THE snowcapped Andes of South America are a cruel and unforgiving barrier. When storms are brewing, plane crashes are frequent; invariably after an aircraft goes down, mountain people remark that "the Cordillera never gives anyone back." Last week, though, the Cordillera had been forced to give back 16 of the 45 people who had been aboard a Uruguayan air force plane that hit a mountain peak in mid-October. Incredibly, the survivors lasted for 73 days in deep snow and subfreezing temperature. They took extremely grim measures in order to do so—they ate the bodies of those who had died in the crash.
The 16 survivors—all men and all but one 26 years or younger—were rescued after two of them had struggled down the mountains in an epic ten-day hike. The pair encountered a stray shepherd, and four climbers of Chile's Andean Rescue Corps helicoptered in to bring out the remaining 14. Some survivors had lost as much as 60 lbs., and six required hospitalization for injuries; otherwise, they were in remarkably good condition despite having spent more than two months on a snow-drenched mountain. Only when the rescuers discovered that nine bodies near the wreck had been strangely carved and mutilated in ways unrelated to a plane crash did the truth emerge. Reluctantly, the survivors admitted that they had chopped the dead flesh into small pieces and eaten it. "It was like a heart transplant," explained one of the 16. "The dead sustained the living."*
The strange events on the Cordillera began last Oct. 13 when the F-27 turboprop, manned by a crew of five, took off from Montevideo for Santiago, Chile, normally a 2½-hr, flight. Aboard were 16 members of the Old Christians, a rugby team composed of socially prominent college boys from the prosperous Montevideo suburb of Carrasco. Along with 24 friends and relatives, they were making a trip to Chile for a series of matches. Because of bad weather in the mountains, the plane was forced to stop at Mendoza, Argentina. The players used the layover to stock up on chocolate for their Chilean hosts.
Toboggan. When the F-27 took off again, the storm had abated, but the flight over the Andes proved to be rough going. Still in a holiday mood, the rugby players happily yelled "¡Ole!" or "¡Conga!" each time the turboprop hit an air pocket. But then, recalled Roberto Canessa, a 19-year-old medical student, "I looked out as we turned and saw a mountain only a few feet away." Without warning, the plane hit a peak and slid like a toboggan for half a mile down an 80° slope. When the plane finally stopped in a huge snowdrift at 11,900 feet above sea level, 18 people were dead or dying. "One of the pilots was alive," said Canessa, "but he was pleading for a revolver to kill himself."