Miracle in the Andes Read online

  Roberto faced more challenges when he arrived in Montevideo, where finicky customs officials refused to allow the machine into the country. Roberto, of course, would not be denied. He hailed a cab and went directly to the offices of the president of Uruguay, where he demanded a meeting with the leader of our country. Incredibly, his request was granted, and after he made his case to the president, airport customs officials were ordered to cut the red tape and allow the Doppler to enter the country. Roberto arranged for it to be taken to his hospital, where it was immediately put into service. Less than forty-eight hours had passed since Roberto had first heard about the machine, but it was already up and running and saving the lives of Uruguayan children.

  Roberto has enjoyed a rich and peaceful personal life. Three years after our return from the Andes he married Laura Surraco, the girl he had missed so badly in the mountains, and this was a lucky thing for him, because she may be the only woman in Uruguay who could stand up to his stubbornness and harness his boundless energy. They have two sons and a daughter. I am godfather to his son Hilario, who is now a standout player for the Old Christians. Roberto, who has always been active in the affairs of the team, is now president of the Old Christians Club, a position he relishes because he loves the team and is convinced no one could guide it better. Of course, he feels this way about everything and believes he should have a say in all important matters, including the loftiest affairs of the Uruguayan state. In 1999, in fact, he grew so unhappy with the leadership of our government that he formed his own political party and ran for president of the country. His grassroots campaign drew only a small percentage of the vote, but, as always, he made his voice heard. I tease him mercilessly about his ego, but I would not have him any other way.

  Gustavo Zerbino is another especially good friend, with whom I have grown very close over the years. He is a man of strong principles and straight talk, and when he speaks he makes his words count. I can’t imagine a more dependable friend than Gustavo. In the Andes, he was always brave, smart, and steady, and if he hadn’t burned himself out on that nearly fatal attempt to climb the mountain, he most certainly would have been one of our most trusted expeditionaries. But even before the disaster he was a loyal and protective ally who would never desert a teammate or a friend. I’ll never forget how he came to my aid during a very tough rugby match, when an opposing player ambushed me from behind with an illegal punch to the back of the head. The blow stunned me. I never saw it coming, but Gustavo did. “It was Number 12,” he said to me, as my head spun. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, “he’s mine.”

  Moments later a “maul” formed, as players from each team locked in a shoving match to take possession of the ball. Suddenly, out of the tangle of bodies I saw Number 12 stagger, then topple backwards like a falling tree. Gustavo stepped over the fallen Number 12 and approached me. He gave me a matter-of-fact nod. All he said was, “Done.”

  Gustavo was an idealistic and compassionate young man who often worked with the Jesuits in the slums of Montevideo. Today, he shows the same concern for the welfare of others, and this makes him a strong and generous friend. Gustavo runs a large chemical company, is active in many community organizations, serves as the president of the Uruguayan Chemical Association, and is the vice-president of the Old Christians Rugby Club. He is divorced with four fine sons from his first marriage, and because he lives only blocks away, I see him and his family often.

  Carlitos Paez, another of my favorite friends, remains as irreverent, as affectionate, and every bit as loveable as he was each day in the mountains. I love him for his creativity and his outrageous humor and for the warmth he has always shown my daughters, with whom he is especially close and who have been drawn to his magnetic personality since they were babies. Carlitos has faced more than his share of challenges in life. His first marriage ended after only two years, and he has been single ever since. About fifteen years ago he fell so deeply into an addiction to alcohol and drugs that we all knew something had to be done. One afternoon, Gustavo and I showed up at Carlitos’s house. We told him we were taking him to a rehab hospital where he would stay until he had recovered completely. He was shocked by this confrontation, and at first he refused to budge, but we told him the decision was no longer his. All the arrangements had been made, we told him, and we let him see, in our faces, that there was no use in resisting. Happily, Carlitos recovered completely. He has been sober ever since, and now volunteers his time to counsel people who are battling substance abuse and addiction. Carlitos works as an executive at a public relations firm in Montevideo. He has such a passion for golf that he recently purchased a home that borders the fairway of a golf club. But his greatest passion these days is his granddaughter, Justine, the child of his daughter Gochi. His world revolves around this baby, and it is good to see the joy she brings him. Once, Carlitos wrote to me, “We continue to walk our paths with the certainty that life is worth living, that nothing is impossible if affection and solidarity exist, if we have the people willing to give a hand to [those who] need it.” Carlitos has survived more than one ordeal in his life, but he has learned to find happiness, and I am always happy to be with him.

  Alvaro Mangino was one of the youngest boys in the disaster, and perhaps because of this I always felt a special sense of protectiveness toward him while we were in the mountains. He has grown into a man of great common sense and inner calmness who has learned to put the ordeal behind him and, while learning much from the experience, has gone on to live his life. He has been married for many years to his wife, Margarita, and has raised four children. For many years he lived in Brazil, but he has recently returned to Montevideo, where he works for a heating and air conditioning company and serves on the board of the Old Christians. He is a loyal and steady friend, and I am happy to have him back close to home.

  Alvaro is particularly close to another of my good friends, Coche Inciarte, who may be the calmest, gentlest, and most thoughtful of all the survivors. Coche has a naturally mild and peaceful nature; I can honestly say I have never heard him raise his voice. He speaks with great natural eloquence and sharp wit, but while he often jokes and teases, he has a deep emotional understanding of what we suffered, and he never hides the closeness he feels for the rest of us. Coche married his childhood sweetheart Soledad, who had thought she lost him in the mountains. Their reunion was a miracle for both of them, and Coche has never let himself forget what a wonder it is to have her and the three children they have raised.

  For many years, Coche, a dairy farmer, was one of the largest producers of dairy products in Uruguay. He recently sold his holdings and retired to enjoy his family and to devote time to his great passion—painting. Coche, it turns out, is quite a talented artist. One of his paintings hangs in my office now and I think of him every time I see it, because his artwork reveals the same depth, gentleness, and dignity that make him such a great friend.

  As one of the triumvirate of leaders known as “the cousins,” Eduardo Strauch was an important figure in the mountains. His clear and deliberate thinking helped add stability and direction to our daily struggle to survive. He is much the same today as he was in the Andes: cool and collected, a man of few words, but always worth listening to. Eduardo and his wife, Laura, have five children. He is an accomplished architect in Montevideo who has built many fine homes and buildings there, including my first house.

  Eduardo’s cousin Daniel Fernandez still possesses the humor and charisma he used to ease the intense pressures and fears we faced in the wrecked fuselage. Daniel is a great storyteller and has the ability to truly capture the imagination of his audience when he speaks. Sparks always fly when Daniel, a member of the Blanco political party, and Roberto, a die-hard Colorado, discuss Uruguayan politics. They are both bull-headed, and each loves to incite the other. Their arguments inevitably end in a stalemate, but no matter how hot these discussions may grow they are always laced with humor, and the rest of us greatly enjoy the show. Daniel runs a successful computer and
technology firm based in Montevideo. He and his wife, Amalia, have three wonderful kids.

  I have always admired Pedro Algorta, the great friend of Arturo Nogueira, for his intelligence, keen wit, and independent thinking. I have not seen Pedro as much as I would like, because he lives in Argentina, where he works as the general manager of a large brewery and beverage manufacturer. But recently he bought a ranch in Uruguay, and I hope this will allow me to see him more often. He and his wife, Noel, have two daughters and a son, all of them studying or working abroad.

  In the Andes, none of the survivors was as cool and collected as Bobby François. He was frightened as any of us, I am sure, but he seemed determined to face his destiny with a minimum of drama. “If we die, we die,” he seemed to be saying. “Why waste energy over it?” He has lived his life with much the same attitude, and it has served him well. Bobby is a rancher, a lifestyle of slow and simple rhythms that suits him. He spends his days in the saddle, riding alone on the open range, tending herds under the broad skies of the Uruguayan plains. He has five children with his wife, Graciana. They spend half of their time on the ranch, the other half in Carrasco, where Bobby is especially close to Coche and Roy Harley.

  Javier Methol, the only survivor other than me to lose a family member on the mountain, struggled to recover from Liliana’s death, but he found strength in his strong Catholic faith and in the love of the four children he and Liliana shared. After grieving his lost wife for years, Javier met and married his second wife, Ana Maria, with whom he now has four more children! For many years he was an executive at a large tobacco company—a company that was founded by Panchito’s family—but he is now happily retired.

  Of all the survivors, Javier is most convinced that it was the hand of God that led us out of the mountains. Once he wrote to me: God gave us life again in the mountain and made us brothers. When we considered that you were dead, He brought you back to life, so that afterwards together with Roberto you became His messengers in search of the salvation of all of us. I am so sure, that for some moments He carried you both in his arms …

  Javier and I have different ideas of God, and the role God played in our survival. Still, I respect the humility and sincerity of his faith and the way he has rebuilt his life after his devastating loss. Calm and even tempered, he is one of the stabilizing forces in our group, and I always feel a sense of peace when I am with him.

  Antonio Vizintin, who bravely climbed the mountain with Roberto and me, has faced many challenges and difficulties in his life. His first marriage ended in divorce, and his second wife died tragically. He is now married for a third time, and we all pray that he has a happier future ahead. Tintin, as we still call him, has two children, a daughter and a son, both from his second marriage. He is a good father and has been successful in his work as an importer of chemicals and other supplies for the plastics industry. Tintin still lives in Carrasco, but he is a bit of a loner, and in recent years we have seen less of him than we’d like. Still, he will always be one of us, and we would like to see more of him, even though he allows his son, a fine rugby player, to play for the Old Boys Rugby Club, the Old Christians’ longtime archrival.

  Roy Harley is one of the survivors I think about very often. For more than thirty years I have been troubled by the way Roy was portrayed in previous accounts of the disaster, primarily in Piers Paul Read’s magnificent book Alive. I’ve even been puzzled by the way I treated him, at times, in the mountains. It’s true, Roy’s emotions were fragile in the Andes, but it is also true that he was one of the youngest in our group, and that he hovered closer to death than any of the others who survived. The fact that he wore his emotions close to the surface does not mean he was weaker or more frightened than the rest of us. No one could have been more frightened than I was, and, in fact, I have realized in writing this book that it was my own fear that fueled the anger and frustration I felt toward Roy. Alive was based heavily on extensive interviews conducted with each of the survivors, and I regret that in those discussions we all may have drawn too simple a picture of Roy’s particular struggle. But we were young men then, and things seemed much simpler. In Miracle in the Andes, I have tried to set the record straight: in my eyes, Roy Harley was no coward and no weakling. He was and always will be one of us, a survivor, a reliable friend, and an important part of our circle. Over the years he has proven himself again and again as a man of integrity and strength, and he is one of the guys I know I can always count on. Today Roy is a successful engineer working for a large manufacturer of paint. He lives in Montevideo with his wife, Cecilia—the sister of Roberto’s wife, Laura—two lovely daughters and a son who is now playing for the Old Christians. Roy, a great advocate of physical fitness, has hardly aged, and the rest of us envy him for his flat stomach and firm muscles, because most of us have seen our muscles soften and our bellies grow.

  Alfredo “Pancho” Delgado is another survivor for whom the record must be cleared. In Alive, Pancho comes across as a manipulative and dishonest character, who schemed behind our backs to increase his own comfort, often at the expense of others. There is no doubt that Pancho did these things, but in fact, so did we all. Each of us, at times, acted selfishly—trying to pilfer more than our share of food or cigarettes, to escape work, or to secure for ourselves the warmest clothes and the most comfortable sleeping places. None of us were saints. We survived not because we were perfect, but because the accumulated weight of our concern for each other far outweighed our natural self-interest. Why Pancho stood out in this regard is a puzzle. He had a keen wit and a natural eloquence, and perhaps we resented his talent for getting away with his transgressions. In any case, it is not right that Pancho has been singled out like this and has had to be burdened with this unfair reputation. The truth is that Pancho always was and always will be one of us and, like the others, he will always have my friendship, my trust, and my respect. Pancho, who lives close to me in Carrasco, is a prominent lawyer. He is married to his life-long sweetheart, Susana, with whom he has two sons and two daughters. His oldest son, Alfredo, is the captain of the Old Christians First XV.

  Ramon “Moncho” Sabella, who has never married, is the confirmed bachelor in our group. Despite our constant efforts to introduce him to many suitable matches, he remains a happily single man-about-town, who swears he is simply having too much fun to ever settle down. When he is not partying on the beach at Punte del Este, or in the clubs of Montevideo, Moncho works in real estate development, and in a new venture, in partnership with fellow survivor Fito Strauch, to breed and raise ostriches. Moncho is a good friend, he still has a keen eye for beautiful women, and he is always fun to be around.

  Fito Strauch was one of the most important guys on the mountain, and none of us, least of all me, has forgotten the many ways in which he contributed to our survival. Like Javier, Fito firmly believes that it was God’s personal intervention on the mountain that saved us, and that we should live our lives as His messengers. Sometimes I feel that Fito is unhappy with me for the way I have lived my life; that I have minimized or even dismissed God’s role in our rescue, and that I have not been faithful to the spiritual lessons of the ordeal. I tell him I am not sure how to spread God’s message, because I am not sure what that message could be. Fito might say that the lesson of the Andes is that God saved us because He loves us. But did He not love my mother and sister and the twenty-nine others who died? What happened to us in the Andes transformed me in profound ways and gave me a deeper and more spiritual approach to life than I had before, but for me, the lesson of the mountains is that life is precious, and that it should be lived fully, from the heart and out of love. I don’t want my life to be defined by what happened to me thirty years ago; I feel I am writing the script of my own life every day. For me, this is not a denial of the spiritual lessons we learned on the mountain, but the very fulfillment of those lessons.

  Fito and I will probably never see eye to eye on this issue, but for me, this does not diminish the respect and friends
hip I feel for him, and when we meet we always embrace like brothers. Fito lives in the countryside where he owns and operates a cattle ranch. He has four children with his wife, Paula.

  Sergio Catalan, the Chilean peasant who first spotted Roberto and me in the mountains, and whose quick and competent response led directly to our rescue and the salvation of fourteen other young lives, is not, technically, one of the survivors. But he is definitely part of our family, and we have kept in touch with him over the years, visiting him at his village in Chile, or flying him in to see us in Montevideo. He remains the same humble, gentle, and immensely dignified man who rode on horseback for ten hours to lead rescuers to us at Los Maitenes. He lives a simple life, spending weeks at a time in the mountain pastures, with only his dog for company, as he tends to his cattle and sheep. Sergio and his wife have raised nine children, and it impresses me that even on the modest means of a mountain herdsman, he has managed to send most of them to college and to see all of them established in good marriages and jobs.

  In March of 2005, Sergio’s wife, Virginia, called me to invite us to their fiftieth wedding anniversary. It would be a surprise for Sergio, she said. She would not tell him we were coming. We agreed, and the day before the celebration was to begin, Roberto, Gustavo, and I, along with our families, were driving up the narrow, rocky road leading to Sergio’s village. The rugged, barren foothills of the Andes rose all around us as we steadily climbed, then someone spotted a figure on a horse. He was wearing the traditional garb of a Chilean cattleman—the short-waisted jacket, the pointed boots, the broad-brimmed hat.