On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Argentine Andes mountains, and the survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism while waiting for rescue.

The Andes Plane Crash

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Photo of survivors from Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 shortly after rescuers found them.

On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes mountains. There were 45 people on board when the plane went down, but by the time they were rescued more than two months later, only 16 were still alive. However, the most horrifying part of their story was how far they were willing to go to survive.

Shortly after the survivors were rescued, it was revealed that they had been forced to resort to cannibalism to avoid starving to death.

When the public learned about these chilling circumstances, the reaction was immediate and intense, but it quickly faded once the men said their actions were inspired by the Last Supper, when Jesus gave his disciples bread and wine made from his own body. A priest also ruled that the survivors had acted out of necessity and absolved them of any related sin.

The tragedy was chronicled by survivor Nando Parrado in his memoir Miracle in the Andes and in the 1993 Ethan Hawke movie Alive.

The Passengers of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571

The group at the center of the tragic and unfortunate plane crash in the Andes included an amateur rugby team: the Old Christians Club, from the Carrasco neighborhood of Montevideo, Uruguay, along with their friends, families, and of course, the plane crew.

The Old Christians were headed to Santiago, Chile, for a match, departing from Carrasco International Airport on October 12, 1972. In total, the twin-engine Fairchild turboprop carried five crew members and 40 passengers.

Among those passengers were Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, two rugby team members who would eventually take the lead in a search party for the crash site.

However, bad weather in the Andes forced the plane to land prematurely. The passengers spent one night in Mendoza, Argentina, before departing again the next day just after 2 p.m.

Knowing their small plane couldn’t fly high enough to clear the Andes mountains, the pilots chose to fly south through the Planchón Pass.

An hour into the flight, a pilot informed air traffic controllers they had passed the pass and were ready to land. Unfortunately, they were wrong, and this mistake would prove fatal.

Flight 571 Crashes in the Andes

Unaware the plane was still in the mountains, air traffic controllers cleared the pilots to begin descent and prepare to land. Due to poor weather causing low visibility, the pilots could not see the mountains directly below.

The plane’s belly soon clipped a peak, losing its right wing. Shortly after, the left wing also broke off, and the fuselage crashed into the snow-covered Andes.

The Crash Site

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The crash site of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in the Andes.

“I felt pain in every cell of my body, and as I spasmodically shuddered in its grip, every moment seemed to last an eternity,” recalled Nando Parrado in Miracle in the Andes.

“Dried blood clots were tangled in my hair, and three bloody wounds formed an irregular triangle about four inches above my right ear. I felt rough crests of broken bone beneath the frozen blood, and when I pressed down lightly, I felt a spongy sensation with my finger. My stomach warmed as I realized what this meant — I was pressing pieces of my skull against the surface of my brain.”

Parrado endured immense pain in heartbreaking circumstances but fared better than some others. In the initial crash, 12 people were killed. Thirty-three remained alive, though some were more injured than Parrado.

Canessa, described by Parrado as “strong-willed and intense,” told him he had been unconscious for three days at that point.

It would be another 10 weeks before the survivors were found. But the hardest part of their story was just beginning.

Survivors Resort to Cannibalism

The passengers’ supplies were scarce. They were at 11,500 feet above sea level, facing freezing temperatures, and had little more than wine bars and sweets to sustain them. Parrado hadn’t even packed clothes for cold weather.

Canessa and another survivor had medical training and tried to tend to the injured, but without proper tools, they could do little.

A search had been launched for the missing plane, but because the crash location was incorrectly reported initially, search teams had no idea where to look. The plane’s white paint made it hard to spot against the snow-covered mountains.

The search was called off after just 10 days.

The Harsh Reality

The plane’s fuselage remained mostly intact but offered little shelter or protection. Within a week, most of the food was gone, and the injured began to die. Six died in the first two weeks after the crash, and eight more were buried on October 29 when an avalanche covered the fuselage.

With death toll rising and supplies nearly exhausted, the passengers came to a harsh realization: they would have to eat the dead to survive.

“We shook hands and said, ‘If I die, please use my body. So at least you can get out of here and tell my family how much I love them,’” Parrado told ABC News in 2023.

The survivors compared this decision to communion, citing the biblical Last Supper, during which Jesus shared bread and wine made from his own body with his disciples.

“It’s a very, very humiliating thing to eat a corpse,” said Canessa. “I thought of my mother who had a unique chance to tell her not to cry anymore, that I was alive. And to do that, I had to buy time and buy time, I had to eat the corpses.”

By December 12, only 16 of the original 45 passengers were still alive, and a decision was made to send three of them across the mountains to seek help. The chosen “Expeditioners” were Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa, and Antonio Vizintín.

The Journey of Parrado and Canessa

Sixty-one days after the plane crashed in the mountains, the men set out on what they thought would be a one-day trip.

Three days after they left, the expedition reached the mountain summit and realized all that surrounded them was more of the same.

It was then decided that Vizintín would return to the crash site to inform the others that the journey would take longer than expected. He left his remaining rations with Parrado and Canessa and retraced his steps.

Meanwhile, Parrado and Canessa continued, facing more danger on the way down. Finally, after eight days, they reached a riverbank and a cattle trail that led to the town of Los Maitenes, Chile.

Across the roaring river, Parrado and Canessa could see three farmers but the noise made communication impossible. One of the men, Sergio Catalán, indicated he would return the next day.

“That dream tomorrow we always had was real now,” said Canessa.

Rescue and Aftermath

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Nando Parrado (left) and Roberto Canessa (right) shortly after their rescue.

When they returned early the next morning, they devised a plan to communicate by writing notes on paper, tying them to rocks, and throwing them across the river.

Parrado’s initial note read: “I come from a plane that crashed in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days. I have 14 injured friends at the crash site. We need help. We have no food. Please come get us.”

Catalán immediately went to help, riding 10 hours on horseback to inform authorities. In the following days, the other 14 survivors were rescued by helicopter.

Public Reaction and Legacy

In the media frenzy, word spread that survivors had resorted to cannibalism, causing some to question the ethics of such an act. The survivors addressed the reaction directly, and their comparison to the Last Supper seemed to calm some of the moral panic.

“Some thought it was good, some thought it was bad, but I couldn’t care less,” said Canessa. “They have no right to judge us.”