Argentina Cattle Mutilations Wave

April 2002. In Salliqueló, on the border of Buenos Aires province and La Pampa, people saw "strange lights" in the night sky. Then three cattle were found dead. Their cuts looked burned.

It was the first report of a wave. By late June the cases had reached at least six provinces. By August they ran north to Tucumán, Salta, Chaco and Corrientes. Headlines climbed with them. "Mysterious death toll to 84". Then "more than one hundred". Then more than 200.

Ranchers and vets described the same pattern again and again. One eye, one ear, the tongue, facial muscle down to the bone, the udder, the genitals, the rectum. All removed. SENASA vet Daniel Belot examined more than a dozen cases around Salliqueló. He found "no blood inside or outside the body… perfectly clean." No tracks. No predators. The edges looked like the work of "an intense heat source".

Scavenger birds avoided the bodies. "Even the other animals refuse to come close to the dead ones." In Chaco, one carcass did not decay for days. Vet Eduardo Sensi put it plainly. "The mutilations do not seem to be the handiwork of humans or animals."

Near Catriel, at Puente Dique over the Río Colorado, Jorge Hernández watched a red light around 21:00. It brightened, dimmed and moved in bursts, then hovered for about 20 minutes. "It couldn't be a plane or helicopter because of the way it remained still." In Bernasconi, police chief Gustavo Martínez saw a light "the size of a tennis ball". "It changed color and size constantly, sometimes reddish and then blue."

In August, goats died in Cachi, Salta. The nephew of their owner, María Laura Liendro, described a night encounter with "a strange being some 80 cm. tall, with a short tail and dense fur." It is the only eyewitness creature description in the record. The chupacabra itself lived in the papers. About 1.20 m tall, 32 kg, red eyes.

SENASA president Bernardo Cané first spoke of intent. "Sin dudas hay intencionalidad," he told Página/12 on 22 June. Unicen veterinary dean Alejandro Soraci admitted: "No tengo explicación." It had been "una muerte quieta", a quiet death.

Then, on 1 July, SENASA changed course. A Unicen study of 20 animals found natural deaths from metabolic or infectious disease. The wounds came afterwards, from the red-nosed mouse Oxymycterus and from foxes. Fresh, unmutilated carcasses left in the field developed the same lesions. Cané called it "definite proof". Histology found no heat cauterization. Geiger counters found no radioactivity.

La Pampa refused the verdict. Minister of Production Néstor Alcalá said: "That type of mouse does not exist in the region." Police expert Marta Paturlanne proposed that at least three animals had inhaled a "caustic narcotic" or toxic agent. She insisted that "we have no mice or ants here". No confirming tests followed. Others blamed sects, mass psychosis or pumas. Ufologist Fabio Zerpa suggested alien scientists.

The cases spilled into Uruguay and Chile. In 2018 they returned around Santa Fe and Bahía Blanca, and SENASA again named scavengers. Today the wave sits in the history of the chupacabra, a story the media widely tied to the creature. As one YouTube series put it, 2002 in Argentina meant one thing. Cattle mutilation.