Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

  The survivors and their families were ushered into buses which drove up alongside the aeroplane. The boys wanted to be driven in front of the balconies so that they could salute their friends, but on the instructions of the Army the buses drove straight out of the airport towards the Stella Maris College.

  Everything was ready for their arrival. The large brick assembly hall, designed by the father of Marcelo Pérez, had been laid out as for a prize-giving, with a long table on a podium and a system of microphones and loudspeakers which would enable the many journalists who were already seated facing this stage to hear what was said. It was not only the Christian Brothers who had done this but also the officers of the Old Christians, who greeted the survivors as the coaches turned into the driveway of the school.

  It was an emotional reunion and one in which the turmoil of the situation – with cameras whirling and clicking all around them – could not blunt the grievous truth that among those who now climbed off the bus and took their places on the podium there were only three members of the rugby team which had set out for Chile: Canessa, Zerbino and Vizintín. Parrado and Harley were still in Chile. As Daniel Juan and Adolfo Gelsi looked at the thin, bearded faces, they searched for their champions – Pérez, Platero, Nicolich, Hounie, Maspons, Abal, Magri, Costemalle, Martínez-Lamas, Nogueira and Shaw – but they were not there.

  Nevertheless the whole group of survivors had entrusted the press conference to the care of the Old Christians, and with calm mastery of a potentially chaotic situation – a room packed with journalists from all over the world, parents, parents of the dead, friends, relations, and television cameras – Daniel Juan took his seat on the centre of the podium and the conference began.

  The survivors had decided that they would speak in turn, each of them taking a particular aspect of their experience, and when they had finished they would ask the Uruguayan press if they wished to question them further. The only dispute among them was as to how they should treat the question of cannibalism. Some of the boys and their parents thought that they should be quite frank about what had happened; others considered that it would be enough for some vague allusion to be made to it. A third group – notably Canessa and his father – thought that no mention should be made of it at all.

  A compromise was reached: Inciarte would speak about it. He offered to do so, and it was agreed that he was the most suitable person because of his high-minded attitude to what had happened, but on the day of the conference itself Coche began to have doubts about his own abilities. He stuttered, and he was afraid that in front of all the journalists and cameras he would break down. Pancho Delgado volunteered to take his place.

  The conference began. The whole room listened in silence as, one after the other, the survivors told their heroic and tragic story, until it was Delgado’s turn. Almost at once his eloquence – which had been of such little use on the mountain – came into its own.

  ‘When one awakes in the morning amid the silence of the mountains, and sees all around the snow-capped peaks – it is majestic, sensational, something frightening – and one feels alone, alone, alone in the world but for the presence of God. For I can assure you that God is there. We all felt it, inside ourselves, and not because we were the kind of pious youths who are always praying all day long, even though we had a religious education. Not at all. But there one feels the presence of God. One feels, above all, what is called the hand of God, and allows oneself to be guided by it … And when the moment came when we did not have any more food, or anything of that kind, we thought to ourselves that if Jesus at His last supper had shared His flesh and blood with His apostles, then it was a sign to us that we should do the same – take the flesh and blood as an intimate communion between us all. It was this that helped us to survive, and now we do not want this – which for us was something intimate, intimate – to be hackneyed or touched or anything like that. In a foreign country we tried to approach the subject in as elevated a spirit as possible, and now we tell it to you, our fellow countrymen, exactly as it was …’

  As Delgado finished, it was quite evident that the entire company was deeply moved by what he had said, and when Daniel Juan asked the assembled journalists if they had any questions to ask the survivors he was told that there were none. Whereupon the whole room burst into a spontaneous hurrah for the gentlemen of the Uruguayan and international press, followed by a final cheer for those who had not returned.

  3

  With the conclusion of the press conference, the public ordeal of the survivors, which had followed so closely on their private ordeal, came to an end, and they were able at last to return to the homes and families of which they had dreamed while imprisoned high up in the Andes.

  It was not easy to adapt to the reality. Their experience had been long and terrible; its effect had gone deep into both their conscious and subconscious minds and their behaviour reflected this shock. Many of the boys were brusque and irritable with their parents, novias, and brothers and sisters. They would flare up at the least frustration of their smallest whim. They were often moody and silent or would talk compulsively about the accident. Above all, they would eat. No sooner was a dish set on the table than they Would attack it, and when a meal was over they would stuff themselves with sweets and chocolates so that Canessa, for ex-example, became bloated in the space of only a few weeks.

  Their parents felt helpless in the face of this behaviour. Some had been warned by the psychiatrists in Santiago who had briefly examined some of their sons that they might face some difficulty in readapting to normal life and that there was little they could do to help. Their case, of course, was as baffling to psychiatrists as it was to the parents themselves, for there were few case histories relating to a breach of this particular taboo. No one could know what the effect would be on their minds; they could only wait and see.

  Some of the parents were also in a state of shock. It was as if they were paralysed by surprise and gratitude at the sight of those sons whom they had given up for dead. Coche Inciarte’s mother, for example, was unable to take her eyes off her son as he ate. At night she lay in the same room as he did but did not close her eyes; she simply watched her son as he slept.

  The mothers who were best equipped to deal with the unique situation in which they found themselves were Rosina and Sarah Strauch and Madelon Rodríguez. Not only did these three women have strong personalities which nothing could intimidate; they also looked upon the whole saga as theirs as well as their sons’. They behaved, as it were, as if their faith and their prayers were as much responsible for the survival of the boys as the boys’ own efforts. They were quite decided in their own minds on something which still confused the boys themselves – the meaning of what they had been through. To these three the boys had disappeared and then returned to prove to the world the miraculous powers of the Virgin Mary – in the case of the Strauch sisters, the Virgin of Garabandal.

  The beneficiaries of this miracle were justifiably confused because other interpretations were put forward. On the one hand they were aware that many – especially among older people – were appalled by what they had done and considered that they should have chosen to die. Even Madelon’s mother, who as much as anyone had believed in the return of her grandson, could not bring herself to contemplate this aspect of his survival.

  The Catholic Church, however, was quick to dismiss this primitive reaction. ‘You cannot condemn what they did,’ said Monsignor Andrés Rubio, Auxiliary Bishop of Montevideo, ‘when it was the only possibility of survival … Eating someone who has died in order to survive is incorporating their substance, and it is quite possible to compare this with a graft. Flesh survives when assimilated by someone in extreme need, just as it does when an eye or heart of a dead man is grafted onto a living man … What would we have done in a similar situation?… What would you say to someone if he revealed in confession a secret like that? Only one thing: not to be tormented by it … not to blame himself for something he would not blame in some
one else and which no one blames in him.’

  Carlos Partelli, the Archbishop of Montevideo, confirmed his opinion. ‘Morally I see no objection, since it was a question of survival. It is always necessary to eat whatever is at hand, in spite of the repugnance it may evoke.’

  And finally the theologian of L’Osservatore Romano, Gino Concetti, wrote that he who has received from the community has also the duty to give to the community or its individual members when they are in extreme need of help to survive. Such an imperative extends especially to the body, which is otherwise consigned to dissolution, to uselessness. ‘Considering these facts,’ Father Concetti went on, ‘we justify on an ethical basis the fact that the survivors of the crash of the Uruguayan airplane fed themselves with the only food available to avoid a sure death. It is legitimate to resort to lifeless human bodies in order to survive.’

  On the other hand, the church did not concur with the view that had been expressed by Delgado at the press conference that eating the flesh of their friends was equivalent to Holy Communion. When Monsignor Rubio was asked whether a refusal to eat the flesh of a dead human being could be interpreted as a form of suicide, and the opposite as an act of communion, he replied, ‘In no way can it be understood as suicide, but the use of the term communion is not correct either. At most it is possible to say that it is correct to use this term as a source of inspiration. But it is not communion.’

  It was clear, therefore, that the survivors were to be regarded neither as saints nor as sinners, but a role was in-increasingly sought for them as national heroes. The newspapers and radio and television stations began to take an understandable pride in what these young fellow countrymen had achieved. Uruguay was a small nation in a large world, and never since their soccer victory in the world Cup in 1950 had the activities of any Uruguayans achieved such world renown. There were many articles describing their courage, endurance and resourcefulness. The survivors, on the whole, rose to the occasion. Many of them kept their beards and long hair and were not ill pleased to be recognized wherever they went in Montevideo and Punta del Este.

  Though every interview and article emphasized that their achievement had been the work of the whole group, it was inevitable that some of the survivors should fit the role of national hero more successfully than others. Some, for example, were not even on stage. Pedro Algorta had gone to join his parents in Argentina. Daniel Fernández had retired to his parents’ estancia in the country. His two cousins, Fito and Eduardo Strauch, were too taciturn to project for the public an image which corresponded to the part they had played on the mountain.

  The ablest exponent of the whole experience was Pancho Delgado, and it was quite natural, because he was the one who had dealt with the question of cannibalism at the press conference, that the press should look to him for further information. Delgado rose to the occasion. He went by bus to Rio de Janeiro (with Ponce de León) to appear on television and gave extensive interviews to the Chilean magazine Chile Hoy and the Argentinian review Gente. Nor was it surprising that Delgado, finding himself once again in a situation where his talents could be useful, should use them; nor that the press should take advantage of so eloquent a survivor. His prominence in the public eye, however, did not endear him to his former companions.

  The other member of the group whose behaviour some felt was unseemly was Parrado. His character had undergone a greater metamorphosis than that of the others. The timid, uncertain boy had emerged from the ordeal as a dominating, self-assured man who was everywhere recognized and acclaimed as the hero of the Andean odyssey, but the man still contained the tastes and enthusiasms of the boy and, being freed now from his close acquaintance with death, he was determined to indulge them.

  Thinking him dead, his father had sold his Suzuki motorcycle to a friend, but so pleased was he to see Nando return from the grave that he bought him an Alfa Romeo 1750. In it Parrado roared off along the coast to Punta del Este to lead the sweet life on the beaches and in the cafés and nightclubs of the glamorous resort. All the beautiful girls who had previously thought of him as the shy friend of Panchito Abal now flocked around him and vied with one another for his attention. Parrado did not hold back. The only thing he permitted to draw him away from Punta del Este was the Formula One motor race in Buenos Aires. There he met drivers Emerson Fittipaldi and Jackie Stewart, and they were photographed together, for everywhere Parrado went he was followed by a horde of journalists and photographers.

  These pictures all appeared in the Uruguayan papers and dismayed his fifteen companions. When the paper showed him among a gaggle of bathing beauties in Punta del Este as a judge of a beauty competition, they voiced their objection and Parrado withdrew; to him, as to the others, the unity of the sixteen was still of the greatest importance.

  While he recognized that it was their combined efforts which had saved their lives, however, Parrado felt that his own achievement was a triumph which he should be allowed to celebrate. Life had conquered over death and should be lived to the full in the same way as he had lived it before … but of course some things had changed for ever. One evening in the middle of January, he went into a nightclub with a friend and two girls. It was a place he had frequented with Panchito Abal, and he had not been there since the crash. As he sat down at a table and ordered drinks, he was suddenly struck with the truth that Panchito was dead, and for the very first time in the three months of trial and suffering, he burst into tears. He fell forward onto the table and cried and cried and cried. He could not stem the flood of tears, so the four of them left the nightclub. Soon after that, Parrado started work again selling nuts and bolts at La Casa del Tornillo.

  The reason why the other fifteen survivors looked askance at Parrado’s return to the kind of life he had led before was that they themselves had a more elevated – almost a mystical – concept of their experience. Inciarte, Mangino and Methol felt certain that they were the beneficiaries of a miracle. Delgado considered that to have lived through the accident, the avalanche, and the weeks which followed could be ascribed to the hand of God, but that the expedition was more a manifestation of human courage. Canessa, Zerbino, Páez, Sabella and Harley all felt that God had played a fundamental role in their survival, that He had been there, present, on the mountain. On the other hand, Fernández, Fito and Eduardo Strauch, and Vizintín were more inclined to believe, in all modesty, that their survival and escape could be ascribed to their own efforts. Certainly, prayer had assisted them – it had been a bond which held them together and a safeguard against despair – but if they had relied on prayer alone they would still be up on the mountain. Perhaps the greatest value of the grace of God had been to preserve their sanity.

  The two most sceptical about the role God had played in their rescue were Parrado himself and Pedro Algorta. Parrado had good reason, for like many of them he could see no human logic in the selection of the living from the dead. If God had helped them to live, then He had allowed others to die; and if God was good, how could He possibly have permitted his mother to die, and Panchito and Susana to suffer so terribly before their death? Perhaps God had wanted them in heaven, but how could his mother and sister be happy there while he and his father continued to suffer on earth?

  Algorta’s case was more complex, for his Jesuit education in Santiago and Buenos Aires had left him better equipped to deal with the mysteries of the Catholic faith than had the simpler theological education of the Christian Brothers. Moreover he had been, before he left, among the more earnestly religious of the passengers on the plane. He had not had the easy though somewhat unorthodox familiarity with God of Carlitos Páez, but the orientation of his life – especially his political conviction – was centred around the precept that God is love. After seventy days in the wilderness of the Andes he did not believe any the less that God was love, but it had taught him that the love of God was not something to count on for survival. No angels had come down from heaven to help them. It was their own qualities of courage and endurance whi
ch had seen them through. If anything, the experience had made him less religious; he now had a stronger belief in man.

  They all agreed, however, that their ordeal on the mountain had changed their attitude towards life. Suffering and privation had taught them how frivolous their lives had been. Money had become meaningless. No one up there would have sold one cigarette for the five thousand dollars which they had amassed in the suitcase. Each day that passed had peeled off layer upon layer of superficiality until they were left only with what they truly cared for: their families, their novias, their faith in God and their homeland. They now despised the world of fashionable clothes, nightclubs, flirtatious girls, and idle living. They determined to take their work more seriously, to be more devout in their religious observances, and to dedicate more time to their families.

  Nor did they intend to keep what they had learned to themselves. Many of them – especially Canessa, Páez, Sabella, Inciarte, Mangino and Delgado – felt a sense of vocation to make use of their experience in some way. They felt touched by God and inspired by Him to teach others the lesson of love and self-sacrifice which their suffering had taught them. If the world had been shocked by the knowledge that they had eaten the bodies of their friends, this shock should be used to show the world just what it can mean to love one’s neighbour as oneself.

  There was only one rival, as it were, for the lesson which was to be drawn from the return of the sixteen survivors, and this was the Virgin of Garabandal, for, whatever the opinions of their sons, there remained that group of strong-minded women who had invoked her intercession and now felt that she had answered their prayers. They remembered when the sceptics had conceded that only a miracle could save the boys, and they were determined not to see their Virgin cheated of it just because it was susceptible to a rational explanation of a somewhat disagreeable nature. Indeed, they gripped the nettle of cannibalism with the thesis that the manna from heaven which had rained down upon the deserts of Sinai was but a euphemistic description for God’s inspiration to the Jews to eat the bodies of their dead.