How Tampico’s alien embrace transformed fear and uncertainty into hopeful resilience

by Ambika Subra.

Forget Roswell - if extraterrestrials have landed anywhere, it’s Tampico.

A port city on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, Tampico has been shaped by invasion - Spanish conquest, French occupation, oil booms that lured American investors, and even colonies of raccoons that spread across the beaches after migrating from the destroyed Casuarinas forest. In the 2010s, the city faced a darker invasion, one that turned Tampico into both a war zone and a cautionary headline. Cartel violence swept through the area. Entire families disappeared overnight. Military trucks patrolled the streets. A city-wide curfew emptied plazas and shuttered local businesses.

In Mexico, the extranjero - foreigner, outsider, alien - has long been a symbol of conquest, uncertainty, and fear. For Tampiqueños, the unknown has never been distant or abstract. It has arrived in waves, seizing power, land, and lives. And yet, despite a history of violent invasion, Tampico has refused to surrender to fear. Instead, it has rewritten the meaning of the extranjero, embedding it into collective consciousness. And in this rewritten mythology, the outsider is not a force of destruction, but protection. The alien - quite literally, the green figure with a large head and a UFO - is the extranjero that defines the city, not as an invader, but as a silent guardian.

For over 60 years, many Tampiqueños have believed in Amupac, an underwater alien base 1.3 kilometers off Miramar Beach, shielding the city from natural disaster. While other regions along the Gulf Coast - Veracruz, Texas, Louisiana - have suffered catastrophic hurricanes, Tampico has remained untouched since 1966. The reason, according to locals, isn’t meteorological luck. It’s extraterrestrial intervention.

Journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan, Mexico’s most famous alien investigator, traced the legend’s origins to an American tourist in the 1970s who claimed to have been abducted and taken to a submerged extraterrestrial city beneath the Gulf. Newspapers in Tampico and Ciudad Madero published the story as fact. Since then, with each hurricane that shifts course, belief in Amupac has only grown. Fishermen often report strange lights beneath the water. Radar interference remains unexplained. Unexplained objects hover over oil rigs. One local meteorologist interviewed by Vice News stressed there are several more terrestrial explanations for why a hurricane hasn’t hit Tampico since 1966. But many Tampiqueños remain convinced: something - or someone - is protecting them from true destruction.

Tampico’s aliens are not just a conspiracy theory or local legend. They are embedded in the city’s cultural fabric. Walk along the beaches, and you’ll see murals of UFOs, alien sculptures, and plush green companions sold at market stalls. Raccoons roam around a half-buried flying saucer on the beach. Every year, the city holds UFO conferences and a parade where residents dress as extraterrestrials, turning myth into collective history. Many make pilgrimages to Miramar Beach to meditate, hoping to connect with their unseen protectors.

The phenomenon has even led to structured research - most notably through la Asociación de Investigación Científica Ovni de Tamaulipas, an organization dedicated to studying UFO sightings and unexplained aerial phenomena in the region. Netflix is scouting the area for a documentary.

But the significance of this mythology isn’t aesthetic or for tourism. It’s about collective survival - a way to reclaim power in a place that has been shaped by forces beyond its control. Just as Tampico has endured colonial occupations and cartel wars, it has also found a way to turn the unknown - the fear of the extranjero - into something protective and hopeful.

The unknown is so often framed as a source of fear, but Tampico offers a rare counter-narrative: what we don’t understand can often protect us the most.

The existence of Amupac in Tampiqueños’ minds isn’t about scientific proof. It’s about something deeper - the way mythology gives people meaning, survival, and identity. Faith in these cosmic protectors has become a form of resilience. It is a way to reclaim control in a context where the unknown has often dictated the city’s fate. The belief in Amupac extends beyond aliens. It’s about the power to turn fear into protection, to transform uncertainty into faith.

And that’s the real power of Tampico’s aliens. Whether or not they exist is moot. Tampiqueños have made them real.