In 1972, a plane carrying a group of Uruguayan teenage rugby players from the Old Christians team crashed in the Andes en route to Chile to play a match. Lost and isolated in the most inhospitable conditions, the survivors had to turn to cannibalism. Seventy-two days later, they were rescued after two of them, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, trekked through the mountains to Chile for 10 days to find help.

Out of the original 40 passengers and 5 crew members, 16 died when the plane crashed against a mountain, severing the fuselage of the Uruguayan Air Force’s chartered Fairchild plane. The remaining 29 rationed what little food they had found in the luggage, and some of them died in the subsequent days. They found a portable radio, which gave them the worst news possible on the 10th day: search parties had stopped and the world assumed they were all dead.

What followed was two months of unimaginable psychological trauma, debilitating diseases, freezing temperatures with no warm clothing, an avalanche that killed eight more people, starvation, and the desperate decision to use their friends’ bodies as food. The despair led to a 10-day trek through snowy peaks with no equipment other than rugby shoes and a self-made sleeping bag.

The incredible true story of the Andes flight disaster or “The Miracle of the Andes” has been the subject of several books, and adapted to film three times. The first was the forgotten 1976 Mexican film Supervivientes de los Andes — a mostly exploitative version that focused on the gruesome aspects........

© Buenos Aires Herald