Interviewer: Fernando, recovering from all that happened must have been a very tough experience. Going back to the place of the accident, where you lost your sister and mother, other than the memories it brings, it must be very hard.
Fernando Parrado: I think I am a simpler guy than I look. I see white as white and black as black. Of course I haven’t forgotten what happened in that hell, however I learnt to live with it. 6 weeks after the accident, I was a 20 year-old boy who had to continue living, I had a whole life in front of me. My father has gone 17 times to the grave, and I have gone 11, just to place flowers there. If there’s something different to that, I don’t know. We go there to pay tribute to our loved ones. Some people go to visit their loved ones to a cemetery 2 blocks away, our cemetery is just a little far away.
I: How do you consider being reborn after being so hurt?
F: It is an experience that only some people get to live. I say I resurrected. Everyone thought I was dead. The way I saw the world that surrounded me after I was dead completely changed. People go on with their lives, nothing in the world changes. People cry you, and that’s it. And before you die, you think you are the center of the universe. That’s what shocked me the most, seeing that you matter, but people go on with their lives after you’re gone. You die and nothing happens. Sometimes good things and bad things happen, that’s just life and we’re all equal.
I: You basically came back from death, and a couple of hours after the rescue, your father told you to not let this be the most important thing that happened in your life. 34 years later, did you manage to do this?
This is an extract from an interview to Nando Parrado one of the sisxteen survivors, it is an illustration of his life-changing experience from his point of view ans mostly his feelings.