Operation Prato 1977: When UFOs Attacked the People of Colares, Brazil — And the Military Covered It Up

In the autumn of 1977, the small island town of Colares in the Brazilian state of Pará became ground zero for one of the most terrifying and best-documented UFO incidents in history. For months, residents were subjected to repeated low-level overflights by objects that emitted focused beams of light. Those beams left physical marks on victims’ bodies — puncture wounds, radiation burns, temporary paralysis, and in at least two cases, deaths attributed to the encounters. So severe were the reports that the Brazilian Air Force deployed a military team to investigate — and what they found was so disturbing that the files were classified for decades.

The Chupa-Chupa: The UFO That Attacked People

The locals gave the objects a nickname: “Chupa-Chupa” — roughly translating to “sucker-sucker” in Portuguese, referring to the way the beams of light seemed to extract something from the people they struck. Witnesses described a variety of craft — some cigar-shaped, some disc-shaped, some resembling inverted plates. They appeared primarily at night, flying very low over the island and its fishing communities. When a beam struck a person, the victim typically experienced immediate paralysis, followed by an intense burning sensation. Many reported being lifted slightly off the ground. Physical examination afterward revealed circular puncture marks on the skin at the point of contact, often arranged in pairs, and the affected area showed signs consistent with radiation exposure — hair loss, skin discoloration, anemia.

Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho de Oliveira, a physician at the health clinic in Colares, treated dozens of victims and later gave detailed testimony about what she observed. She described the physical evidence as genuine and unlike any injury pattern she recognized from conventional causes. The wounds, she said, resembled those produced by radiation exposure but with localized precision that no known natural phenomenon could explain. At least 35 people were seriously injured during the wave of attacks, and local accounts — never fully confirmed or officially denied — suggest that two people died from their injuries.

Operation Prato: The Brazilian Military Investigates

The Brazilian Air Force’s response to the Colares incident was unlike almost any other government’s handling of a UFO event. In September 1977, the military launched “Operação Prato” (Operation Plate/Dish) — a classified investigation headed by Captain Uyrangê Bolivar Soares Nogueira de Hollanda Lima. The team deployed to Colares with cameras, radar equipment, and medical personnel. Over the following months, they documented hundreds of sightings, photographed numerous objects, and compiled a detailed classified report running to several hundred pages.

Captain Hollanda and his team personally observed and photographed the objects on multiple occasions. The photographs, some of which were later declassified or leaked, show disc-shaped craft against the night sky, emitting focused light beams. The military team confirmed the physical injury reports, interviewed victims, and concluded that the objects were real, structured craft of unknown origin. The report concluded that the beams posed a genuine danger to human health and that the Brazilian military was unable to identify the craft or their purpose.

Captain Hollanda’s Deathbed Confession

For decades, Operation Prato remained classified and Captain Hollanda maintained official silence. In 1997, however — shortly before his death in an apparent suicide — he gave a lengthy interview to Brazilian UFO researcher A.J. Gevaerd in which he described what the team had witnessed. Hollanda stated that the objects were real, that the military team had direct contact experiences, and that the investigation had profoundly affected everyone involved. He described seeing beings visible through the craft’s openings on at least one occasion. He expressed deep psychological distress about his experiences and the orders to maintain secrecy that had followed him for 20 years.

Hollanda died just weeks after giving the interview. Gevaerd and other researchers have noted the suspicious timing, though no evidence of foul play was established. His testimony, recorded and published posthumously, represents one of the most remarkable accounts by a military officer regarding direct UFO contact ever documented. The Brazilian government partially declassified the Operation Prato files in 2004 as part of a broader transparency initiative, releasing hundreds of pages of reports, photographs, and sketches that corroborated the civilian accounts and confirmed the military’s direct observation of anomalous phenomena.

The Legacy of Colares: Physical Evidence Nobody Can Dismiss

The Colares incident stands out in UFO research for the quality and quantity of its physical evidence. Unlike most sighting cases, which rest primarily on eyewitness testimony, the Colares wave produced documented physical injuries consistent across dozens of independent victims, military photographs of the objects, a classified official investigation that confirmed the anomalous nature of the phenomena, and a military officer’s posthumous testimony about direct contact. The Brazilian government’s partial declassification of the files placed the Colares incident into the category of officially acknowledged, government-confirmed UAP events — a category that even today has very few members worldwide.

What the objects were, why they targeted the people of Colares, and what was extracted by the beams that struck them remain completely unknown. The fishing community of Colares still carries the memory of those months in 1977 when the night sky was a source of terror rather than wonder. For researchers, it remains one of the most compelling and disturbing cases in the global record — a place where UFOs were not just seen but interacted physically with human beings, and where governments acknowledged, at least partially, that something extraordinary had occurred.

Sources and Further Reading

• Gevaerd, A.J. (1997). Interview with Captain Uyrangê Hollanda. Published in UFO Magazine (Brazil).
• Brazilian Air Force declassified files, Operação Prato (2004). Available through COMDABRA.
• Pratt, B. (1996). UFO Danger Zone: Terror and Death in Brazil — Where Next? Horus House Press.
• Corrêa, M.A. (1978). Internal Brazilian Air Force medical report on Colares victims (partially declassified 2004).
• Randle, K.D. (2010). Reflections of a UFO Investigator. Anomalist Books.