An Unusual Conference In Dulce New Mexico

RIO RANCHO, NEW MEXICO - Norio Hayakawa is a resident of Rio Rancho who believes that wild rumors may not always bring a bad name to a community or hurt it. Sometimes they bring curiosity seekers, and even tourism may flourish. Take, for example, the city of Roswell. "Roswell has raked in quite a lot of tourist dollars all these years, despite the lack of any tangible, solid, irrefutable evidence that an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed in the desert outside of the city in July of 1947," Hayakawa noted.

And when it comes to the subject of UFOs, Hayakawa believes that there is a much more interesting area in New Mexico than Roswell.

According to Hayakawa, Dulce, New Mexico, a sleepy little town of less than 4000 (inhabited by the Jicarilla Apache nation), has attracted quite a number of UFO and conspiracy buffs ever since rumors surfaced in the mid-80s that a U.S./alien joint biological laboratory and base exists a mile under the town's Archuleta Mesa. "This rumor has become so well known among UFO buffs around the world that anyone doing a Yahoo or Google search on Dulce, New Mexico would find the bulk of over 300,000 search results related to the alleged underground base," Hayakawa said.

Skeptical of such claims, Hayakawa, a retired funeral director, visited the town of Dulce in 1990 with the crew of a Japanese television program to attempt to document the existence of such an alien base.

Although he was unsuccessful in locating it, Hayakawa claims that he and the television crew were inexplicably detained by the police chief while interviewing the citizens on the street about UFOs and cattle mutilations.

Now, almost 19 years later, Hayakawa and a few UFO enthusiasts from New Mexico, California and Arizona, would like to clear these unfounded rumors. They are planning to have a one-day public conference in the town of Dulce next March.

It will be appropriately titled: "The Dulce Base: Fact or Fiction?"