In late 1977, Captain Uyrangea Hollanda Lima led a classified Brazilian Air Force investigation team into the Amazon coastal community of Colares, Para state. His mission: investigate reports of civilian injuries attributed to beams from unidentified aerial objects. He spent months there. He photographed the phenomena. He documented hundreds of civilian testimonies. He filed classified reports. Then he went public in 1997, gave a lengthy interview describing what he had witnessed, and died shortly after.
What Hollanda’s Team Found
The Colares incidents involved civilians reporting being struck by beam-like emissions from unidentified aerial objects. Physical symptoms included burns on the skin, anaemia, and circular puncture-like marks. Hollanda’s team documented multiple such cases with physical examinations and photography. They also directly observed and photographed the aerial phenomena themselves over multiple months of continuous field presence.
The 1997 Interview
Before his death in 1997, Hollanda gave an extensive recorded interview to Brazilian UAP researcher Daniel Rebisso Giese. In the interview, Hollanda described the investigation in detail and stated unequivocally that the phenomena were genuine and unexplained. He described making direct visual observations of the craft. He expressed regret that the files had been classified and that the Brazilian public had been denied access to what the military had documented. He died shortly after the interview was recorded.
The Current Status of the Files
The Operation Saucer investigation files have been partially released through Brazil’s national transparency process and now reside in the Arquivo Nacional collection. Not all material has been fully released. The Hollanda interview is in the public record. The physical evidence documentation from 1977 is in the archive. Brazil’s transparency laws have done more to open this specific case than any political directive.
Sources: Arquivo Nacional, Brazil. Operation Saucer/Operacao Prato 1977. Captain Hollanda interview 1997. SIAN database.