Alive

Uruguay is a country in South America which borders the far larger countries of Brazil and Argentina. The three countries have a combative history. Uruguay was an economic success for the first part of the 20th century but struggled in the decades after the 1950s. Only families with land enjoyed continued prosperity. Civil unrest broke out in the country.

Meanwhile, a group of Catholic parents requested that Irish priests teach their children to ensure the students are educated in a way they saw fit. The Irish priests discovered a country very similar to their homeland. The priests introduced the sport of rugby to the Uruguayan schoolboys. In a country with an extreme passion for soccer, rugby was an incredibly niche sport which the priests were certain could teach the boys "to suffer in silence and work as a team" (10). The graduates of the religious school maintained their love of the sport and formed an alumni team named the Old Christians’ Club in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo. As the rugby club grew throughout the 1960s, other teams sprang up around them. The clubs formed a league and played against teams in Argentina and Chile. The players chartered a plane to fly to Chile for one game in 1971. The trip was such a success, the players immediately hoped to do the same the next year.

Players’ family members sign up to accompany the team, and they prepare to depart on October 12, 1972. Marcelo Perez is the captain of the first team, and Daniel Juan is the president of the club. Around 50-60 people wait on the tarmac for the departure of the plane. Most are from Montevideo’s prosperous, land-owning families. They board the relatively new plane under the watch of the experienced pilot Julio Cesar Fernandes who has calculated the four-hour flight to avoid the dangerous weather over the Andes mountains. The pilots navigate the tricky crossing while the passengers laugh and joke in the cabin. A young woman named Susana Parrado sits and talks with her mother, while her brother Nando sits with his inseparable friend Panchito Abal. The plane arrives at the Andes, but the weather does not permit them to cross. The pilots decide to land and wait for the bad weather to pass.

The passengers disembark the plane and entertain themselves at the small Argentinian airport. The next day they shop and nurse their hangovers from a night of partying. The pilots endure taunts from the rugby players and worry over whether they should take the risk of crossing the mountains. A plane arrives at the airport from Chile, and the pilots trust the news that the mountains are crossable.

The co-pilot’s name is Lagurara. He helps Ferradas chart a course as the plane takes off. The plane hits a patch of bad weather and the fasten seat belt sign is turned on. The plane shakes and some passengers begin to worry. One of the rugby players makes a joke about parachutes. No one is amused. The plane plummets hundreds of feet and crashes into a snowbank. The structure is ripped apart, people are sucked out into the icy air, and the plane skids along the snowy mountainside "like a toboggan" (22) before coming to halt.

Many of the passengers inside and outside the aircraft are dead, and others are seriously injured. Those who have miraculously emerged uninjured try to help the others. The team captain Perez is among the survivors, and he begins to organize the rest. Outside is a desolate landscape with mountains on three sides and endless snow. No one is dressed for the subzero temperatures. They try to help one another, but the deepness of the snow drifts makes movement impossible. People wander aimlessly and disappear, the survivors try to free those trapped in the wreckage, and everyone is dazed and confused.

Two first year medical students named Canessa and Zerbino try to administer help, but they lack any real training. Susana Parrado is seriously injured and blind in one eye, Abal is mortally wounded, and Nando Parrado is barely conscious but still alive. Bodies are left in the cold snow while bandages are made from any available material. Zerbino and Canessa do what they can, but many of the injured die quickly. The light fades and snow begins to fall. The survivors hope that the plane is already reported missing and help is on the way. The co-pilot Lagurara is discovered alive but fatally injured in the cockpit. Ferradas is dead. The radio is broken but a survivor named Sabella assures the others that he has spoken to someone in Chile. As night falls, the temperature drops below zero. Help will clearly not arrive soon. The survivors huddle in the wreckage.

A barricade of broken seats and suitcases fails to keep the bitter wind out of the plane. The survivors drink wine they find in the luggage compartment to try and keep warm. The injured moan in agony, and the atmosphere is tense. Lagurara, still alive, can be heard in the cockpit mumbling about passing Curico while begging for a gun to kill himself with. People become hysterical and shout at one another.

The next day, the survivors wake to find the wreckage of the plane half-buried in snow. The mountains on three sides are impossible to climb while a long, seemingly unending valley disappears down the slope. Three injured people die in the night, and many of the injured suffer from frostbite and delirium. Canessa and Zerbino treat who they can but are forced to concede that they cannot save everyone. They are helped by an older woman named Liliana Methol who has nursing experience due to her husband Javier’s history of medical issues. Liliana is a source of maternal comfort for the young male survivors. Lagurara is declared dead, and with him dies any knowledge of how to organize a rescue. Marcelo Perez is confident that a search team will soon find them but insists on rationing what little food they have. There are candy bars, dried fruit, cookies, and jars of jam. For lunch, each person is given a square of chocolate. The survivors prepare for another cold night.

On Sunday October 15, the sky clears. The survivors hope they will be spotted by a search team. Cousins Fito and Adolfo develop a system for turning snow into drinking water while the rest of the group are divided into medical, cabin, and water maker teams. The cabin team organizes and prepares the wrecked cabin where the survivors sleep. The medical team attends to the injured. The water maker teams melt snow into drinking water using Fito and Adolfo’s system. Certain areas are designated as restrooms so as not to contaminate the snow. Nando Parrado recovers enough to help his sister, but the frostbite in her toes worsens. Planes fly overhead but the survivors’ shouts go unheeded. One plane seems to dip its wings and they become convinced that rescue is imminent. They drink wine to celebrate, but night falls and no rescue team arrives. The conversation flits between excitement and anger. Marcelo notices that a ration of food is missing from the supplies but he does not know the identity of the thief. The next day Canessa creates a series of hammocks, each of which can hold two wounded people. The pain of sleeping is reduced, but the separation of the bodies means the cold is even worse. Most of the wounded return to the painful huddle on the floor of the plane.

A few of the injured recover slightly by Monday morning. Unwilling to wait for a rescue team, Nando is the most determined to escape the situation. Carlitos Paez empathizes with Nando’s idea but is perturbed when Nando hints that he will “cut meat from one of the pilots” (39) to fuel his journey. Carlitos decides not to take Nando seriously but is concerned at the lack of rescue. The survivors debate how rescue might arrive, if at all. They try to make sense of the pilots’ charts. Walking through the mountains seems impossible. The peaks are high and the snow is too deep to navigate without falling in it. Fito develops snowshoes which allow them to search the immediate area for other survivors or more wreckage. Fito, Canessa, Carlitos, and Numa Turcatti climb the nearest mountain on Tuesday. They are too weak to go far, and they find nothing. Carlitos mentions Nando’s suggestion of eating the pilots. Fito takes the idea seriously.

Days pass and no rescue team arrives. Susana Parrado dies on the eighth night. Nando tries unsuccessfully to revive her until he is overcome by exhaustion.