“I didn’t mourn the dead so as not to lose energy,” says the Andean survivor

For survivor Roy Harley, the hardest part was the uncertainty […]

For Roy Harley, a survivor of the Andes, more than the hunger, the cold and the thirst, the most difficult thing was the uncertainty.

“It was terrible not knowing if we would be alive the next morning,” Harley says Travel by fareabout the 72 day wait for a rescue.

This Uruguayan from Montevideo was one of the 40 passengers on the journey between the Uruguayan capital and Santiago de Chile, whose twin-engine Fairchild turboprop crashed in the Valle de las Lágrimas, Friday 13 October 1972.

The plane had been chartered to transport rugby players from the Old Christianss Rugby Club from Stella Maris College, a school in Carrasco, a middle-class neighborhood of Montevideo.

The journey should take about three hours. But the survivors would return home only more than two months later, after 72 days without bathing or changing clothes, waiting for help that never seemed to arrive.

Of the 45 passengers only 16 survived.

Andean survivor

More than 50 years later, and after a multitude of films, documentaries and books, the tragic plane crash in the Andes is back on the agenda with the premiere of the impactful film “The Snow Society”, screened at Netflix.

Directed by JA Bayona (“The Impossible” and “The Orphanage”) and based on the book of the same name written by Pablo Vierci, the film is striking for its reconstruction of photographic evidence of the time which, in the film lasting over two hours , come to life with the actors in the cast.

“It’s very beautiful, very faithful to the history we live in [nos Andes]. Bayona was able to interpret our stories and transform them into this wonderful story,” describes Harley, who also praises the cinematography and the soundtrack, and believes it will be “a great film globally”.

It’s no surprise that “The Snow Society” is already the most-watched film on the streaming platform. streaming in one week of opening.

Both Vierci’s book and Bayona’s film are much more than a dramatic account of death. His “The Snow Society” is a hymn to life, in what was once considered by National Geographic to be the greatest survival story of the last 100 years.

“You have to take into account that, at almost four thousand meters above sea level, when the whole world has abandoned you, you have to accept that the fate of dying or living depends on you.”, says Gustavo Zerbino for the reportage of Travel by fare.

Zerbino is referring to the Snow Society, as the surviving group called the routine they had to organize, in the more than two months of waiting for a rescue that, increasingly, seemed impossible.

Mountain mode

Inside the fuselage, a space 6.5 meters long and three meters wide, the survivors slept hugged, at short intervals to avoid freezing, due to the external temperature of -30°C.

The armchairs served as heat in an environment where doors were the only way to protect oneself from the cold. The water available was ice melted in a funnel and the little food was limited to preserves, biscuits and chocolates.

“We lived in total chaos, surrounded by death. Living one more hour was madness. Our only goal was to live, we did what was necessary to transform problems into opportunities to live”, describes Zerbino.

“We went into mountain mode, we had to unite. The world says it was a miracle. But it was a friendship we had to build in a supportive society where rules and norms appeared out of necessity.”

Gustavo Zerbino

For Harley, these young hopefuls were like “survival machines” who couldn’t even think through what was happening. “We always had to move forward,” she says.

“We didn’t cry for our dead friends because it made us lose energy. We had to survive without worrying about what was happening,” he recalls.

The controversial decision to feed on one’s dead comrades was simply a matter of… hunger.

The first cuts would have been needed, starting from the eighth day, after the crash of the plane. To do this, pieces of glass were used to cut the skin already hardened by the rigidity of the ice.

At a press conference in Montevideo days after the rescue, survivor Alfredo Delgado Salaberry made clear that the act was “an intimate communion” that helped them survive.

Harley was one of those who organized the first expedition, together with Tintín and Carlitos, who would seek help, after the avalanche that killed other survivors, that same month of October. Just as survivor Fernando Parrado describes in ‘The Snow Society’, an “accident within an accident”.

“We were very afraid of moving away. The plane was the refuge that took care of us and protected us from the elements of the mountains. We burned our eyes trying to find out where we were,” Harley says.

The survivors interviewed by the report were unanimous in praising the new Netflix production, a respectful work that is careful to avoid gratuitous sentimentality to attract the public.

“The film manages to show exactly what we experienced in the mountains. Let people feel and connect with what we experienced there [em 1972]. It is very positive for this time that we live in this world of wars, arrogance and arrogance,” describes Zerbino.

However, this survivor is keen to remember that the protagonists are those who died in the accident, “those who helped us survive”.

“The film closes a stage, but will connect the entire world through the most important survival story of the 20th century,” concludes Zerbino.

Source: Terra

Ben

Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.