Bermuda Triangle in the Caribbean, Richat Structure in Mauritania, Angikuni Lake in Canada, and the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. So many terrestrial places as mysterious as the others and full of legends. Among these places, the zone of silence is often quoted in Mexico. In the north of present-day Mexico, more precisely between the states of Durango, Chihuahua and Coahuila. Located in the Mapimi Biosphere Reserve in the state of Durango, the Silent Zone is a mixture of electromagnetic anomaly, military myth and UFO sightings.
The legends concerning this place are diverse and varied. But what are the origins? Myth or reality?
Located in the Mapimi Biosphere Reserve in the state of Durango, the Silent Zone is a mixture of electromagnetic anomaly, military myth and UFO sightings.
The beginning of the rumours
Let us go back to the origin of these legends. The first one would come from oral testimony. The one of Francisco Sarabia, a Mexican pilot who became famous for having beaten the speed record of a flight between Mexico City and New York in 10 hours and 43 minutes. Our man is an experienced pilot who is not easily fooled by these instruments and who knows the insides of the planes he flies well. Our famous pilot takes his plane as usual on an ordinary day in the 1930s. No doubt to make a routine flight or a trip for special reasons. During his flight, he began to fly over the Chihuahua desert in the middle of a silent zone. According to his testimony, a radio silence suddenly fell on his plane. Francisco
Sarabia, an experienced pilot, undertook an emergency landing after his radio failed. According to several websites, no explanation has been found by Sarabia and his engineers to explain the radio failure.
The second point of departure is the story of the chemist Augusto Harry de la Pena, who was then working for the company Petroléos Mexicanos. He drew the attention of the Mexican authorities to the fact that radio waves were not passing through the area. Among other versions: the crash of the meteorite of Allende of which several pieces were scattered over several tens of kilometres of the zone of the silence or the history of a professor named Santiago Garcia who would have discovered the anomalies of the zone…
Another version that remains the most widely shared concerning the origin of the legends is undoubtedly the one involving the US military. It is July 11, 1970, in the middle of a cool summer night at the US Air Force launch complex in Green River, Utah. The U.S. Army is preparing to fire an Athena RTV as part of its program to impact the White Sands Missile Ranch, a test site for U.S. missiles.
An anomaly occurs however during the mission. The spacecraft does not go towards the objective, but towards the south in direction of Mexico following an error in the calculation of its trajectory. 3 weeks. It is the time that it will take for the American army to locate Athena RVT.
A radioactive missile and the army reinforce the rumours
The missile carried a radioactive element, cobalt 57, requiring a lot of manpower to clean the still undetermined missile site of debris and radiation. After three long weeks of searching and a diplomatic incident with Mexico, the missile was found in the Silent Zone more than 1100 kilometres from Mexico City (a relatively important point to note for later). Once the missile was located, the U.S. military received authorization to clean up the site where the missile landed. However, the area is frequented by Mexican shepherds and some shepherds who saw the missile in the sky crashing in the area will speak of the fall of an angel while in the neighbouring towns of the area, they will evoke a bright meteorite or a shooting star. This is how the legends about the Silent Zone began, amplified by the intervention of the American army, making the story even more mysterious for many people.
The first of the legends that circulated concerned a magnetic anomaly. Before 1970 some testimonies concerning strange phenomena which disturb electrical instruments such as radios have been noted. But these stories remain globally unreliable. Thus, the story of Francisco Sarabia and his radio remains difficult to verify, the protagonists being dead for a long time. Only a few sites tell this story and as is the case in many legends, it seems to have been attached only recently to the zone of silence to give weight to the story. His fame does tend to legitimize it to the most gullible, as other famous people are attached to legends. Thus, many articles as well as a thesis that partially evokes the zone of silence do not mention this story. Francisco Sarabia also has flown over the zone of silence many times, it is surprising that this failure happened to him only once. But as already said, if this can only be an a posteriori addition to the legend of the zone of silence, it is today in no way refutable at 100%.
Regarding Augusto Pena. He really existed and worked in two factories of the company Petroleos Mexicanos about 70 km from the area of the supposed silence. He was also one of the founders of the Instituto Tecnológico de La Laguna. He is credited with the name of the Zone of Silence. Our man is thus the individual who launched the legend of the zone of silence reinforced sometime later by the crash of an American missile not far from the zone. (A difference of about 1000 km for the landing site of the missile however between the American and Mexican sources. Mexican sources mention the Silent Zone as the crash site, while American sources mention a zone of about 200 km around Mexico City, more than 1100 km from the Silent Zone).
These beginnings of legend around electromagnetism amplify with time. Some people talk about extraordinary magnetic currents that run through the area. There again two companies, of which the Ahmsa, a Mexican iron and steel company, carried out verifications with magnetometers without any anomaly being found. In the same vein, another legend evokes gravitational problems in the zone. Indeed, the zone of silence is supposed to have stronger gravity than the surrounding areas and than the rest of our planet, thus allowing to attraction of meteorites in the zone. This time, employees of the company Pemex, searching for oil, did not find any particular gravitational anomaly that would allow dismissing this legend. Testimonies of inhabitants of the region also tell that they have not seen any meteorite falling in the area for more than 30 years.
The extraterrestrial myth
Another of the legends mentioned is the appearance of UFOs and attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial species. One group, in particular, is cited as being behind these extraterrestrial legends of the place. This group is known as “El Centro de Investigación de Antropología Cósmica de la Escuela Filosófica Lu Men” (The Cosmic Anthropology Research Center of the Philosophical School of Light). Based on the remains in and around the Zone of Silence, they developed a belief in the existence of an extraterrestrial species of large yellow Maya living below the reserve where the Zone of Silence is located. With this history, UFO sightings have increased in the area. But generally, these sightings are usually attributed to mirages due to optical phenomena specific to desert areas. Another claim about the area that is more down to earth concerns the high density of fossils found in the Silent Zone. But according to the local press, the density of fossils is not higher than elsewhere in Mexico and is easily explained by the fact that the Silent Zone was underwater during the Mesozoic, 185 million years ago. A book entitled “The Enigmatic Zone of Silence” published by Posada also mentions a more robust fauna than normal and turtles with amazing geometric patterns. However, the staff of the reserve and the local inhabitants did not notice any strange animals in the zone. And that the turtles present on the spot as the species Gopherus flavomarginatus (Llanera turtle) do not have particular anomalies compared to the other Mexican turtles.
But then what about the radio waves? Indeed and even if it is a testimony surely apocryphal and invented, the pilot Francisco Sarabia evokes radio cuts. In the same way that our engineer Augusto Pena declares that the radio waves do not pass in the zone. It is therefore impossible to listen to the radio there. In the real world, it is quite possible to receive radio waves and thus for the inhabitants to listen to their favourite Mexican radio.
What is the impact on the region?
The answer to this question can be summarized in two words: tourism and Money. The Zone of Silence is indeed located in a desert area of Mexico empty of tourists. The story invented by Augusto Pena was initially intended to create tourism in a poor and underdeveloped region of Mexico. Pena succeeded in his goal as today many tourists visit the area and part of the population of the region is alive. However, tourism causes some problems in the territory, especially for the people who work in the natural reserve where it is located.
Indeed, the particular tour of the Silent Zone pushes people to collect fossils or archaeological artefacts important for the archaeologists and palaeontologists of the region. If in France, this kind of situation can be considered archaeological looting, it is not necessarily the case in Mexico leaving the right to foreign tourists to destroy excavation sites potentially interesting for archaeologists and palaeontologists. The wild camping also carried out by certain tourists threatens the local flora and fauna and leaves waste sometimes important on the spot. Not to mention the cost of rescuing people who get lost in the silent zone, because they are ill-prepared for an expedition in the desert. Today, in an attempt to curb mass tourism, the employees of the Mapimi reserve have set up quotas of tourists to respect. Hopefully, this will preserve this fragile ecosystem with its fabricated history.
