An Interview with Alejandro Rojas

by Brent Raynes

Alejandro Rojas is the International Director of Public Education for the Mutual UFO Network. In this interview, read his candid and open remarks and observations on UFOs, alien abductions, the implications of UFO contact, the legendary and mysterious San Luis Valley, and how the Native American Trickster and Jung’s archetypes of the collective unconscious may provide us greater insights and understanding into the UFO enigma.

He maintains a very interesting website at: www.ufothinktank.com.

Readers may email him at: alejandro@ufothinktank.com.

Editor: I had been in touch with Priscilla Wolf and she had suggested a couple of questions that I should ask you. She thought I should bring up about your Native American background and your views on the San Luis Valley (Colorado).

Alejandro Rojas: Sure, and are you familiar with my title and role in this?

Editor: I guess we should start with a little background. How you got interested in UFOs and so forth too.

Alejandro Rojas: Right now, I’m the International Director of Public Education for the Mutual UFO Network. So I do interviews and arrange media for MUFON throughout the world, and with national networks and documentary makers. I got to work with ABC on a recent documentary and that’s why Judy (Messoline) has had me MC at her event (UFO Watchtower conference, Hooper, CO) for the last couple of years.

But yes, my family is from the San Luis Valley. My grandfather was born there and then they moved to Denver. My roots are Pueblo and Ute Indians from the valley.

Editor: It was very interesting being with Priscilla and she was telling us about the valley, how it was the Bloodless Valley and the history of it, and Mount Blanca and things.

Alejandro Rojas: Yes, it’s a neat place.

Editor: Well, how did you end up getting involved in this tangled web of ufology?

Alejandro Rojas: Well, I had always kind of kept an eye on it. My interests were largely spiritual and also, at the same time, scientific. So I kept an eye on all of this and then what really got me to devote so much of my life to it was the Disclosure Project. It was a few months after that I had started looking deeper into all of this as national media documentaries started getting more and more of my attention.

But when I came across the Disclosure Project and the Washington Press Conference after it had happened, I was shocked that something at that level had happened without being covered by national media and not going out to the public. That showed me that there was much more than just money that drives the media and that the media doesn’t necessarily cover everything that is of great interest to people. Which I had already suspected, but that was, to me, in your face proof.

So I really put my life into it. I researched and researched it and pretty much became a hermit while researching information. Then I found out that MUFON’s international headquarters was located here in Colorado and so I checked that out and started getting involved with the local state organizations and got to know a lot of the national directors and others. I began doing my own yearly event. I became director of something called “The New Thought Forum” where they’d present speakers on a lot of different arenas in the paranormal, and eventually when we had a new director for the Mutual UFO Network he asked me to come onboard as the international director of public education, so I took that, was very happy about that, and really the media portion of it turned out to be the biggest time consuming thing. The biggest part of that job was handling the media. Luckily, the media has gotten a lot more interested. We take a very conservative sort of stance where we don’t like to speak on something unless we have some substantiated information, where we’ve had some credible or credentialed people who have given us this information or given the research, and the media really appreciates that. They appreciate being able to get sources where there is some sort of substance to it as opposed to being purely speculation. So we more or less say, “Here are the professionals who have given us this information,” and they can go and talk with those people as well. That’s worked really well for our media attention.

Editor: Did you have any previous experience in working with the media?

Alejandro Rojas: It was through my previous experience in that directorship with that “New Thought Forum” and also putting my own lectures on. I also, at the time, was a corporate trainer and now I’m a manager of a training department. So that experience and my major, which was broadcast journalism, has helped.

Editor: Okay, so all of this training and experience has come in handy.

Alejandro Rojas: Yeah, definitely.

Editor: So you enjoy what you’re doing and it’s fulfilling.

Alejandro Rojas: Yeah, and it keeps me busy.

Editor: Keeps you busy. Now I know that you had that sighting of some UFOs back in December 2005 with Joe Fex that you video taped (featured in my Reality Checking, October 2008), but have you had other sightings and things that kind of made you stop and think, “Wow, this is getting close.”

Alejandro Rojas: Not until after I became an official MUFON investigator. So not until I really got into this stuff. I already had done years of research and been involved before I had my first sighting. My first sighting was actually at the UFO Watchtower, and since then I’ve had about four more sightings. Now my first sighting was at a place where a lot of people have sightings and my other three sightings, that I can think of right now, were with people who see a lot of things and feel that they are abductees. I did come from a logical perspective and I didn’t know what to make of the abduction claims and scenarios, but I can’t deny that I had these experiences with these people who claim to have lots of sightings.

So that was kind of extraordinary to me and it taught me that if you want to see a UFO then hang out in places where people see them a lot or with people who claim to see them a lot.

Editor: Right. I know that in my interview with Joe Fex, he said that if anyone wants to see something bad enough like in the San Luis Valley, then just go camping and he said eventually you’ll see something.

Have you investigated some of the abduction claims or people who have said that they had close encounters and such?

Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. Like I said, three of my sightings were with people who felt that they were abductees and since I’ve been with this field I’ve had quite a few people approach me about this. Just recently I became a certified hypnotherapist, so yes, I have dealt with a lot of these people.

Editor: Well with where you’re at right now, what’s your take on things? What’s your overall impression that seems to interest you most and what you think may be going on with all of this, the UFO, the paranormal, the abductions. What kind of captures your main interest.

Alejandro Rojas: Well, I think that for me it’s kind of learning what I already knew in a way. What I mean by that is that my Native American and even my Mexican background on my dad’s side, those cultures are very open to the paranormal and to different phenomena. In fact, especially in the Native American lore you have more. They talk about the Wildman, the Star Brothers, and these interactions with different entities or spirits that are more advanced than we are, that have better connections and more of an understanding of nature. So I’ve always been kind of open and I’ve never closed my mind to those stories. I was an engineering major when I first started college. In high school I was always interested in math and science. But I was attracted to those stories and I felt that those elders and those people who were having those experiences were genuine. Lying is just something that’s more foreign, and especially to the Native American world and thought, and so it didn’t make sense to me that these were just fabricated stories.

So I was always open to it. Getting involved, especially with the UFO field, which led me to meeting other paranormal researchers and getting involved with other research, like Joe (Fex), who is into a lot of stuff, I started to learn that we still do interface with all of that stuff, even in the Western World. The Western World kind of has a different take and a more narcissistic view where man is very powerful and knowledgeable, whereas I think that we’re learning that we’re not all that knowledgeable, that there’s a lot that science is opening itself up to, but there’s a lot out there that we don’t understand. A difficult transition, which we’re going through, which I think is at the root of all of this, and that is that we are going through an evolution, a learning of knowledge where we need to learn that, and this is the difficult part for the Western World, that we’re not the end all. There are more knowledgeable and intelligent and technologically advanced beings out there.

It’s not a bad thing. We don’t have to feel that we’re inferior. In fact, a more Native American perspective is that it’s a wonderful thing, that there is a lot more to learn and there is mystery and growth is continuing. Growth is always something that is very satisfying and it is wonderful that we have the opportunity to continue to grow. If we’re open to these teachers and if we’re open to learning from these experiences then that will help us to do just that, to learn and open ourselves up and evolve and to continue to have wonderful experiences. Expecially with interacting with some of these different entities.

In the Native American lore, the root of a lot of these entities like the Trickster, for example, was to keep humans humble and to teach humans and to remind humans that we’re not in charge of the world and nature, that we work together, and that there are others out there who can mess with us and kind of bring us down in our ego because they are powerful.

Editor: I was told once, by someone who is part Native American (our own co-editor Dr. Greg Little) and had researched it, and he said that like in the vision quest a lot of times, or all of the time, in the beginning the Trickster tended to appear to someone, say a young initiate in a vision quest ceremony, and the person would have to get by the Trickster to get to a higher level. If, however, they believed everything that the Trickster said then they wouldn’t progress beyond that stage or that point. If they flattered them and inflated their ego and they never learned to see beyond their self reflection and their ego, they heard what they wanted to hear and they didn’t question it and try to evolve, then that’s where they would stay.

Alejandro Rojas: That’s another thing that I think that we’re learning from these experiences and that we need to understand with these experiences and something that I think is important is that the paranormal and all is enigmatic, and it is supposed to be. When you have this tendency that “I want to learn everything” or “I want to have all of this knowledge,” it must be pointed out that nobody learns everything. I think that’s a piece of this that we need to understand. When it comes to contactees, for instance, there are a lot of people who claim they are communicating with them. Now I do believe that extraterrestrials are here and I do believe that people are communicating with them. However, I think that it’s detrimental to believe everything that you hear. I don’t think that we can completely understand the messages that we are receiving. An indication of this is that rarely, if ever, do two contactees say the same thing. And by a contactee I would not just include people who are communicating with ETs and not having a physical interaction, but include those people who are abductees and having physical interactions, and still receiving messages. The messages are very similar on either end.

But nobody is saying the same thing when it comes down to the details or the content of these messages. And I think that is on purpose. But because a lot of people are, “Oh, this person says this and I’m going to believe everything this person says,” and in order to do that you’re not listening to other messages that are out there. But if you listen to all of the messages and none of them are the same, then you’re kind of forced to come up with your own conclusions and use your own feelings and thoughts, and come up with your own world and what you are, your connection and interaction with divinity or the universe. I think that that’s the key, that just like the Trickster, which is enigmatic in nature, because people are still having these Trickster type experiences, and you’re forced to grow. It forces you to grow and it forces you to figure these things out. It doesn’t just hand you all of the answers. Instead you’re forced to piece together, use your own experiences, your own intelligence, and your own spirituality to come up with your own connection to nature and divinity.

I think that’s a huge part of it that right now we miss a little bit when we go and we sit and we listen and subscribe to just one person’s message.

Editor: Right. Wow, those were very interesting insights there. Growing up with Native American ancestry and Mexican, in a culture that was more open to these things, and being naturally inclined to be interested, have you ever had any experiences that you could share like with growing up where you heard elders talk about these things openly or where you had experiences yourself that you reflect on now as an investigator?

Alejandro Rojas: I never had my own experiences, but definitely all of the Trickster stories and the Skinwalker stories were always interesting to me. My Grandma used to always tell me about different legends and different types of stories. My Great-Grandma, for instance, in the San Luis Valley, she remembered playing under the table when somebody came and was pounding on the door. This was outside of the town of San Luis, and they opened the door and this guy was in a frenzy. He was really excited and scared. He said that during the night he was being chased by a seven foot praying mantis. So her father, and I think it was her uncle, got their guns and went to go look and they never found anything. But it wasn’t, “Oh that guy was crazy.” Instead they thought, “Wow, who was this seven foot praying mantis that was chasing this poor guy around.” It was more of an openness of believing that this guy isn’t crazy if he tells us this. Something was probably happening.

Editor: That was way before the abduction stories of praying mantis beings.

Alejandro Rojas: Right. So it’s just that openness and that’s why I say it’s kind of like relearning what I had already learned. When I was younger that was the sense that I got of these Tricksters and these different spirits, that they were there to mess with us and to humble us and to show us that we’re not the end all, that we also continue to grow.

So when I started to get into UFOs, I didn’t make the connection initially. I’m a big fan of like John Mack and Leo Sprinkle and now that I’ve gone through this training, and I’m going back to school to get more degrees in psychology, I understand the subconscious and what Jung called the collective unconsciousness of humans. We all have a similar root to what these Trickster beings and what the ETs are kind of giving to people. It’s all very similar.

Editor: Well as you read in my column in this last issue I got to visit with Priscilla and visit her old hometown in the San Luis Valley and heard the most incredible stories that her grandparents and others told about a phantom hitchkiker, mysterious balls of fire, people being seemingly abducted by UFOs back in the early 1900s, this big black dog with blazing red eyes (one time it was shot and it turned into a witch), and it’s stuff that back then, as you pointed out, these things happened, they talked about them, and there was this whole aura of believability to it. I live in Tennessee, and there are stories that people in the country used to tell over the years, but now we’re just kind of tuned into the TV and cyberspace and we’ve kind of lost that connection with these kind of accounts. Except, of course, when a UFO comes around and people say, “Could that be real?” and it makes people think again. What’s out there?

But anyway, you say that you’re going back to college and get more education in psychology, and you’re already reading Jung which is a head trip right there.

Alejandro Rojas: Dr. Leo Sprinkle is someone I know and he is a mentor and a real inspiration to me with all of this. You kind of take these experiences that people have and relate it to a sort of psychological experience or internal experience that they’re having. People get a little upset because they think of people communicating directly with ETs. But when you get into that arena and if you get into Joseph Campbell’s work, a man who worked with mythology and archetypal figures in mythology and who stated that life itself is an expression of the subconscious and life itself is full of these lessons. Again very Native American, very Buddhist, and lots of different traditions. Life itself is an experience that you grow from and that is constantly teaching you lessons.

I think that if you’re an advanced civilization, or even if you’re a father with a child, then you’re going to use these sort of things, analogies, and give advice. You can’t live your child’s life for them. All that you can do is show them, give them advice, use analogies, try to take them to places or give them experiences that will help them along the way. I think that’s sort of what we’ve got. You can’t just go to your child and say “This is the way it is” and expect him or her to do exactly what you say. And that’s why I think that this experience has to be so enigmatic. No culture from some other planet that is extremely advanced is going to be able to come here and say, “Hey guys, this is the way it is. Do it this way.” You think that we’re going to listen? No, we don’t listen to the wise people we have on this planet. It’s all an experiential type of thing of us moving together towards something better and bigger.

I don’t think that we have to feel alone in that or even extremely frightened because no doubt there are many intelligent civilizations visiting us. They all probably went through this themselves. This can’t be a unique experience. There have had to have been other planets and other civilizations that have gone through this growth. So we’re one of many and it’s something that is natural and I think that we’ll make it through.