Roberto Canessa: The tale of one 1972 Andes plane crash survivor and what the ultimate survival guide taught him
THE survivor of the 1972 plane crash was the one who suggested to resort to cannibalism to stay alive.
Roberto Canessa, 70, trekked through the mountains for ten days in search for help for the survivors.
Who is Roberto Canessa?
Roberto Canessa is one of the 16 survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes mountains on 13 October 1972.
Only 19 at the time, Canessa was a second-year medical school student in Uruguay.
Along with another medical student - Gustavo Zerbino - he assisted the injured during the crash, bandaging fractured bones with strips of clothing and cooling them in the snow.
Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa had hiked more than 37 miles in 10 days to find help.
They volunteered to make the trek on December 12, because it was clear the most sickly survivors would soon die.
Roberto Canessa was also the reason the rest survived the starvation as he suggested they eat the bodies of the dead.
How long were the Alive from Society survivors in the Andes?
The remaining survivors had to endure 72 days of extreme hardships, including starvation, freezing temperatures and avalanches.
Surrounded by glacier - with no protection gear or view of the horizon- the party of survivors chose to wait until summer to make their escape from 11,718 feet above sea level.
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From the onset, the survivors had very little food. All they had consisted of eight chocolate bars, three small jars of jam, a tin of mussels, a tin of almonds and several bottles of wine.
Their small stock dwindled quickly and they resorted to eating parts of the airplane, such as the leather on the outside of the seats.
This made them sicker.
It was then that Roberto Canessa suggested that they eat their friends' remains in order to survive.
Canessa said their decision was made particularly grim because the bodies belonged to their teammates and friends.
He said: “My only trouble with it was that these were the bodies of my friends. I had to go to their families later to explain.”
Canessa, who used glass to cut the flesh, added he took some comfort in knowing that he would be okay if the others had used his body to feed them, should he have died instead.
Having spent almost two months in the mountains, the survivors had lost hope of ever being rescued, so Canessa and Fernando Parrado set off to find help.
Based on the pilot’s dying message to them, they believed they just needed to scale the mountain to the west and then head down to Chile.
During their descent they came across a raging river which halted their search but Canessa and Parrado spotted Sergio Catalán, a Chilean shepherd, on the other side who could not hear them over the water.
Luckily, the shepherd returned the following day and tossed a rock with a pen and pencil to the survivors, who explained their terrible ordeal.
The shepherd managed to alert the authorities to the plight of the survivors.
A multi-day helicopter rescue was conducted and was able to save the other survivors, many of them had lost half their body weight.
Where is Roberto Canessa now and what has he said about the plane crash?
Canessa is a pediatric cardiologist and won a British Council Scholarship to study at London’s Guy's Hospital.
He is also a motivational speaker, having published his recollection of the events in 2016 in a book titled I had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in thew Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives.
He was portrayed by Josh Hamilton in the 1993 feature film Alive and by Argentine actor Matías Recalt in the 2023 Spanish feature film Society of the Snow.
On his , he said about the tragic accident: "One of the unforgettable scenes in the mountain happened on the first day of the last footslog to cross the Andes mountain range, a 10-day climb, having lost 30 kilos, no equipment, geared with nothing whatsoever.
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"It was that first night, when we were about to freeze, unable to find a place to put our sleeping bag made of plane rags that were sown together, that we found a rock that would allow us to place it without falling off to the abyss.
"As soon as we put it down, the wind calmed down and a huge moon came up, right there; so close that you could touch it; which led me to feel that it was there to tell me that it allowed me to stay alive that night."