As a historian, cultural anthropologist, UFO researcher, author and film producer I investigate the Carlos Diaz contact case for seven years. Since I wanted to be sure before I publish the case that any possibility of a hoax can be excluded, I did not only travel to Mexico twelve times for on-site field investigations, but also consulted leading experts in the US, Belgium, Germany and Italy, including

* Prof. Corrado Malanga, University of Pisa
* Prof. Manfred Kage, University of Mannheim
* Prof, Auguste Meessen, University of Louvain
* Bob Shell, editor "Shutterbug" Magazine, phototechnical consultant
of the FBI
* Dr. Robert Nathan, Jet Propulsion Lab/NASA, Pasadena
* Jim Dilettoso, The Village Labs.

None of these photo technical experts found any evidence of a hoax in the films and footage shot by Diaz. Field investigations were performed also by Prof. John E. Mack of Harvard, who spent three days in Tepoztlan and extensively talked to the witness, his family and local eyewitnesses. We were able to verify that over 50 % of the population of the city of Tepoztlan, in which Diaz lives, about 12.000 people, saw the very same type of object filmed and photographed by Diaz, a fact confirmed by the mayor of Tepoztlan. The Air Traffic Controllers of Mexico City's International Airport confirmed on camera regular UFO sightings over the area of Tepoztlan. Several researchers who visited the place, including Dr. Roberto Pinotti, saw the very same ship Carlos filmed and photographed.

Therefore the personal opinion of Mr. Pascal Lopresti, who was never known as a UFO researcher in Mexico (actually he served as a translator and organizer for Italian stigmatist Giorgio Bongiovanni) is completely invalid. It was nice of Carlos to show him some new material, which is in my possession for over a year, but it has no news value. Nor does any of Lopresti´s "conclusions".

According to Carlos Diaz, "the aliens" are living among us for thousands of years. They live there as normal Mexicans, drive in terrestrial cars, have TV sets and cameras and maybe even tripods. Therefore it is not a big surprise if one of them had a tripod he lent to Diaz - nobody claimed it was an extraterrestrial tripod!

But Lopresti is just wrong when he claims: "Carlos Diaz has always refused to allow the video to be analyzed". He gave me a copy a year ago, I analyzed it frame by frame and I will publish it in our upcoming documentary "Ships of Light" which will be presented at the International UFO Congress in Laughlin in March 2001. Even a bigger mystery to me is Lopresti´s "conclusion": "No human being from this planet can board a plasma ship with his/her physical body and a camcorder." How the hell does he know? Is Lopresti an Extraterrestrial?? Or how can he make such a claim with the certainty of a dogma? We don't even know if the ship really consists of plasma (although it looks like plasma), "plasma-ship" is just a metaphor, so how can he ever make such a statement?

Lopresti calls himself an "investigator". To my knowledge, he has no education or background to make such a claim. He claims to be the co-organizer of the Acapulco-conference, which was ONLY set up by Jaime Maussan and his team of Tercer Milennio and Los Vigilantes. Lopresti´s job was that of a translator for Giorgio Bongiovanni. Therefore, the one who obviously seeks attention by big claims seems to be Lopresti, not Carlos Diaz.

Every investigator who ever met Carlos was impressed by his willingness to share his material. Diaz was never interested in money. He is very poor but he never charges anything, When Bill Hamilton claims that "Carlos does video work and films weddings and celebrations", it is just not true. Carlos did work as a wedding (still) photographer as a young man but never did that with video.. He just has the Camcorder given to him by Jaime Maussan. He doesn't have an external microphone, no light, no editing equipment. He did not even have a monitor to view what he shot before I bought him a TV set three years ago..

Bill Hamilton criticized that the object on the films "descended in a jerky movement". This happens very often in UFO cases, we call it "falling leaf movement", a detail mentioned by many eyewitnesses in Tepoztlan and elsewhere. The UFO was obviously NOT lowered by a cable, since its movements never had a center. He criticized the "static interior illumination" of the object - Jim Dilettoso called it "coherent light" and made a parallel to laser light. Besides the fact that on one film the center of the object is pulsating and the object increases and decreases its brightness, the "uniformity" of the light of the craft indicate a light quality very different from that of an illuminated model or lamp. In that case namely the light would be most intense in the center and less at the edges. No, the object is not moving with the wind. The tree's movement in one film is completely untypical for wind movement, since it is too shaky, and seems to be caused by the ship. In the sequence with the object firing a beam down to Earth, the beam's light is too strong and too condensed to be that of a flashlight.

In one case Diaz filmed a craft right behind a tree, partially covered by it. We were able to identify the tree and verify it's diameter and distance from the camera. From our calculation, the object's diameter must have been at least 60 feet... too big for a hoax with a small model!

Michael Hesemann Duesseldorf/Germany