Ecuador.Decree 129 · Ecuador

In 2007, the Ecuadorian government authorized the declassification of Armed Forces material concerning anomalous aerial observations, transferring historical files to the civilian domain for open analysis. The presidential authorization is documented: on June 25, 2007, under President Rafael Correa, the Armed Forces were cleared to release the information held in their archives on the unidentified phenomenon. Ufologist Jaime Rodríguez —who drove the process through the Ecuadorian Commission for the Investigation of the UFO Phenomenon (CEIFO)— received official notice from General Patricio Cárdenas, secretary of the National Security Council, conveying that the President of the Republic authorized the Ministry of Defense and the three branches of the Armed Forces to deliver whatever information might exist in their archives about the unidentified.

The process gathered on the order of 44 testimonies from Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) personnel, along with the declassification of photographs, videos and reports tied to the phenomenon. Among the military cases that surfaced were encounters recounted by officers —for instance, a colonel who reported firing at a flying object in 1995, and FAE pilots who described observations of strange aircraft during flight missions. The corpus records this milestone under the reference of the associated administrative instrument (Decree 129); the verifiable core, however, is the June 2007 presidential authorization and the documented transfer of files into civilian hands, rather than any particular decree number.

The singularity of the case lies in the fact that the administrative act is, in itself, the documentary evidence: a presidential decision opening classified material to civilian scrutiny. It places Ecuador among the few countries that have executed a formal, publicly accredited opening of phenomenon archives, in the same family as the release of the COMETA report in France or later US initiatives.

One of the few Latin American disclosure milestones with a documented presidential authorization and a transfer of files into civilian hands. Together with CEFAe (Argentina) and DIFAA/OIFAA (Peru), it forms a South American institutional base documenting a comparatively open state stance on the phenomenon — distinct from the 'strategic ambiguity' model that characterizes post-2017 US disclosure.

The case's value is twofold. First, institutional: it shows that the decision to treat the phenomenon as a legitimate object of archiving and civilian scrutiny is not the preserve of great powers, but that a small state can execute it through ordinary administrative channels, with a presidential signature and an identifiable chain of command. Second, comparative: the Ecuadorian opening, channeled in part through a civilian commission (CEIFO) and a ufologist as interlocutor, contrasts with the Anglo-American pattern, where declassification arrives filtered through intelligence agencies and framed as a national-security matter. That difference in framing —an archive opened to civil society versus disclosure managed by intelligence— is relevant to understanding how different states handle the same class of information.

Editorial honesty requires a caveat: the Ecuadorian process was driven by civilian ufology actors, and part of the coverage blends verifiable declassified material (pilot testimonies, FAE reports) with more ambitious claims that lack the same backing. The corpus weighs the case by the solidity of the institutional act —the presidential authorization and the transfer of files— and not by the nature of any individual sighting contained in them, which remains without technical resolution.