Ryde The Acapulco Conference (1er Congreso Internacional Sobre el Fenomeno Ovni, to give it its proper name) was apparently a full-throttle fiasco. It was poorly organized and underfunded; poor ticket sales, botched airline and hotel reservations, inadequate food and water, and searing heat didn’t help matters. Neither did the fact that many of the participating ufologists detested one another; some even refused to be in the same room together.
Amid all of this, John’s position was indeed that of pariah. In an article in the Dec. ’77 Chic (“Close Encounters in Acapulco”), Don Strachan brackets Keel with Jacques Vallee as “too eccentric to place on a left-right continuum”: “Then, prominent UFO writer John Keel drops a bomb by defecting from the fold. ‘The UFO establishment is a powerful propaganda machine,’ he declares. ‘The average UFO publication isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. They used to think in the Middle Ages that these were witches with lanterns on their broomsticks,’ continues Keel, who argues that UFO sightings are caused by local disturbances in the earth’s magnetic field.”
And in the Sept. ’77 Fate (“Disaster in UFO-Land”), Jerome Clark reports that Keel further fueled the theorists’ quarrels: “As if to aggravate the situation further, John Keel, the earliest and most vocal proponent of the paraphysical hypothesis, delivered a blood-and-thunder address which argued that UFOs as such don’t exist, that they are just temporary manifestations of a kind of intelligent energy which he holds responsible for virtually all of mankind’s ills.”
In an attempt to salvage the situation, another conference was held in Mexico City. As Clark reports, “I didn’t go on to Mexico City but later I talked with John Keel who did and from whom I heard further horror stories of disorganization, bouncing checks and dwindling audiences. The last night of the Congress, April 27, attracted a grand total of 20 paying customers.”
It was not the pleasant junket John and others had hoped; and probably not the best context for challenging ideas…