Between January 13 and January 20, 1996, the city of Varginha in Minas Gerais, Brazil became the site of one of the most extraordinary claimed UFO-and-entity events of the twentieth century. At roughly 8:00 AM on January 20, three young women — Liliane Fátima Silva, Valquíria Aparecida Silva, and Andrade de Oliveira — walked through a vacant lot at Jardim Andere on their way home from shift work. Near a brick wall, no more than seven metres away, they saw what they later described as a 'creature unlike any animal' crouching against the wall: approximately five feet tall, dark brown, with three bony protrusions on its oily head, enormous blood-red eyes, and v-shaped veins on its forehead. They fled in terror and reported the encounter to family and police.
Subsequent investigations by Brazilian UFO researchers Ubirajara Franco Rodrigues and Dr. Roger Leir linked the event to a week-long series of military mobilizations in the region. On January 13, residents across the Três Corações–Varginha corridor had reported a cigar-shaped object low and slow over the town; farmer Oralina de Freitas and her daughter Eurico had watched the object shake visibly and emit smoke as it passed at treetop level. Military Police officers Marco Eli Chereze, João Andrade, and Eurico Rodrigues were subsequently ordered to collect what commanders referred to only as 'an animal' at multiple sites in Jardim Andere. Chereze, who handled the creature directly during the capture, fell violently ill; he was hospitalized at Regional Hospital of Varginha, developed an unidentifiable infection, and died on February 15 at age 23. The Brazilian Army's 4th Army Battery was mobilized during the week of the sightings, and multiple witnesses reported military vehicles carrying opaque containers from the town.
The Varginha case was formally investigated by the Brazilian Army's Central Intelligence Division (DCI) and portions of its file were partially declassified through Brazil's Freedom of Information Act in 2012. The case remains the best-documented military-adjacent entity-recovery event in Latin American history. The city of Varginha has formally embraced its notoriety, constructing a distinctive water tower in the shape of a UFO at its major highway entrance and holding an annual UFO conference.