On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes. Forty-five people were aboard when the plane went down, but when they were recovered, more than two months later, only sixteen were still alive. The most impressive part of their story, however, was the lengths to which they were willing to go to achieve their goal.

Shortly after the survivors were rescued, it was discovered that they had been forced to resort to cannibalism to avoid dying of nổi tiếng.

When the pub is around a circular motion, the reaction is immediate and intense, but quickly responds when the group is in a state of shock to the atmosphere of the Ultimate Cena, when Jesus dies who has a discrepancy and a ricavati in the body. A sure way to stabilize in case you can work alone when necessary, cleaning the quality of the correlation.

Bi kịch was recounted by survivor Nando Parrado in his memoir  Miracle in the Andes  và in the   1993 film Vivo của Ethan Hawke.

This is the story of the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.

Passengers of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571

The group of people in the center of tragedy and fortune happened during the aviation incident and joined an amateur rugby team, the Old Christians Club, in the Carrasco Quarter of Montevideo, in Uruguay, I am interested in friends and acquaintances, naturally, the aircraft equipment.

The Old Christians guided Santiago del Cile part, part of the international airport of Carrasco on December 12, 1972. In total, the Fairchild turboprop trasportava cinque membri dell’equipaggio and 40 passes.

Tôi đã vượt qua c’erano Nando Parrado và Roberto Canessa, do thành viên của đội bóng bầu dục che alla Fine sirebbero venire avanti per guida la Squadra di Ricerca to la sito del accidente.

However, poor weather conditions in the Andes forced the plane to land before reaching Chile. The passengers spent just one night in Mendoza, Argentina, before departing the next day, shortly after 2:00 PM.

Knowing that their small plane could not fly high enough to clear the Andes mountain range, the pilots decided to head south through the Planchón Pass.

An hour into the flight, a pilot informed air traffic controllers that they had cleared the crossing and were ready to land. Unfortunately, they were wrong, and their error would prove fatal.

Air Force Flight 571 crashes in the Andes

Unaware that the plane was still over the Andes, air traffic controllers gave the pilots clearance to begin their descent and prepare for landing. Due to poor weather conditions and poor visibility, the pilots could not directly see the mountains toward which they were falling.

The plane’s fuselage crashed into a corner, losing its right wing. Shortly thereafter, the left wing also disappeared, and the fuselage crashed into the snow-capped Andes.

Plane crash site in the Andes

The crash site of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 is compromised.

“I felt the pain in every cell of my body, and as I trembled spasmodically in his grip, every moment seemed to last an eternity,” Nando Parrado recalled in  Miracle in the Andes  .

“Dried blood clots had tangled in my hair, and three bleeding wounds formed a jagged triangle about four inches above my right ear. I could feel the rough ridges of broken bone beneath the dried blood, and when I pressed lightly, I felt a spongy sensation, like that of a finger. My stomach warmed as I realized what it meant: I was pressing pieces of my skull against the surface of my brain.”

Parrado suffered immense pain in excruciating circumstances, but he fared better than most. In the initial incident, 12 people died. Thirty-three of them were still alive, but some were even more injured than Parrado.

Canessa, described by Parrado as “strong and intense,” informed him that she had been unconscious for three days at that point.

It would be another 10 weeks before the survivors were found. But the most difficult part of their story was just beginning.

The survivors resort to cannibalism

The passengers’ supplies were meager. They were at 3,500 meters above sea level, in freezing temperatures, and had little more than a few bars of wine and sweets to sustain them. Parrado hadn’t even packed cold-weather clothing.

Canessa and another survivor had medical training and tried to treat the wounded, but without the proper equipment they could only do so.

A search for the missing plane had been launched, but due to the incorrect location reporting that had caused the crash, search teams had no idea where to look. The plane’s white paint job certainly didn’t make searching through the snow-capped mountains any easier.

The search was called off after just 10 days.

The plane’s fuselage was still intact, but it offered no shelter or protection. Within a week, most of the food was gone, and the injured soon began dying. Six died in the first two weeks after the crash, and eight more followed them to the grave on October 29, when an avalanche buried the fuselage.

With the death toll rising and supplies nearly exhausted, passengers were faced with a stark realization: they would have to eat the dead to survive.

“We shook hands and said, ‘If I die, please use my body. Then at least you can get out of here. And tell my family how much I love them,’” Parrado told ABC News in 2023.

Survivors have compared this decision to communion, citing the biblical Last Supper, during which Jesus shared bread and wine made from his body with his disciples.

“It’s very, very humiliating to eat a corpse,” Canessa said. “I thought of my mother, who had a unique opportunity to tell her not to cry anymore, that I was alive. And to do that, I had to buy time, and to buy time, I had to eat corpses.”

By December 12, only 16 of the original 45 passengers were still alive, and it was decided to send three down the mountain in search of help. The chosen “explorers” were Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa, and Antonio Vizintín.

Sixty-one days after their plane crashed in the mountains, the men set out on what they thought would be a day trip.

Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa’s mountain journey

Three days after setting out, the explorers reached the top of the mountain and realized that everything around them had remained the same.

It was then decided that Vizintín would return to the crash site to inform the others that the journey would take longer than expected. He left his remaining rations at Parrado and Canessa and retreated the same way he had come.

Meanwhile, Parrado and Canessa continued their journey, which proved more dangerous as they descended. Finally, after eight days, they reached the banks of a river and a cattle trail that led them to the village of Los Maitenes, Chile.

On the other side of the Roaring River, Parrado and Canessa saw three farmers, but the noise made communication virtually impossible. One of the men, Sergio Catalán, said they would return the next day.

“That dream of tomorrow that we had always had was now reality,” Canessa said.

Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa and Sergio Catalan

Wikimedia CommonsNando Parrado (left) and Roberto Canessa (right) shortly after their rescue.

When they returned the next morning, they had devised a plan to communicate: write notes on paper, attach them to rocks, and throw them across the river.

Parrado’s initial message read: “I’m from a plane crash in the mountains. I’m Uruguayan. We’ve been walking for 10 days. I have 14 injured friends at the crash site. We need help. We have no food. Please come get us.”

Catalán immediately rushed to the rescue, traveling 10 hours on horseback to inform the authorities, and in the following days, the other 14 survivors were rescued by helicopter.

Amid the media frenzy, rumors spread that the survivors had resorted to cannibalism, leading some to question the ethics of such an act. The survivors, for their part, addressed the issue directly, and their comparison to the Last Supper seemed to quell some of the moral panic.

“Some thought it was a good thing, others thought it was a bad thing, but I didn’t care,” Canessa said. “They have no right to judge us.”