Dan Snow's History Hit - The Real Society of the Snow: I Survived the Andes Flight Crash

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Warning: this episode includes descriptions of human suffering and cannibalism. High in the remote Andes mountains, a Uruguayan rugby team resorts to the unimaginable to survive after their plane crashes into the side of a mountain. With no food or water, the survivors endured freezing temperatures and isolation for 72 days. Their story captivated the world, provoking both horror and awe.Dan is joined by survivor Roy Harley, as well as Daniel Nogueira whose brother perished in the ordeal and author John Guiver. Together they tell this extraordinary tale of survival and explore the complex moral dilemmas faced in the struggle to survive. This is the true story behind Netflix's hit movie 'Society of the Snow.'This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmoreEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

The travel begins on the 12th of October. We went early in the morning to the airport and it was a very nice day, it's very sunny. And we went to the airport with a lot of friends, very excited with my first flight to Chile. This is Roy Harley. You might recognize his name if you recently watched the hit Netflix movie Society of the Snow.

He's one of the survivors of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the high Andes and clung to life with nothing, in a feat that defies what we understand as the limits of human endurance. Even if you didn't see the movie, you probably do know this story. This is the rugby team who had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. And so the pilot told us that there was a big storm over the Andes. And this plane, in that time, there is no GPS or nothing. When we begin going across, we go into the clouds. We can't see from our windows.

And some 15, 20 minutes of flight, the pilot decided that he had reached Curicó and he began landing. But he didn't take into account the wind, so we weren't in that position. We still were in Argentina, so the pilot began going down. The engines were very slow and we were landing. going down the engines were very slow and we were landing I didn't know nothing because it was my first travel in a plane and then it begins to to bumble up and down and then we have a very very big jump the plane makes a very hard noise there. I think that in the cabin of the pilot, he saw we were going just to a mountain and he tried to put the nose of the plane up.

We just crashed against this mountain. The plane breaks. What had happened was something that most of us have nightmares about. A propeller plane carrying 40 people, pilots, crew, a rugby team of young men and their families from Uruguay, got caught in a storm. In a navigational error,

the pilot believed they'd crossed the highest peaks and he was safe to descend to land at their destination in Santiago, Chile. In reality, he was heading straight into the side of a mountain, in a desperately remote part of the Andes, on the border between Argentina and Chile. I feel that the snow was coming when the plane was sliding down the mountain and then they stopped the plane and all the seats go to the front it was a mass of people in seats and and he stopped there it was a second

of very very quiet and then who shouts my leg was caught between the seats, and I saw a lot of friends in the snow, very damaged, a lot of people dead. Everybody was shouting, and we were there, stand up in the middle of the Cordillera Rosandes at 4,000 meters, and not knowing what really had happened. The team, dressed in summer clothes, found themselves thousands of feet up on a mountain ridge in blizzard conditions, where temperatures plunged to minus 30 degrees Celsius. They had no shelter beyond the broken

fuselage of the aircraft, and even that would prove temporary. fuselage of the aircraft, and even that would prove temporary. By the end of an ordeal that would last 72 days, only 16 of them had survived. Their story is incredible, from the plane crash itself, to their resourcefulness on the mountain, their journey for help, and the way that the world treated them when what they had to do to stay alive reached the press. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got Roy Harley, who survived in the Andes, Daniel Nogueira, the brother of Arturo Nogueira, one of Roy's teammates, and the author John Guyver, who's committed his life to sharing their story with the world.

You can sense from this introduction that there are a number of areas in this story which you may find upsetting, so proceed with caution. This is the story of the Uruguayan rugby team who survived the Andes flight crash, told by those who were there. The story takes place in October 1972. The rugby team was made up of young guys, aged 19 to 26, from a very tight-knit community in a small town called Carrasco on the outskirts of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. It was a nice place to grow up. It was affluent, the families knew each other and the boys all went to the same school, the Christian Brothers from Ireland.

This is John Guyver, author of To Play the Game, a history of Flight 571. It was certainly very idyllic. Kids could ride their bikes around freely. Houses were kept unlocked, the beach on the doorstep. A rich social life. Everyone went to the same church, the same school. And then there was the rugby. The Irish Christian brothers had been adamant that all their students should learn the game. They considered it a built character. They considered it a recipe for life, a way to learn

discipline, teamwork, selflessness. And so all the boys in the community, most of whom went to the school, they learned rugby and many of them grew to love the game. And so when they left the school, a bunch of them got together, they formed an old boys club called the Old Christians. And the successes led to trips further afield to Argentina, to Buenos Aires and various other places in Argentina. And in 1971 to Chile. And they had such a good time in 1971 that they organized a repeat trip in 1972. Why did that plane crash on the way there? Well, to understand the accident, you have

to understand a little bit about the flight plan. So the plane had set out from Montevideo on the morning of Thursday, the 12th of October, 1972, but had been forced to stop overnight in the Argentinian city of Mendoza due to an extreme cyclonic storm over the Andes. And the following day, which was Friday the 13th, there were still remnants of the storm. And although they were so close to Santiago, the pilots decided to take a much safer route, which involved flying a couple of hundred miles south, crossing the Andes, where there are much lower mountains, and then flying north. And so that leg across the Andes should have taken around 35 minutes. But about 16 minutes into that leg, the pilots changed course for Santiago. And there've been lots of theories as to why they did that, whether they were lost at

the time. My personal belief is that what they did was they set course for Santiago as soon as they made contact with the ground station. And then what I think happened was that there were a couple of very deep air pockets. There was a much stronger wind than they anticipated. And I believe they dropped out of the line of sight with the ground station in Santiago. And so they lost their instruments and they had to resort to manual navigation. By that time, they were flying in very deep cloud, very thick cloud, and they were completely lost. And when they came out of the clouds, they found themselves heading directly towards a 15,000-foot wall of rock and snow, and they almost managed to clear it. But a wing clipped the ridge, the tail was severed, and some of the passengers and crew got sucked out. And the windless fuselage landed on the other side of the mountain. It started tobogganing down about a mile to a remote valley on the Argentinian side of the border. As the fuselage and the remaining passengers

crashed down the mountainside, all the seats broke away from their fastenings and everything slid to the front of the plane, crushing those in the first rows as well as the pilots. Roy Harley, who told us he was sitting in the 12th row, sustained a horrible injury to his leg. Eight people were killed during the crash or shortly after. 28 remained,

emerging from the wrecked fuselage that had come to a halt in deep snow. Around them for miles, just white ice and snow, grey rock and the encroaching black of night. It was a nightmare. Then the night came very quickly because all the stress and, with all the damaged people, I was very afraid. And the cold was terrible. The only way to take out the cold was putting body against body with another and hitting yourself.

It was terrible. Nobody slept. The other day, the sun appears. The weather was better, but it was very windy and very cold. And there we can realize who were the dead people and who were the injured. Was there drinking water in the wreck? Was there any food in the wreck? nothing only three or four chocolates some jam and nothing more we spend all this day drinking water we melt snow but it was very difficult because it was one drop by drop and all the small quantities of water that you melt you produce from the snow in the night, it freezes. So we really have very few water to drink. And we, with a small knife, we cut very small pieces of chocolate for all of us.

And the hunger is it's terrible, terrible. The day after the accident, there were still 28 survivors. They were sort of living cramped in this fuselage. And there was a general optimism that the rescue would come very quickly. A couple of planes had flown over. They felt they'd been spotted. They rationed the few supplies that they had, which was very little. So a typically daily ration would be a small piece of chocolate and a sip of wine. And they made some exploratory expeditions. They found they couldn't get very far from the fuselage. It's too cold to survive outside overnight. The Chilean Air Search and Rescue Service had been notified within an hour of the crash that the flight hadn't landed as it should have done and was no longer appearing on radar. Four aircraft were dispatched to search for the

missing plane in its last reported position. It was concluded that it must have crashed in one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the Andes, and therefore they were looking for a wreck site, not survivors. The plane went down around 3pm. The news reached Uruguayan media around 6pm. This is Daniel Nogueira. He's the younger brother of Arturo Nogueira, who initially survived the crash. He was a student in 1972. the crash. He was a student in 1972. So the way I took notice of this was that I was in school and we had a special math class on Friday. And then during that class, someone approached me and asked me for the plane of the old Christians. And I said, well, they went to Chile yesterday. And she said, well, I heard that the plane is lost. And I said, well, I didn't hear anything.

And this was about 7 p.m. on that Friday. So I didn't quite believe that something had happened to the plane until I went home. And a friend of mine came with me on the bus. And we usually would take off on the same stop. And he would go one way and I would go another way. But he came with me to my place. So he probably had heard more than I knew. So when I got home, it was full

of people. And then I realized that something had really happened to the plane. That was the way I acknowledged about it. Presumably, everybody thought people don't survive plane crashes, right? I mean, initially, did they assume the news was bad? Absolutely. Yes. Initially, it was a lost plane. So we didn't know there was a crash yet. And there were also conflicting versions. Some people had heard that the plane had landed somewhere else in Chile. So it was not very clear until probably the following days when we knew that the fate was a crash in the mountains. And then at least at home and at least my father, rather than my mother, he had flown over the mountains over the Andes several times.

And he said, well, there's no hope. And usually, you know, any plane crash has no survivors. So, yes, we didn't have any hope in the beginning. Back on the mountain, Roy and the others did remain hopeful. We began to wait for the help from outside. And we try to help our friends that were damaged, but waiting the help from outside. That's when I found the small radio. So I went very early in the morning and put on the radio. Went very early in the morning and put on the radio. And then I heard some radio transmissions from Chile. And all these radios speak about the Uruguayan plane crashing the Andes.

And it was incredible being there in the middle of the mountain. Here, this radio talking about the Uruguayan plane that crashed the Andes and the search were organizing and everything. But after eight days of searching in heavy snow, rescuers terminated the efforts, believing that the chances of anyone surviving the crash by this point were zero. It was decided they'd look for the bodies in January when the snow melted. The decision shocked the survivors and their families, who believed their loved ones could still be alive. They decided to take matters into their own hands. That's one of many extraordinary aspects of the story, the parent search. So it was largely orchestrated by one individual, a guy called Carlos Pais Villarro.

And he was a very famous Uruguayan artist. So he was the father of one of the passengers, Carlitos Pais, his son. And Pais Villarro, he dropped everything to travel to Chile on the news of the plane's disappearance. And over the following two months, he built up this army of volunteers in Chile, mountain guides, scouts, army personnel, pilots. And quite importantly, he was very involved with members of a ham radio club, which had a fleet of mobile ham radio cars, actually Citroen 2CVs.

So that formed his transport and his communication as he traveled around Chile searching for the lost passengers. At the other end of this communication link in Carrasco, in the passengers' community, there was a contemporary and a friend of the passengers, a guy called Raphael Ponce de Leon. And the only reason he hadn't gone on the trip was the arrival of his first child was imminent. But he set up a ham radio station in his father's house, and there were daily communications with Pais Villarro. And every evening throughout the whole episode, mothers of the passengers would gather at the house to hear the latest news. Occasionally, a group of parents would head to Chile to help with the search.

And the ironic thing is that Pais de Loro had originally been searching in approximately the correct place. But the official search and rescue effort had done a thorough search of the area. They hadn't spotted anything. Meanwhile, at the crash site, as the days entered double digits, the hunger became all-consuming and survivors started to consider the unthinkable. When we heard the radio that the search has been finished, after shouting, crying and doing everything, we say, OK, so we organize. We change the attitude, not waiting the rescue from outside and saying, OK, now we need to organize ourselves. But at the time we were very, very weak.

We tried to eat the leather of our shoes, but it's impossible. We tried to eat our cigarettes, but it was really, I don't recommend you. So we have to all together to take a very important decision. It was the most important decision we take out in the Cordillera. Because we were in a glacier of ice and rocks. We have nothing more than ice and rock.

and rocks. We have nothing more than ice and rock. So we have to decide to use the body of our friends as energy to survive. One of Roy's teammates was Koko Nikolic. He was a 20-year-old student, passionate about animals, training to be a vet. He survived the initial crash, but sadly died 17 days into the ordeal. His friends remember him as both brave and determined. Before he died, he wrote letters documenting the team's experience and wrote this of the dilemma they faced. One thing that will seem incredible to you today, we start to cut the dead in order to eat them. There's nothing else to do. As for me, I ask God in all that is possible that this day would never come.

But it came and we have to face it with courage and faith. Faith because I come to the conclusion that the bodies are there because God put them there. And as the only thing that matters is the soul, I don't have any remorse. If the day came and I could save someone with my body, I would gladly do it. There started to be some discussions in small groups of friends. And then there was a general discussion in the fuselage among the whole group. And the realists were really encouraging the others that, look, this is what had to be done.

The search had certainly been called off. There was no prospect of any food. They were getting weaker by the day. The doctors among them, the medical students, they made nutritional arguments. There were some arguments by the more religious among them that it was something likened to communion. There were various other discussions. There were some people who said, look, we need to be absolutely sure that the search has been called off before we do this.

And so there was a lot of consideration. You must understand the position. 10 days, 11 days have passed since we crashed and we were dying. And Eva, I can tell you a thing. I don't want to die. tell you a thing, I don't want to die. For me, it was terrible to think that in my house, my fathers and my brothers were crying. I was alive and I don't want to die. So I would do whatever we need to survive. So it wasn't a hard thing. I understand that for you and for the audience,

it's terrible to understand that. But for us, it wasn't a very hard decision. Some discussion, yes, okay, but they are friends and they have faces and we know who they are. And that was the worst thing, knowing who were the bodies.

But it was the only thing to survive. I don't know if you understand in that position. We were lost in the middle of the Corrigera de los Andes, our four thumbs. And we have heard that nobody was looking for us. So it was around the ninth day that one of them, Fito Strouch, who was somewhat of a leader on the mountain, he was one of three cousins, he took it upon himself to do the first cut to break the taboo. And a few others followed that day. the taboo, and a few others followed that day. They assured each other of the intimacy and seriousness of what they were doing and made an analogy with the Catholic communion. These were words that would later be used to encourage those who were more reluctant to eat.

Eventually, everybody ate. They began with parts they couldn't recognize as human, but as the weeks wore on, they had to consume all the parts. They had no choice. And so you made the decision. Was there any way that you organized the eating to try and make it more acceptable? Or did it just... Yes, yes. The first times, we cooked it.

You cooked it. But the problem is that we have nothing to make fire. We have no wood, no papers, nothing. So we make a small fire with a box of wood. But then when it finished that wood, we cannot cook it anymore. So we decided to eat it raw. Did it feel strange or did it feel normal? Yeah, no.

We were living in a very small society and very quickly it began normal. Very quickly. Because we were all alone in the middle of the cordillera and we decided to organize ourselves, we organized the people that cut the meat

the people that make the water the people that clean the plane the people that organize every day who were the position of everybody to go to sleep. It was an organization, very, very well organized. Everybody do what he could do.

Popular culture is really focused on this part of the story, the horror of people eating their friends. But in truth, this story should be remembered for the immense compassion and respect this group of young people showed each other while enduring a nightmare, some making the ultimate sacrifice so their friends could live. I don't think any of us can possibly imagine the strength it took to choose to survive. In the days after the crash, each person took up a role. They cleared the snow from the shattered fuselage, where they could sleep,

huddle together for warmth, on two levels. One on the plane floor, and another level, the sort of hammock in the roof of the plane. On October the 29th, the plane crash survivors had been living on the mountainside for 17 days. Of the original 45 who'd boarded the flight, 27 were still alive. But things were about to get worse. Their position on the mountainside was not only susceptible to plummeting temperatures, but also avalanches. On that day, the 29th of October, an enormous avalanche crashed down from the ridge above. The fuselage where the team hid filled with snow. Those on the lower level were buried and most suffocated.

Those on the upper level managed to survive. Just. We went inside the plane and an avalanche came and covered us with three meters of snow. We had no light. We were sleeping with the bodies of eight of our friends that died and all wet because our heat melted the snow. I changed places with my best friend, Diego Storm, five minutes before the avalanche, and he died, and I survived. This is Dan Snow's history. There's more on this topic coming up. To be continued... and popes who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

Those who survived the initial avalanche tried to sleep in the cramped and claustrophobic space in the fuselage between the snow and the roof. Wet, and most of them without shoes, they had to sleep on top of each other or directly on the ice. Several suffered exposure from being against the snow for so long. Then at midnight, a second avalanche came, sealing the fuselage completely and cutting off the air supply. Roy knew that in the cockpit, there were some smashed windows to the outside. So each day I would have a bar, an aluminum bar, and I went there. I go across the pilot. The pilots were frozen there in the position. And I tried to dig a chimney hole to receive air. The first day, we couldn't reach this hole.

And we learned there that the snow, it's, how do you say, it's permeable. The oxygen passed through the snow because we were 19 people inside that plane breathing. And in the third day, I could dig with this hole and I saw a piece of blue sky. And there we have oxygen. And the snow with the sun begins to go down and when we could, we tried to go through this hole outside. It was very, very cold outside because we were all wet and for us the avalanche was the worst thing that we received in these 72 days. It took them three days to free themselves.

It wasn't just the physical danger that threatened their survival, but the psychological distress. One of Roy's teammates, Archo Nogueira, survived the initial crash, but the avalanche claimed his two closest friends, Marcelo Perez, the rugby team's captain, and Enrique Platero. The loss left him heartbroken. He was known for his loyalty, kindness, and sensitivity. Arturo began to isolate himself from the others, often resting alone inside the cold, wet fuselage. He died just over two weeks later.

This is brother Daniel, who was back in Uruguay with the families, desperately conducting their own search for their loved ones. Tell me about your brother. What was he like? Arturo. First of all, he was my eldest brother. Out of seven, he was the second after his sister. And I think he was the perfect son to my parents, other than all the rest of us. A very good student during school. He played the guitar and sang very well. And he was very good at sports. A very annoying older brother.

good at sports. A very annoying older brother. Yes, yes, yes. I think that probably put a lot of pressure on him as well, but he did very well. He was a good person, good friend of his friends. It seems like your community mobilized. They started organizing searches and radios and teams. Was that a way of channeling that grief and that energy? I have to say there was like a totally different point of view between the mothers and the fathers. Usually the fathers were, I would say at that point, more realistic about what had happened with the plane. about what had happened with the plane. But the mothers were very insistent on the fact that they felt that their sons were still alive. And that happened at home, as it happened with many other homes. So I think that many of the searches were driven by the mothers.

driven by my mothers. Were there any, it seems crazy to say, but were there any moments when you laughed? Were you able to talk about other things? Yes. When we go inside the planes every evening, we pray the rosary. And then we, everybody tell what was the best

food that was made in his home and it's incredible because we were very hungry and we

speak about food and everybody told how it was prepared and what things it have in the

cooking and everything and you can in the cooking and everything. And you can see the eyes of all of us looking at the guy that was speaking. It was incredible. Then we talk about our life, our friends, our family. We talk and we laugh. Really, we laugh. In the night, we laugh. And we laugh, really we laugh. In the night we laugh and then everybody

was going to sleep. October turned into November. November into December. Those who remained knew that time was running out. Some of the team had attempted expeditions away from the fuselage, but had always encountered terrain that was too difficult to pass, bad weather, or had returned in fear of getting lost. But on December the 12th,

three of the men set out on one final attempt to get help. They knew their chances of surviving or finding anyone were very, very slim, but they had no choice. Well, they had, on an early expedition, found the tail of the plane, which had actually gone even further down the mountain. And there they'd found some insulation materials, and they spent a week or so constructing a three-person sleeping bag. And that's what was going to allow them to spend the nights outside. And the final expedition, which set off

on the 12th of December, it was about day 60 of their odyssey, they headed west towards Chile and blocking their way was a 3,000 foot wall of snow at the head of the valley. So the plane, the fuselage was at about 12,000 feet. And this mountain that they were climbing was about 3,000 feet high, about 15,000 feet. And three of the survivors started out, Nando Parado, Roberto Canessa, and Antonio Vizintin, who was also known as Tintin. And it took the best part of three days to reach the summit of that headwall, which was actually the high ridge separating Argentina and Chile. And when they got to the top, all they saw was mountains in every direction.

And they realized the trek was going to take much longer than they had imagined. So they sent Tintin back to the fuselage. They took his rations. They rested another day. And so it was about day five that they took the step into the unknown. And they knew there was no way back because of the steepness of the descent. And they felt most likely the outcome was that they'd die walking, but it was really all they could do, you know, other than just sort of sit and waste away at the fuselage.

So they started climbing down a long, wide gully. And after a couple of days, it looked like they were approaching some sort of valley. And they got very excited as they lay down to sleep that night because they noticed the sun on the mountain opposite them continued to shine late into the evening. And that gave them hope that the valley was open to the west. Well, the following day, they entered the valley, and it was this long, wide, deserted valley with many boulders. And they came across a river coming out from the snow. Eventually, they reached the snow line, and they started to see some signs of life, some plants and birds and lizards.

line and they started to see some signs of life, some plants and birds and lizards. And on day eight, they came across some signs of human activity. They spotted a horseshoe, rusty soup can, and they continued on down the valley. And on day nine, as they settled down for the night, they spotted a man across the river they'd been following. And it was a muleteer, a cattleman. His name's Sergio Catalan. He was with his two sons returning from their day's work. It was sort of the summer pastures for their cattle and sheep. And the two survivors, they jumped up and down and shouted and gesticulated. And they couldn't hear much over the roar of the river,

but they were just able to hear him shout back, manana, because it was already getting dark by then. So tomorrow, well, the next morning, they saw him again. There was an exchange of notes thrown across the river, including the famous one from Nando Parado, which said, I come from a plane that crashed in the mountains. I'm Uruguayan. We've been walking for 10 days. In the plane, there are still 14 injured people.

Well, Sir Catalan sent a man to help them, and then he set off on his mule to alert the authorities. They were in a very isolated place. It was a place called Los Maiteñes, and it was about 10 miles down a mule track, and then another 30 miles down a dirt road to the nearest village, and further still to the nearest town of San Fernando. But fortuitously, he came across a road crew on the dirt road, and they gave him a lift to San Fernando, where he showed the letter to the authorities.

And that kicked off the whole rescue effort. If it hadn't been for that chance encounter, they may not have been able to make that journey themselves. It's extraordinary. No, they really were on their last legs. I mean, one of them, Roberto Canessa, he really couldn't walk anymore. They'd been hiking for 10 days. I mean, it was them, Roberto Canessa, he really couldn't walk anymore. They'd been hiking for 10 days. And I mean, it was very fortuitous. I imagine it's not easy then to hike back up to rescue, even with a modern, you know, the government at your back. Well, so, I mean, the rescue would be by helicopter, although it turned out to be much, much higher in the Andes than they felt. And the helicopters had a great deal of difficulty.

But the day when Catalan had arrived to alert the authorities, it was too late to consider a rescue that day. But all the preparations were made, so helicopter crews were prepared, and anistas, medical personnel, army personnel, police, and so on. and an Easter's medical personnel, army personnel, police, and so on. And a squadron of army personnel went up to Los Mitenes to speak to Arado and Canessa. It wasn't long before the news had spread across the Chilean radio network. But the following day, the rescue started taking place. So the helicopter set off early. They arrived in Los Mitenes mid-morning. They picked up Nando Parado so he could direct them to the crash site. hope they were starting to plan another expedition, but they'd listened to the transistor radio that morning. They'd heard the names Canessa and Parado, and they realized that a rescue was imminent. And the rescue was actually quite fraught. One of the helicopters was close to crashing on the

mountain. They were only able to hover on one ski. Three Yandinistas and a medical orderly jumped out. Six of the survivors were hauled aboard. And that's all they were able to take that day. The remaining eight had to wait another day because conditions were just too dangerous. The winds were too dangerous. But now they had food and contact with the outside world. And so the six who were rescued that day were flown back to Los Mitenes, where they received first aid, and from there to San Fernando, where they spent the night in the hospital, in the local hospital. lists going around. And some of the parents had traveled to Chile and others were in Montevideo.

And it was left to Pais Villarro, who had led the parent search all those weeks, to read out the list of survivors on the radio. And the list was broadcast in Carrasco to the family members who had gathered outside Ponce de Leon's house. And there they heard who the 16 survivors were. When the helicopter arrived to rescue you, what state were you in? Were you exhausted when the helicopter came? I was really very weak. I had to make a great effort. When I was rescued, my weight was 37 kilos. Wow. In the beginning, I was 85 and I left the plane with 37 kilos. I was really bad.

Could you believe it when the helicopter came? What was your excitement? Yes. When we heard on the radio, Parral and Canessa, we realized that they have reached civilization and the helicopters were coming so we prepared ourselves to receive the helicopters the next day when we listened to the radio

and we waited, waited, waited until midday that they appeared there. Imagine two helicopters in that hole that we were. The noise of a helicopter was incredible. There was a great reunion, the survivors and their families, and they stayed there in Santiago for a few days over Christmas and the families of the dead returned to Montevideo. 45 people had gone missing when the plane crashed on the 13th of October.

16 survived until the 23rd of December, 72 days. The story of the survivors was greeted as a miracle around the world. The media coverage was overwhelmingly positive, portraying the survivors as heroes who'd battled extreme conditions and defied death through their resilience and willpower. There was particular admiration for the two survivors, Nando Parado and Roberto Canessa, who had trekked for 10 days across the mountains

to find help and guide the rescuers back. The Pope at the time, Pope Paul VI, praised the vigour of spirit of the survivors and sent blessings, reflecting the celebratory mood worldwide. Meanwhile, plans were made about what to do with the remains of those who died on the mountain. what to do with the remains of those who died on the mountain. But it didn't take long for rumours to start circulating about how they'd actually managed to stay alive for so long in such a barren place. The survivors had initially told the press that they'd managed to stay alive eating cheese

and other food items they'd brought with them, and after these ran out, local vegetation. They'd planned to discuss the actual details of how they survived, including their cannibalism, only with their families first. False rumours snowballed in Montevideo, saying they had in fact killed some of their teammates for food. Then, on the 26th of December, two Chilean newspapers published graphic front-page photos taken by the Andean Relief Corps of half-eaten human remains from the crash site. So Perotta and Canessa told the Air Force personnel and the doctors what they had done to survive.

They were advised not to speak about it, to keep a low profile and let the story emerge naturally. And in Chile, remember they were staying a few days in Chile, the press kept quiet about it for a couple of days. Although there were some oblique statements in the press, there was a rather odd statement from the doctor who'd looked after them. And he said something to the effect of, as for the food eaten during this period, I can say very little about it because it's a matter of secrecy. The explanation must be sought outside the realms of medicine. So there was a sort of hints of it in the press. The first explicit mention of them having to use the bodies of their friends came on Christmas day, but it was buried on page 20 of a Peruvian newspaper. But the following day, it was all over the front pages in Chile. There were various sensationalist headlines, may God forgive them, your chilling confession of the Uruguayans, we had to eat cadavers, and stuff like that. And the press started hounding survivors.

And Nando Parado, in particular, was much sought after for interviews, he stopped speaking altogether to the press after an Argentinian reporter started making very defamatory insinuations. And with all this sort of storm, this press hounding that they received in Chile, they made the decision, look, we're not going to say any more about this until we return to Montevideo. This is Daniel, Archero's brother again. I have to say in the beginning, it was shocking. I think that we all took it as a rumor that could eventually be right or wrong. But then they came back to Uruguay and did this sort of, it was not a press conference, but there was a press in it. It was a meeting in the school, in the gym for all the families. And when they broke out the news about what they had eaten, they presented it in a very religious way, and that sort of softened the news for everyone,

which we already knew that something had happened like that or thought that had heard about it. But then the general idea was that the most important thing was that they survived, whatever it took. I took it as a demonstration of braveness to do it. So I think the survival drive was, and this with time, I get to think that, was key to do it. And it was so good that they did. The press conference took place at the school gym and the survivors, one by one, spoke about various aspects, the accident and the avalanche, the conditions on the mountain, the escape, the

rescue, and so on. And at the end, one of them, a chap called Pancho Delgado, one of the survivors, he made a very impassioned and eloquent speech about the anthropology, the cannibalism. And he concluded, he said, that was an intimate communion amongst us that helped us to subsist. And we don't want this, which for us is an intimate, intimate thing to be exploited or made light of in any way. And that basically shut everyone up. The survivors received a standing ovation. No one dared ask any more questions. standing ovation. No one dared ask any more questions. I think that shows a sort of maturity around the subject that's perhaps a bit surprising. What about the families of those who didn't come back? How did they deal with their grief? the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really

were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts. Well, the immediate reactions of some of the parents who lost their sons was quite extraordinary and supportive. So one of the fathers commented to the press, thank God that there were 45 there, so 16 homes were able to regain their children. Another mother said, we support the decision taken by the boys. We're trying to help them overcome this ordeal.

And there was a general opinion among the mothers of those who died that these mothers were better equipped than anyone to help the survivors overcome the psychological aspects of their ideal. Then again, there were families who never really recovered. There was one father, a very prominent businessman, and he learned the death of his son. He gave up his business career and with a year he died of a heart attack brought about by his grief. And that family distanced themselves from the survivors, you know, ever since really. There was another father whose only son had been lined up to take over the family business, and he lost all interest in his business and went into decline.

And longer term, there were a couple of coping mechanisms. So a group of the mothers started a library in memory of their sons, the Bibliotheca Nuestros Hijos, the Library of Our Sons. And its initial purpose was to fund textbooks for disadvantaged children in the poor neighborhoods around Carrasco. But it continues to this day and it provides scholarships and IT courses to disadvantaged children. In the months after the rescue, Argentine authorities and the families of the victims returned to the crash site,

deciding to bury the recovered remains there in a common grave. A group of 12 men and a priest dug a grave a few hundred metres from the aircraft fuselage and created a memorial with a cross and a plaque. Thirteen whole bodies and 15 sets of skeletal remains were buried there. Some of the remaining aircraft wreckage was set on fire. One father was desperate to return his son's body to Uruguay. Rafael Echavarra, who had died on the, but not in the accident. He died of his injuries about a month after the accident. He'd expressed before his death his determination to return to Uruguay. And his father, on hearing about this from the survivors, decided he would go to the mountain and recover what he could of his son's remains and take them home.

So he worked with some local cattlemen on the Argentinian side who knew the mountains very well. They figured out a route up to the crash site and Mr. Echevaran went up with another parent and these local guides in March 1973. And he was able to recover some of his son's remains and take them back to Uruguay. And that was the first approach to the site by land. And then in the following years, there were other parents who went up by the same route. Nando Parado and his father, I think, went up almost every year for many years

because Nando's sister and his mother died in the accident. They were buried there. In 1995, there was a big gathering of survivors up at the accident site, and there were many other trips after that. The first commercial trip happened around the turn of the millennium. Nowadays, there's a steady stream of summer visitors. There's a grave and a memorial near the accident site. It's a two-day trek on horseback and it's quite an extraordinary aura up there. A lot of energy and people get very emotional up there.

And there's still a lot of fragments of the plane to be found. People are still discovering artifacts. One of the most high-profile discoveries was the jacket of one of the survivors, which was found at the place where the plane hit the mountain and it had been sucked out of the fuselage. And it still contained his wallet with his ID card and his money, which was returned to him. Was it difficult going back to your normal life?

No, no. For me, I was alive. I was very, very happy taking touch with our families, my father, my mother, my brothers. Is it annoying having people like me ask you questions? Do you find it difficult to talk about the story? Is it good or bad? No. No. For me, it's

very difficult, but I survived that. I am proud of all our myself and my 15 friends made there in the Yandex. For me, it was a magnificent story of survival, of crying, of everything. And I survived. Of the original 16 survivors, 14 are still alive.

They've maintained extremely close bonds with each other in the decades since their shared traumatic experience. Many of them were already friends as teammates at the same rugby club before the crash, and still to this day they hold an annual rugby match where they and their families get together again. When the Netflix movie Society of the Snow premiered, many of the survivors attended an early screening together and embraced emotionally afterwards. How would you like Arturo to be remembered? Well, I think that we as a family, we

many times think about what would his life have been if he had survived, or if this had not happened at all. But, you know, when you think about someone

that died at 21, and in my view, he was always my older brother, so he's still my older brother. So it's like he continued to grow after this year, and he's still like 73 years old. But we like to remember him, everything, you know, the good things about him. I go there to the Place of the Christ four times with my family.

It's a very nice place. And I enjoy life. I work a lot. I have eight grandchildren, three children. They all are married. They all have degrees of study and everything. And really, I enjoy life. And every day I say,

thanks God, I am alive. What do you want the people listening to this? What do you want them to take away? What lessons can your story teach us? No, I think that the most important lesson is to fight.

When you have problems in the life, fight and believe that if you put passion in what you do and you can change things. Thank you to all my guests, Roy Harley, Daniel Nogueira, and John Guyver. If you want a much more detailed account of this incredible story, Thank you to all my guests, Roy Harley, Daniel Nogueira, and John Guyver. If you want a much more detailed account of this incredible story,

John's book, To Play the Game, is a history of Flight 571. If you've enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends. You can even share it via WhatsApp. Think about that. The episode was produced by Marianne Day-Forge, and the editor was Dougal Patmore. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. you