El Maitén entity encounter — 1949-02-20

The El Maitén account describes an alleged encounter on 20 February 1949, but the cited newspaper report appeared twenty-one years later. According to the later source chain, an agitated travelling salesman arrived at an officer’s station and said he had met an unidentified object twenty kilometres from the town in Chubut. The officer was retired by the time the story was published. The salesman reportedly saw three humanlike figures emerge in unusual suits, with something flashing in their headgear. Cord-like connections linked them to the object. They signalled for him to stop his car. The short narrative does not give a dependable hull shape, figure height, clothing colour, conversation or departure sequence. Anatomical details found in some catalogue tables are not supported by the accompanying narrative and are not used to manufacture a more specific creature. The attribution leads to La Razón of 13 March 1970 and later work by Roberto Banchs and Luis González Manso; the original clipping was not recovered here. A reference to Vallée’s Magonia case 73 is erroneous, since that entry concerns Lago Argentino instead. The plate consequently labels this a late secondhand report, retains the three tethered figures and leaves the object’s structure unresolved.