Roberto Canessa: “I learned more about the Andes from watching the film than from being up there” / Photo: EFE
The Old Christians Club school rugby team from Montevideo chartered a Uruguayan Air Force plane to travel to Santiago, Chile on October 13, 1972. They wanted to play a match against Old Boys in this city. But when the FH-227D plane carrying 45 passengers crossed the Andes, it crashed and caused an accident instant death of 12 people. Another 17 died in the following days as a result of injuries, lack of food and the harsh conditions they were exposed to.
The accident went down in history as “the”. Miracle of the Andes” and is depicted in the Netflix film “The Snow Society”.
It was one of the most shocking episodes in aviation history because one of the reasons 16 planes survived was because they had eaten their dead comrades. The group that resisted was rescued 72 days after the accident.
One of the rescued Roberto Canessais now a cardiologist specializing in pediatric cardiology.
The BBC's Victoria Derbyshire interviewed him in March 2016 when he was presenting the book I Had to Survive: How the Plane Crashed in the Andes inspired my calling to save lives''.
This is his testimony
Image by Roberto Canessa in 1974.
We flew over the Andes and it was very cloudy.
At one point, one of the flight attendants said to the passengers, “Buckle up, we're going to fly through some clouds and the plane is going to shake.”
Sure enough, the plane began to shake.
Someone told me to look out the window, we were flying very close to the mountains.
Some people said, “I don’t want to die.”
The plane attempted to gain altitude but crashed.
I held onto my seat very, very tightly. The plane lost both wings and began to slide down the mountains.
When it finally stopped, I flew towards a “wall” in front of me with incredible force.
I hit my head hard and felt like I was going to pass out. I couldn't believe the plane had stopped.
Continue reading the story
I saw that my legs were still there, my arms were still there, I had survived.
I couldn't believe it at all. I looked around and everything was a disaster. Some friends were dead, others were injured, bleeding, some had pieces of metal embedded in them.
I told myself that I had to get out of there, that the police would arrive, that the ambulances would arrive, the firefighters, so I went to the back of the plane.
The plane was broken and as I walked into the snow I was very sad because we were in the middle of the mountains surrounded by immense silence.
There were no firefighters, there was no help, there was nothing
The pilot was alive but trapped in the cockpit. They couldn't get him out and he said, “I have a gun in my briefcase.” He wanted to commit suicide. He was in agony all night long. We couldn't figure it out.
We were freezing because of the temperature. The next day the seriously injured people had died. It seemed good to me because his suffering and pain were unbearable.
For those who stayed, there were only stones and snow. There was nothing to eat and we were very, very hungry.
There is an instinct within you that tells you that you need to eat something. So we think about the leather of the shoes or the straps.
We started chewing the leather but we felt like it was poisoning us because it contained a lot of chemicals. So we had nothing left.
human experiment
At some point someone said: “I think I'm going crazy thinking about eating our friends' bodies.“.
They replied that it was crazy, that we wouldn't do it, that we wouldn't become cannibals.
Canessa and the other 15 survivors had to walk through the Andes for 11 days to be rescued.
I was a medical student at the time and saw meat, fat, protein, carbohydrates.
I found it very difficult to invade my friends' privacy and cut off part of their bodies. He felt like he was violating his privacy in some way.
someone said “Well, if Jesus Christ said at the Last Supper, 'Take my body and my blood,' then that's all right.”.
But for me it wasn't the last supper. Although at the time I wondered what I would “think” if I were one of the corpses.
I would be proud of my body being used as a living by my friends. Today I feel like I carry a part of my friends within me and I have to be grateful for their memory.
For some it was more difficult than for others to eat the corpses – that is, to live long enough to be saved.
I often think it was like a human experiment. Then it became customary to share the meat among the survivors.
The story of the accident and the 16 survivors – pictured at an event marking the 40th anniversary of the tragedy – inspired 16 books and several films.
solidarity
The families (of the deceased) supported us, they didn't care what happened to the bodies, they cared about what happened during their lifetime.
It's funny because I think there are two versions of this story. The way we lived and ate corpses wasn't the most difficult thing.
People say, “Ah, you survived because you ate the corpses,” as if it were a magic formula.
In September 2010, a group of plane crash survivors visited the relatives of 33 Chilean miners trapped in a mine in northern Chile. They raised a Uruguayan flag alongside the 33 flags representing the workers.
But eating the corpses was just a way to save time. We survived because we were a team, worked together and helped each other.
We survived because we left the mountains on foot for 11 days.
One of the things that helped us interact was that we were a group and had grown up together.
The only thing we had was life and you said, “I’m going to stick with it and see what happens, against all odds.”
When I was in the mountains and saw my friends dead, I knew I could be next and I realized how fragile the line between life and death is.
Since then, life has been more fun for me.
*This article was originally published in 2017 and updated following the premiere of The Snow Society.