horror head-on.
Was it true? Was it false? I won’t deny there’s a sort of maturation exercise in writing this, and I hope it’s the same for people my age who experienced the same. It’s hard to explain this to someone older or from a later generation. There are elements that are untranslatable, that belong to a vanished ecosystem. The tone of this article involved embracing the fiction of Ray Santilli’s video and Fernando Bravo’s program as we experienced it back then. The chronicle of its debunking and the autopsy made in Chiche will have to wait for another time, although I believe Agostinelli’s testimony can help the traumatized sleep a little better. Now, some of us can look that corpse in the face again and know it will remain there, eternally lying on the operating table. Others will still see it move, visiting them at night, like a ghost that continues to belong to a world of mystery, awakening a sinister melancholy.
