There is something that no film can reflect, even one as wonderful as The Snow Society, by J.A. Bayona, based on the book of the same name by the Uruguayan journalist and writer Pablo Vierci. Those things that escape the cinema are only discovered in the printed pages, especially those that are worth reading more than once. This is the case of this book about the 16 survivors of the Andes air tragedy.
The Snow Society, which was published in 2008, was out of print for years and could only be obtained in libraries or retail bookstores. That is until Alrevés decided to reissue it in 2022, a year before the film's theatrical release, which will be available on Netflix starting January 4. There were already other books and other films about this drama, but Pablo Vierci and J.A. Bayona will mark a before and after.
The luckiest survivors spent 71 days up there. The rest, a little more. They prefer to talk about nights. “It wasn't 71 or 72 days. There were 71 and 72 nights,” says Nando Parrado. The first rescue helicopters could not take them all at once and returned the next day. The miracle was possible thanks to two passengers who after 61 days went to look for help and found it after 10 days of crossing.
Nando Parrado was one of those two young people worthy of an epic Greek poem. He and Roberto Canessa carried out a high mountain feat without preparation or means and when everyone already assumed they were dead. Nando explained to Pablo Vierci that when he remembers the crashed flight of Fairchild 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force he prefers to talk about nights “because they were much worse than the days. “They were the fear, the darkness, the memories.”
When these unlikely climbers reached Los Maitenes, in Chile, the international press focused on covering the case. The journalists speculated about how they had survived without food for so long at such an altitude. The first hypotheses indicated that they killed birds with stones and also ate lichens and fungi. The reality was more terrible and beautiful at the same time.
Anthropophagy? Cannibalism? The ideal definition forces us to repeat the phrase on the piece of paper that appeared in Numa Turcatti's hand. There were 45 people on the plane, 16 of whom died on December 13, 1972 or in the hours following. In the following two months, 13 more people died. Numa was the last. This is what he wrote on the piece of paper: “There is no greater love than giving one's life for one's friends.”
No lichens, no fungi, no birds (there weren't any, and even if there had been, who had the strength to kill them with stones). One of the first to know what they had been feeding on was the brother of a survivor, whom he accompanied in an ambulance to the hospital. When the companion found out the truth, he became so upset that his brother, who was a walking skeleton, had to give him her place on the stretcher.
Pablo Vierci refuses to use the word cannibalism (although this expression will be the shadow of the miracle of the Andes) because it was “a pact of mutual surrender.” Everyone knew they were “survival and fuel at the same time.” At first, they did it almost secretly, embarrassed, although they ended up saving bones to gnaw or suck on to get some calcium. But that was not the lesson they gave to the world.
If they survived it was not because they went from cutting pieces of meat the size of a match to large portions, but because the law of the fittest did not prevail and they sought the common good. In the fuselage of the plane, frozen from the cold and with the Sword of Damocles of constant snow avalanches, they were not afraid of dying. The only thing they wanted was not to be the last to die because then they would have no one by their side to receive comfort.
No one has explained it better than Moncho Sabella: “Many times you thought 'and if everyone dies, what do I do?'. That thought drove me crazy because the last one to die would die without affection, unprotected, helpless. If you were the last one, who did you hold hands with?” They returned from hell (“a hell without flames because real hell is frozen and dark”), but the experience changed them forever.
Roberto Canessa, the other expedition member who managed to cross the mountains, assures that they returned to conventional society, but they did so valuing life "in a different way" and knowing that "any piece of old bread is infinitely better than what we had to eat." in the mountains, that the hardest and dirtiest mattress is much softer than the broken and dented metal floor of a frozen fuselage.”
In the mountains, adds Adolfo Strauch, “no one boasted about anything: everything was done for others and there was no reward other than the well-being of the group.” That's why they don't believe themselves to be heroes. Once they asked one of Roberto Canessa's sons if he admired his father because of the Andes and he answered: "I don't know, at that time I had not yet been born, but I admire him because every day he goes to work so that we "We do not lack anything."
In the Andes they found that breaking the rules (and they broke a taboo: human flesh) “does not mean that integrity or honor are degraded; On the contrary, they become established,” says Adolfo Strauch, who only prides himself on one thing: his descendants. Of the 16 that survived, there were already more than a hundred 15 years ago, when The Snow Society appeared. There were passengers who were born twice and others with two deaths.
When José Luis Coche Inciarte's mother met him again in the hospital, she told him: “I gave birth to you twice, son, only this time I suffered and was much more happy than the first time.” In the initial list of survivors provided by the authorities, one Gustavo appeared, but two were traveling on the plane: Gustavo Zerbino, who was saved, and Gustavo Nicolich, who was not. The father of the second traveled believing that he would meet him again and received a blow from the hammer.
Mr. Nicolich saw Daniel Fernández, a friend of his son, get off a helicopter. He asked him: “What device is Gustavo traveling in?” “He's not coming,” Daniel replied. “How come he doesn't come?” the man insisted with a contorted face. "He's not coming." Thus, with those three words, he found out that his son had died for the second time, because “Gustavo died in the accident, he was resurrected and he died again at that moment.”
“And mom?” his children asked Javier Methol, who responded, while pointing to the sky: “Up there.” The snow society teaches us many things. One of the main ones is not to give up. Tintín Vizintín, another of the 16, says: “The tragedy made us fighters. Some have done better than others in life, and I'm not talking about worldly success. But we are all fighters, we do not give in. In the Andes there was never resignation.”
