George Adamski - The Mexican Connection

Beginning around 1955 George Adamski entertained plans on settling in Mexico and founding a philosophical school and community, based on the teachings of the space people. He loved Mexico and often vacationed at San Jose Purua, with its famous health giving mineral waters. But more important, his visits to Mexico were due to meetings and conferences with the space visitors, who had a base and landing facility in a secluded area not far from San Jose Purua. After the death of Adamski in 1965, several of his co-workers tried to establish a Science of Life School at Zitachuaro, around 30 kilometers from San Jose Purua. In my research of Swedish contactees I have found indications that another group of aliens also had a base west of Mexico City in the 1960s. But this group of alien visitors had a very different agenda.

George Adamski with Salvador Villanueva Medina in Mexico 1955

Already in 1956 George Adamski tried to engage his friends and co-workers in Mexico to establish a Science of Life school. Two of his co-workers were Ian Norrie, a Scotsman resident in Mexico, and Maria Cristina V. de Rueda, who organized lectures and translated Adamski´s books. Not much happened until 1963 when George Adamski visited Denmark and told of his plans to co-worker H. C. Petersen. An Associated Press release September 24, 1963 stated: ”Danish Air Force Maj. H.C. Petersen said Monday he had been appointed by the  International UFO (unidentified flying objects) Organization to build a center for cosmic studies 35 miles north of Guadalajara, Mexico. The plan will be financed by the organization on the initiative of the California author and UFO expert, George Adamski… ”We already have the site near Guadalajara, where the center will be built,” he said. In the new center, specialists will study cosmic philosophy and make preparations för the new ”abstract” age, he said.”

H.C. Petersen

Much time and effort was now spent among co-workers to find the best place for the Mexico center. Several sites were considered. During a couple of weeks in December 1964 and January 1965 Alice Wells visited Mexico City together with Adamski looking into the potentials of establishing the school in Mexico City. News and comments on the plans were reported in Cosmic Bulletin:

”On May 18, (1964) I flew to Mexico City to meet friends there. And spent a short time at San Jose Purua, where they have the health giving mineral waters. There were a number of ships that came in with passengers for att meeting of the Council that took place in Mexico. In the Saturn Report a second meeting was spoken of… The leaders of the Council were in Mexico City for one day. And from what I could gather, the purpose was for a meeting with Government men. San Jose Purua is not too far from Mexico City, and that probably was the reason for the meeting of the Council in Mexico… While in Mexico we discussed the forming of a group, a nucleus to help Mrs. Rueda in getting the school started in the vicinity of Guadalajara and Lake Chapala. Once this is started, the agreement was made that I would spend 6 months in Mexico teaching, and the other 6 months here and traveling.”
(George Adamski, Cosmic Bulletin, June 1964).

When George Adamski died i April 1965 the Mexico project was abandoned for a while, but the idea and plans were continued in 1967-1968 by old and new co-workers a.o. H.C. Petersen, Fred Steckling and Charlotte Blob. They often visited Mexico and succeeded in getting financial support from lawyer Norman Stone. In a letter from Fred Steckling to H.C. Petersen, May 2, 1968, he mentioned that $20,000 had been donated to the project. The place chosen for the school was Zitachuaro, a small village situated between mountains, not far from the base used by the space people. In the letter Fred Steckling also tells of how he, together with his wife Ingrid, had observed flying saucers disappear into the mountain base and that one of the space people had visited the group while in Zitachauro. Local inhabitants were aware of these activities and often noticed the saucers in the sky.

Fred Steckling 1977

During an interview (Coast to Coast, December 11, 2019) Glenn Steckling, present director of the George Adamski Foundation gave further details of what happened during their work in Mexico:

”George Adamski showed us on a map where there was an extraterrestrial landing facility in central Mexico, so we bought a property very close to that area. And we were three years down there during that time. And within a week of our showing up the Mexican military intelligence police there showed up and with two trucks full of troops and equipment. The commandant was very accommodating, very nice. He came and knocked on the door. My father welcomed everybody with open arms saying come on in, I got nothing to hide. And then they dispersed themselves over the many acres over the ranch and looked with metal rods and magnetometers and all kinds of things. So my father said to them you know this makes me very happy because obviously you wouldn´t be out there if you didn´t believe that it didn´t exist.

The commander pointed to one of George´s pictures that was hanging on the wall and he says. We know they are here. We know they are good for us, but WE don´t want them. He went on to say we have seen an abbreviated file from the Pengaton concerning your activities. My father had seen it too, the size of the New York phone book.  They said to us, you are allowed to stay in this country as long as you don´t go among the population and hold lectures and try to educate the people because we do not want any changes to our system either economically or religiously. So that was that. My father said sure that´s fine. We had other work to do. We were doing research with the telescope. We drove up towards the base and interacted with, not the people in the base, that was still a days hike through the forest away. But with the villagers that lived the closest to that and they looked at us rather strangely. My father said to them why do you look at us so strange. They said, well we have seen the same kind of white people or multi-complected people come out of the forest with nice business suits and dresses and they walk down the road until they hit the main highway, wait for the bus and they disappear, but we have never seen anybody return. That was an area at that time upon which there was a landing facitility allowing them to integrate with the people both in that country and ours.”

George Adamski with the Steckling family 1964, Glenn, Fred, Ingrid

The Mexico Project was abandoned in 1971 and around 1970-71 there was a growing dissension among the former Adamski co-workers. Alice Pomeroy, who had given three years of voluteer service to Alice Wells in Vista, wrote in a letter to co-workers September 8, 1970: ”The confusion seems to be centering around the group in Mexico (Fred) the group in Valley Center (Charlotte) the group in Europé (Hans Petersen and Dora Bauer) and Vista (the two Alice´s). All of these groups, Except Vista, seem to differ in their loyalties and each one has certain others he wishes to support, pushing the rest aside… This confusion… grows increasingly wider and broader. First Steve and Alice B., as individuals. Then Fred and Charlotte as part of a group. Then Fred´s group against Charlotte´s group, and now Europé against the USA.”

Announcement of lectures on Project Mexico by H.C. Petersen 1968

When project Mexico collapsed Danish co-worker H.C. Petersen tried to continue the plans in Denmark and a group with two families was established at a farm near Arnborg. That was the end of the dream to found a school and community based on the philosophy of the space people.

After this blog post had been published I received an email (January 14, 2020) from Glenn Steckling with some additional data and corrections. With Glenn Stecklings permission I add this information here.

”… we purchased the property outside of Zitachuaro - a large working ranch at about 1200 meters elevation - and lived there for 3 years… The School / Ranch (Rancho Las Vegas) was inhabited from June 1969 to March 1972… I remember it well and have the photos. Sometimes one could see the UFOs fly along the mountain ridge near our ranch and disappear behind the mountain where the base was… And the Mexican Military police came to visit us just after we arrived because of it. Their commandant pointed to GAs photo and said, and I quote, "we know they are here, we know they are good for us ... but we dont want them." He went on to say,  "we have received notification from the Pentagon and an abbreviated file, and you are allowed to stay here as long as you dont organize events to educated the public in this country… when my father asked the commandant why the space visitors were "not wanted", the answer was, "Their existence and influence threatens our Religious, political and economic way of life."… The research for the property and financial agreements for purchase in that foreign country was ALL done by my parents. The reason we discontinued it in 1972 was due to political turmoil, student riots, and attacks against foreigners during the Presidency of Echeverria. The rumors from our government contacts concerning an impeding economic devaluation was set to cause more instability too. We were counseled by our space friends that things were changing and it would be wise to soon return to the U.S where we would be needed. At the same time, Alice Wells had contacted us and emphatically urged my father to come back to Vista to directly assist her and the foundation as GA had once instructed too. These items solidified our departure from Mexico. 

GA wanted to do the same in 1958 outside Guadalajara in the lake Chapalla region and did not do so because of associated problems as well. 

Yes, at a village which dead ended near the base of the mountain; the mountain whose final destination could only be reached by an additional one days hike through the forest to the mountain described, we drove up and talked to the locals. The locals said they were perplexed at seeing fair skinned people coming up the road TO them. When my father asked why, they described well dressed men AND women coming out of the forest, not jungle, and walking through town, down the dirt road to the main paved highway and boarding the local buses never to return the same way.”

Somewhat intriguing is that two of the Swedish contactees I have investigated had connections to Mexico, ”Anna” and Richard Höglund. I have discussed the Richard Höglund case in several blog entries and a summary of his story is printed in Timothy Good´s book Earth: An Alien Enterprise. For those not familiar with the basic facts a short English version can be found on this Norwegian website. Swedish readers are referred to the documentation of the case in my book Främlingar på vår jord. Ufokontakter i Sverige. (Aliens On Earth. UFO Contacts in Sweden).

What makes Richard Höglund unique as a contactee is that was a reluctant contactee. During his first contact experience he claimed his kidneys had been healed by a group of aliens and because of that he, from the beginning, felt compelled to work for them in various international schemes. Richard travelled to their bases in Bahamas and Mexico during his active involvement with the alien group between 1965-1977. But he differed from the ordinary contactees in that he was very doubtful regarding their true motives and noted that their morals were not very high. Richard was actually afraid of these aliens and didn´t always believe what they told him. "I don´t know if they are Gods or devils", he once told his friend Gösta Johansson. He didn´t dare stop working for them and towards the end of his life he told my ufologist collegue Åke Franzén to beware of this group as they were dangerous.

Richard Höglund in Nassau, Bahamas

Richard first visited the space people´s base in the Bahamas. There he met another a man named Loftin and they became good friends. But in 1968 Loftin revealed the location of the base to the CIA and he was killed by the space people for this treason. The base was then changed to Mexico, in a place three Swedish miles west of Mexico City. Richard was often gone from home, sometimes for months. He claimed that the space people picked him up in their craft, often visiting the base hidden in the Bahamas and also Mexico. Richard complained once to his friend Gösta Johansson that he was not allowed by his contacts to visit the Olympic Games in Mexico in 1968. Gösta noticed that sometimes in the middle of the Winter he found Richard with a deep suntan when he returned to Sweden. Richard was a retired rock blaster with very little money. He couldn´t  have gone on regular flights around the world based on his meager income.

Loftin with Richard Höglund in Nassau

On January 7, 1985 I and engineer Arne Groth interviewed Richard´s doctor in Stockholm, Karl Erik Swensson. He added some interesting details about the Mexico base:

”Karl Erik Swensson: He told of several visits to Central America in the end of the 1960s. It has always surprised me that a rock blaster could go many times to Central America in those days – economically.
Håkan: Did he mention his experiences there?
Karl Erik: No, not very much. He was very reticient. I got the impression he was afraid. I thought the whole thing was very strange.
Arne Groth: Did he give any details about the environment tha made the story credible?
Karl Erik: We didn´t talk about that. He was inside some hangars where they had these motherships that looked like Zeppelins. He travelled in them.”

Karl Erik Swensson, M.D. during interview January 7, 1985

Based on extensive research and interviews with many witnesses involved in the Höglund case this alien group act more like a sort of Mafia than friendly space people. By a strange co-incidence there is also a direct connection here with organized crime. Richard Höglund and his wife Gunvor worked for a time in 1968-1969 in the house of Lou Chesler in Nassau and according to Richard he also met some of his alien visitors there on several occasions. Lou Chesler was active in real-estate development in the Bahamas and a frontman for organized crime boss Meyer Lansky.

I have often pondered on the strange co-incidence that during the same time that George Adamski co-workers tried to establish a school and community west of Mexico City and claimed the space people hade a base in this region, Richard Höglund visited a alien base in the same vicinity in 1968-1970. During his last years Adamski now and then mentioned that evil space people were also operating on our planet. Perhaps further research can reveal what is truth or fiction in these stories?