''The story of the Andes survivors briefly told by team leader
Nando Parrado''
My name is Fernando Parrado, but I´m known as Nando. I was born on December
9th, 1949 in Uruguay, Montevideo. I was on the plane that crashed in La cordillera
de los Andes the 13th of October of 1972.
At the age 23 I was going
to Chile with my rugby
teammates. We needed
to stop in Mendoza
because of bad weather.
Finally we continued our
trip, we were flying over
the cordillera de los
Andes, when the plane
started shaking, we were too close to the mountains, suddenly one of the plane
wings broke and everything went dark.
The next thing I remember is that I woke up, and I saw my team mates´ faces.
They said something “we crashed Nando, we crashed”. My mother was dead and
my sister was ill. I ran over her, I hug her and she died right there in my arms. I
couldn´t do anything to save her, due to her dead, I had a reason to survive.
We had no food just a couple chocolates we found in the plane, I knew it wouldn´t
last for long but still, it was something. Then I started thinking, maybe I could eat
one of the pilots and get out of here, but when I told Carlitos what I was thinking he
was shocked, he couldn´t believe I
was thinking of eating human flesh.
We were getting short of chocolate
therefore I decided to do it, I will eat
a body. I went outside the plane; I
cut a small piece of meat and
swallowed it. It was not so terrible; at
least now we had more food I
thought. At first just some of the boys
did it but then when the chocolate
was almost over everyone started