Miracle in the Andes

by Nando Parrado

  “It’s Sergio!” someone said.

  We pulled over. Roberto, Gustavo, and I got out of the cars and walked toward the horseman. At first he was wary of us, just as he had been the first time we’d met, but when he saw Roberto and me his eyes widened and filled with tears. Before he could speak, I stepped forward. “Excuse me, good man,” I said, “but we are lost again. Can you help us one more time?”

  WHEN I AM together with my fellow survivors, we say in silence all that needs to be said about our time in the mountains, and, for many years, it was enough to know that these friends and my family understood what I went through. I had little interest in sharing my personal story with anyone outside our circle, and though I sometimes gave interviews to magazines and newspapers, or participated in documentaries commemorating various anniversaries of the disaster, I was always wary of sharing too much of myself with strangers. All the public needed to know, I believed, was covered, masterfully, in Alive. True, that book concentrated almost entirely on the factual events of our ordeal; no reader could have more than just the slightest understanding of my inner struggle or of the surging emotions that drove me to survive. But I did not care to reveal those things too deeply. Let the readers have the drama, the horror, and the adventure. I would keep the most intimate, most painful memories to myself.

  As the years passed I was approached on more than one occasion by agents and publishers, asking me to retell the story from my own personal perspective. I always refused. Those people saw me as a hero, and I knew they wanted to celebrate the disaster as an inspirational story of triumph and perseverance. But they were missing the point. I was no hero. I was always frightened, always weak and confused, always hopeless. And thinking of the disaster—the rankness of our suffering, the obscene waste of so many innocent lives—conjured no sense of triumph or glory in my heart. Our story may have inspired millions of people around the world as a tale of the power of the human spirit, but for me those months in the mountains were days of heartbreak, horror, and irretrievable loss. The disaster was not something to be celebrated. It was something to be outlived, and I had tried my best to do just that, filling my life with the riches of friendship and family, so that all those broken parts of my life were buried beneath a lifetime’s accumulation of happiness and love.

  And I was content to have it that way. I don’t mean to say I denied my past—even now, my memories of the Andes touch me every day. I only wanted to keep the sadness and suffering from shaping my future. I was following the advice my father gave me in the aftermath of our rescue. Look forward, Nando, he said. Do not let this be the most important thing that ever happens to you. I did not want to live my life as a survivor. I did not want the disaster to define my life. I took what lessons I could from the ordeal. I savored the friendships that grew out of it, and I always honored the memory of those who died. But I could not glorify or romanticize what had happened to us, and I certainly had no desire to rummage through those dark memories with the unflinching honesty it would take to write a book.

  Why, then, after thirty-odd years, did I agree to write the account you now hold in your hands? The answer begins in 1991, with a call from a man named Juan Cintron. Cintron was organizing a conference for young business owners in Mexico City, and he had decided that my story would make a great motivational speech for the gathering, so he tracked me down by phone in Montevideo and asked me to deliver the keynote address. I had no desire to turn my experiences into a pep talk, so I politely refused. But Juan would not take no for an answer. He called me again and again, begging me to reconsider. Finally he flew to Montevideo to plead with me face-to-face. Impressed by his persistence and enthusiasm, I succumbed to his persuasion and agreed to give the talk.

  In the following months I labored to craft the kind of speech Cintron wanted. He had asked me to mine the story for lessons that would hold the attention of ambitious young entrepreneurs looking for insights and ideas that would help them prosper—points about leadership, innovation, working in teams, and creative problemsolving. He had urged me to keep my presentation crisp and to the point. These were busy and impatient people, he said. Move too slowly and you will lose them. As I worked on the speech, as I tried to draw from so much misery and grief the kind of inspirational tidbits that might help an audience of strangers improve their bottom lines, I deeply regretted my decision to deliver the address. But there was no backing out now. Finally, the day arrived and I found myself on stage in Mexico City, standing in the spotlight, with the notes for my speech on the podium in front of me. I had been introduced, the polite applause had ended, and it was time for me to begin. I wanted to speak, but no matter how I tried, the words would not come to me. My heart was pounding, cold sweat was trickling beneath the collar of my shirt, and my hands were trembling. I stared at my notes. They made no sense. I began to shuffle the papers. People shifted in their seats. The awkward silence grew so loud it sounded like thunder, and just as panic was about to overwhelm me, I heard myself speak.

  “I should not be here,” I said, out of nowhere. “I should be dead on a glacier in the Andes.”

  And then, as if a floodgate had opened, I poured out my story, sparing no emotion and holding nothing back. I simply spoke from my heart. I walked them through all the important moments of the ordeal so that they experienced it all just as I had, the wild grief I felt when Susy died, the terror when we heard that the search had been canceled, and the horror of chewing the flesh of our dead friends. I placed them with us inside the fuselage on the night of the avalanche and in the grim days that followed. I led them up the mountain and showed them the devastating view from the summit, then I took them with Roberto and me on the trek, which we were certain would lead us to our deaths. I didn’t say a word about creativity or teamwork or problem solving. I didn’t mention the word success. Instead, I shared with them what I suddenly realized was the true lesson of my ordeal: It wasn’t cleverness or courage or any kind of competence or savvy that saved us, it was nothing more than love, our love for each other, for our families, for the lives we wanted so desperately to live. Our suffering in the Andes had swept away everything trivial and unimportant. Each of us realized, with a clarity that is hard to describe, that the only crucial thing in life is the chance to love and be loved. In our families, in our futures, we already had everything we needed. The sixteen of us who were lucky enough to return to our lives will never forget this. No one should forget this.

  I spoke for more than ninety minutes, though it seemed like only five, and when I finished the hall was filled with a thick silence. For several seconds, no one moved, then applause swelled and the audience rose to their feet. Afterwards, strangers with tears in their eyes came forward to embrace me. Some took me aside to tell me about hardships they had faced in their own lives, struggles with illness, bereavement, divorce, addiction. I felt such a powerful connection with those people. They were not simply understanding my story; they were making it their own. This filled me with a great sense of peace and purpose, and while I didn’t completely understand these emotions at the time, I knew I wanted to feel that way again.

  After the success of the Mexico City speech, I was asked to give talks around the world, but my daughters were still small and my business obligations were heavy, so I was able to accept only a few of these invitations. As years passed, and I found the time, I began to speak more frequently. Today, I address audiences all across the globe, although my responsibilities at home still force me to be very selective. And each time I speak I simply do what I did the first time: I tell my story and share the plain wisdom I have learned. Always, the result is the same, an outpouring of warmth, gratitude, and that powerful sense of connection. Once, after a talk, a young woman asked to speak with me. “A few years ago I was backing out of my driveway,” she said. “I didn’t know my two-year-old daughter was behind me. I backed the car over her, and she died. My life stopped at that moment. Since then I have not been able to eat, or sleep, or even think about a
nything but that moment. I have tortured myself with questions. Why was she there? Why didn’t I see her? Why wasn’t I more careful? And mostly, Why did this happen? Ever since that moment I have been paralyzed by guilt and grief, and the rest of my family has suffered. Your story shows me that I have been wrong. It’s possible to live, even when you suffer. I know now that I have to go on. I have to live for my husband and my other children. Even with the pain I feel, I have to find the strength to do it. Your story makes me believe this is possible.”

  Speechless, I gathered her into my arms and embraced her. In that moment an unformed thought that had been hovering in my mind took on a razor sharp focus. I realized that my story is her story; it is the story of everyone who hears it. This woman never felt the blast of a subzero wind. She never staggered through a high-altitude blizzard or watched in horror as her body wasted from starvation. But could there be any doubt that in the ways that mattered most, she had suffered as much as I had? I’d always thought of my story as something unique, something so extreme and outrageous that only those who had been there could genuinely understand what we had been through. But in its essence—the essence of human emotion—it is the most familiar story in the world. We all, at times, face hopelessness and despair. We all experience grief, abandonment, and crushing loss. And all of us, sooner or later, will face the inevitable nearness of death. As I hugged that sad woman, a phrase formed on my lips. “We all have our own personal Andes,” I told her.

  Now, after more than ten years of public speaking, after watching my story resonate, time and time again, with thousands around the world, I understand that the connection I feel with my audiences is rooted in something deeper than their admiration for what I did to survive. They are seeing, in my story, their own struggles and fears made real against a surreal backdrop, on an epic scale. The story chills them but also encourages them, because they see that even in the face of the cruelest kind of suffering, and against all odds, an ordinary person can endure. It satisfies me deeply that so many can find strength and comfort in the things I have to say, but they have given me much in return. They have shown me that there is more to my story than grief and meaningless tragedy. By using my suffering as a source of inspiration and reassurance they have helped heal my wounded memories. I saw that my mother, my sister, and the others did not die in vain, and that our suffering really does add up to something important, to some kind of wisdom, that can touch the hearts of human beings across the planet.

  My listeners touch me, too. I draw so much love and fulfillment from the connection I feel with them, as if we are joined in a human web of understanding, as if every person moved by my story enriches and enlarges my life. It amazes me that I am the same man who once disliked talking about the Andes, because now I have a passion to share my story with as many people as possible, and out of that passion came the desire to write this book. I began writing it, in my heart, several years ago, and finally the time felt right to put my thoughts on paper. It has been a remarkable experience—painful, joyful, humbling, surprising, and very rewarding. I have tried to be as truthful as possible in writing this, and now I offer it as a gift:

  To my father, so that he could see, in unflinching detail, what I lived through, and how my love for him was the real power that saved me;

  To my fellow survivors, so that they will know the love and respect I will always feel for them;

  To my wife and my daughters, so that they can stand beside me in the mountains, day-by-day, and see that even though they were still just a part of my distant future, every step I took was a step closer to them;

  And finally, to those with whom I am bonded by suffering and by the joys and disappointments of life—that is, to everyone who reads this. I am no wise man. Every day shows me how little I know about life, and how wrong I can be. But there are things I know to be true. I know I will die. And I know that the only sane response to such a horror is to love. Before he died, Arturo Nogueira, one of the bravest of us all, said time and again, “Even here, even as we suffer, life is still worth living.…” What he meant was that even when everything had been taken from us, we could still think of our loved ones, we could still hold them in our hearts and cherish them as the treasures of our lives. Like all of us, Arturo had discovered that this was all that mattered. My hope is that you who are reading this book will not wait so long to realize what treasures you have. In the Andes we lived heartbeat-to-heartbeat. Every second of life was a gift, glowing with purpose and meaning. I have tried to live that way ever since and it has filled my life with more blessings than I can count. I urge you to do the same. As we used to say in the mountains, “Breathe. Breathe again. With every breath, you are alive.” After all these years, this is still the best advice I can give you: Savor your existence. Live every moment. Do not waste a breath.

  A Note About the Photographs

  IN THE WRECKAGE of the Fairchild we found an inexpensive camera with several unexposed frames on the roll. Some of the photographs reprinted in this book were taken with that camera. They show us in the Andes, as death was closing in and our hopes for rescue were rapidly fading. When I see these photographs today, I am amazed, because I see no trace of the terror and depression with which we all struggled. Instead, I see us lounging on the snow like college boys at the beach, or sunning ourselves on the glacier, in the seats we dragged out from the fuselage, like friends relaxing at a sidewalk café. In one photograph, three young men stand smiling, side by side, with the snow-packed slopes of the Andes rising in the distance. You might mistake them for poorly dressed tourists on a ski slope in the Alps or the Rockies. Only their shocking thinness hints that something is wrong.

  I took some of those photographs myself, mostly on impulse, without much conscious thought, but each time I snapped the shutter I knew that the images I was capturing might outlive us all. The notion that we would vanish beneath the snow, and that our story would never be told, was horrific, and it comforted me to know that a record of our time in the mountains existed inside that little plastic Instamatic. Even if it lay undiscovered for decades, there was a chance that someday someone might find it. Then we would not vanish completely. The world would know that we had lived for a while, that we had fought to survive, and that despite all the hopelessness and fear, we still had the courage to smile for the camera.

  Acknowledgments

  I WOULD LIKE to express my gratitude to friends and colleagues, without whose contributions this book would not have been possible:

  To my agents Stephanie Kip Rostan, Elizabeth Fisher, Daniel Greenberg, and Jim Levine for their wise counsel.

  To my editor, Annik LaFarge, for her enthusiasm and expertise and for the passion and care with which she guided this book into being.

  To Vince Rause, whose humor and skill made him a joy to work with, and whom I now can call my friend.

  To Gail and Kelly Davis, who supported this book from the start and whose friendship I have always treasured.

  To the late Mark McCormack, a great man and a great friend, who always encouraged me to tell my own personal story in a book. At last I have taken his advice.

  To Jackie Stewart, his wife, Helen, and his sons, Paul and Mark, who have always made me feel like a part of their family. My friendship with Jackie has been a great blessing, and I am thankful to him for all the lessons he taught me about racing, about business, and about life.

  To Bernie Ecclestone, who opened so many doors for me when I was young, and who, like Jackie, taught me so many things that have shaped who I am today. I am proud to claim him as a friend.

  To my good friend Piers Paul Read, whose superb book Alive first revealed the story of the Andes disaster to the world, with honesty, sensitivity, and great power.

  To all my teammates and friends who died in the crash. I have never forgotten them and have tried to live my life in their honor.

  To my fifteen fellow survivors, my brothers for life, who are the only ones who can truly understand what we suffered.
Without the loyalty and solidarity we showed one another, none of us would have made it out of the Andes.

  To the Old Christians Rugby Club, and the Old Christians spirit, a spirit of unity and self-sacrifice, which bonded us and gave us the strength and common will to survive.

  To my sister Graciela, who was a great comfort to me in the aftermath of the ordeal, and with whom I have grown closer and closer in all the years since.

  To my wife, Veronique, and my daughters, Veronica and Cecilia, for their constant love and support, and for the patience with which they endured the long hours I spent working on this book. For me, they are the dearest things in the world.

  To my sister Susy, whom I still miss as much as I did in the first moments after I lost her.

  To my mother, Xenia, whose warmth, love, and wisdom gave me the strength I needed to endure the unendurable …

  And to my father, Seler, who inspired me as a boy and who inspires me still. It was my love for him, and nothing else, that carried me out of the mountains, and every moment with him since has been a blessing.

  —Nando Parrado

  Acknowledgments

  WHEN I WAS APPROACHED about the possibility of working with Nando Parrado on Miracle in the Andes, my first impulse was to wonder if such a book was necessary. Like millions of others, I had been fascinated and inspired by the saga of the 1972 Andes Disaster, but the 1973 bestseller Alive had told that story in such exhaustive detail, and with such definitive scope and power, that I wondered if there was any good reason to tell it again. I knew that if this new book was to find an audience it would have to explore dimensions of the story Alive had left unfathomed—dimensions of emotion and introspection, of the spirit and the heart. To simply retell the events of the ordeal would be pointless. We would have to put readers inside Nando’s skull, let them gaze out through his eyes at the bleakness of the Andes, and force them to trudge hopelessly, in his battered rugby shoes, on the frozen slopes he was certain would be his grave. We would have to strand them, with Nando and his friends, in the lifeless cordillera, make them live through the cold, the fear, and the desolation. The story would have to be told from inside out, through the emotional filter of Nando’s desperation, and it would not succeed unless Nando understood that the best story he had to tell was about more than a young man conquering the mountains; it was about an ordinary boy who loved life too dearly to be defeated by impossible odds.