The Miracle of the Andes: The Tragic Story of the Uruguayan Rugby Team’s Survival

The joint presence for the first time in the World Cup of Chile and Uruguay, opponent of the Blues, Thursday September 14 (9 p.m.), revived the memory of the plane accident that occurred in the fall of 1972 in the Andes . The crash had left a Uruguayan rugby club in mourning, which had gone to play a match in Chile. Of the 45 people on board, 16 passengers survived after 72 days in the high mountains. The Chilean and Argentinian authorities, who had to quickly abandon the research, called it “the miracle of the Andes”.

On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 took off from Mendoza, Argentina. On board, 45 people including the Old Christians team from Montevideo, who were to face the Old Boys team from Santiago in Chile. The Uruguayans will never reach Chilean lands. While they were flying over the Andes mountain range, on the Argentinian side, following a poor navigation estimate by the pilot, their Fairchild FH-227 crashed and broke up into several pieces on a glacier at an altitude of 3,600 meters. Twelve people were killed instantly, five others died from their injuries in the following 48 hours.

Forced to feed on the flesh of their dead teammates

The 28 survivors, without means of communication with the outside world, then hid themselves in the main hull of the aircraft to fight against the cold and the wind then rationed themselves with the little food they had. Learning through a portable radio that the search to find them was abandoned after a week, the vast majority of them resolved to eat the flesh of the dead pilot, then that of their friends who had not survived in the crash whose bodies are preserved in the snow.

“We no longer belonged to this world, we had become creatures from another planet”the survivor Roberto Canessa will entrust to Daily Mail for the 40th anniversary of the drama. “We would become too weak to resist hunger. We knew what to do but it was too terrible to think about it. The lifeless bodies of our friends and teammates, preserved by the snow and cold, contained vital proteins that could help us survive.

A little more than two weeks after the accident, and while some were planning to go on an expedition to seek help, an avalanche surprised them in the middle of the night and covered the plane, causing eight new victims. Knowing that their salvation will only come through their own initiatives, after several unsuccessful expedition attempts, two of them, Fernando Parrado and Doctor Roberto Canessa manage to cross the mountain range that surrounds them. After ten days of walking, they end up reaching a valley where they come across a peasant. It is the latter who will alert the authorities.

The other 14 survivors remaining on the plane – four people died of cold, malnutrition and dehydration – were rescued by helicopter on December 22 and 23, 1972. To commemorate this accident, a Friendship Cup (Copa de la Amistad ) is organized each year between the Old Christians and the Old Boys who should have faced each other in 1972. Among the Uruguayan and Chilean players participating in the 2023 World Cup, thirteen were trained or passed through these two clubs.