(CNN Spanish) – It was called the “Christmas Miracle,” a demonstration of faith, hope, intelligence, teamwork and survival instinct that moved the entire world. It is known as the “Wonder of the Andes”.
The tragic and extraordinary story began on October 12, 1972. A total of 45 people, including 19 members of Christian Bross's school rugby team in Uruguay, took off for Santiago de Chile aboard Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 to compete in the Friendship Cup.
That was just the beginning of what was to come.
Bad weather conditions forced the pilots to land at Mendoza Airport in Argentina. The next day, October 13th, they decided to take off. En route, the plane suffered a brutal impact in the middle of the Andes mountain range, more than 3,500 meters above sea level.
“We flew from Mendoza to Santiago, the peaks were slowly getting closer to us, they were getting closer and closer. “Soon they started to feel huge tremors, the peaks were getting closer and the truth is that I started to be afraid,” said Eduardo Strauch, one of the 16 survivors of the tragedy, in the CNN documentary “The Journey Without a Destination.”
“And suddenly the noise, the sound of the engines at full speed and an impact, frozen air, the smell of kerosene,” he added.
He remembered thinking at that moment that it was the end of his life and that of his companions. When he opened his eyes, he said, he realized what had happened.
Another survivor was Gustavo Zerbino. In an interview with CNN, he said that after the accident and fall, he opened his eyes and felt air conditioning fluid running down his face. “If I take a step back, I'll bury myself in the snow, it's up to my waist,” he said.
Strauch described the first night in the Andes as “eternal” and “a horror” but said they were hopeful they would come the next day to rescue them. “We never thought we would stay 72 nights,” he said.
On the first night, the survivors had to improvise the plane's fuselage to cover the rear section, which had separated from the plane after the crash. They also had to sleep next to their dead comrades, listen to the screams of the injured, and endure freezing temperatures.
The Snow Society and Cannibalism
The adverse conditions led them to find a new way to survive: the so-called “Snow Society” with unthinkable rules.
“We came from civilization and from one day to the next we found ourselves in nothingness and began to transform into a different society with different codes, and we ran the Snow Society in cooperation with everyone in the position that everyone had been assigned “One,” explained Strauch.
They made a blanket from the plane's seat covers, braided it with copper wire from the plane, and made a pair of glasses from the plane's sunshades to prevent the snow from damaging their retinas. To get water, they made a kind of funnel and used the sheets of the seats so that it melted in the sun and fell into a bottle.
According to Strauch, the only food they carried was wine, chocolate and cookies, but they soon ran out of them. They also ate toothpaste and deodorant, but quickly became weaker. This need and desire to survive led them to eat the flesh of their dead companions.
“At the end, the idea came up that we would offer each other as food (…) and what could be better than being food for a friend and not having to get stranded on the mountain and get eaten by condors and stuff like that “The stage began to come to life in a way that would have been unimaginable two days before,” he said.
Although it was difficult for the survivors at first, over time they got used to eating human flesh.
The expedition and the rescue
On October 23, 1972, survivors heard on the radio that the search to rescue them had been called off. With this news, they decided to start expeditions to leave the mountains on their own.
Roberto Canessa and Nardo Parrado climbed the Andes mountain range for ten days to announce that they were still alive two months after the accident and to point out the spot where their other 14 companions were trapped in the fuselage of the crashed plane the mountains, where another 29 people died.
The survivors waiting on the plane listened to the radio every day, hoping for good news, until they learned days later that their two companions had been found.
A few days before Christmas 1972, on December 22nd, the rescue occurred that surprised the whole world and was therefore called the “Christmas Miracle”. For 16 survivors, the 72-day nightmare was over.
With information from Dario Klein.