Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado

Here we have the incredible Miracle in the Andes (Milagro en los Andes). It’s Nando Parrado’s 2006 account of the 1972 Andes Plane Crash, which we believe was one of the best books of that year.

Although this is a harrowing read, as part of the Andes flight disaster of 1972, Parrado’s candid account is deeply humanising.

As he lost his mother and sister in the crash, it’s a remarkably personal account of grief. Which was doubled by his personal battles for survival. It makes for one of the all-time great works on survival.

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

“I had always thought that life was the actual thing, the natural thing, and that death was simply the end of living. Now, in this lifeless place, I saw with a terrible clarity that death was the constant, death was the base, and life was only a short, fragile dream. I was dead already. I had been born dead, and what I thought was my life was just a game death let me play as it waited to take me.”

In October 1972, Parrado and his amateur rugby teammates were on a flight to a friendly match in Chile when their plane violently crashed into the Andes mountain range.

After an error by the pilots, the plane crashed violently and was pitched into the middle of the Andes. A desperate fight for survival followed, one that’s entered into global legend.

His mother (Eugenia) was killed instantly and his sister (Susy) terminally wounded.

Adding to this was the loss of his close friend Panchito Abal, a good looking young man who was skilled at wooing ladies. Parrado states their friendship had developed to the point they were, “as close as brothers”.

Of his mother (a Ukrainian emigrant, also going by the name of Xenia) he notes her remarkable tenacity:

“As part of a Rotary Club expedition, my mother escorted fifteen young children from Carrasco on a weekend visit to Buenos Aires. Hours after they arrived, a military coup erupted in that city, with the purpose of toppling the Argentine government. Chaos reigned in the streets, and the phone at our house rang off the hook with calls from worried parents wanting to know if their children were safe. Again and again I heard my father reassure them, with total confidence in his voice, saying, ‘They are with Xenia, they will be all right.’ And they were all right, thanks to the efforts of my mother.”

Parrado’s mother knew a final ferry would leave Buenos Aires at midnight. She phoned ahead and told the ferry drivers to stay put until she arrived, before leading the 16 kids through the jittery streets to safety.

“She was a true tower of strength, but her strength was always based in warmth and love and because of her love and protection I grew up believing the world was a safe, familiar place.”

After being knocked unconscious in the Andes crash, upon waking Parrado was informed of what had happened to his family members.

These are the types of psychological wounds that never heal, but Parrado has always shown incredible resilience in dealing with this grief.

He wrote his book with help from Vince Rause, an American freelance writer and journalist, and Miracle in the Andes covers the build-up to the fateful crash. But there are also insights into Parrado’s formative years and love for rugby. Of the latter he states:

“No other sport gives you such an intense sense of selflessness and unified purpose. I believe this is why rugby players all over the world feel such a passion for the game and such a feeling brotherhood.”

He writes of Abal and his ladies man reputation. But Parrado found his dating efforts more difficult as he was “a little shy, long-limbed and gangly”.

This opens up elements of humour, as he recounts a failed date in the early ’70s:

“I managed, after months of trying, to get a date with a girl I really liked. I took her to Las Delicias and she waited in the car while I bought us some ice cream. As I was returning to the car with a cone in each hand, I tripped over something on the sidewalk and lost my balance. Stumbling and weaving wildly towards the parked car, I fought to keep my balance and save the cones, but I didn’t have a chance. I have often wondered how it look to that girl inside the car: her date lurching towards her in a wide circle across the street, hunched over, his eyes like saucers, his mouth gaping. He staggers towards the car, then seems to dive at her, his cheek smashing flat against the driver’s window, his head bouncing hard off the glass. He slips from view as he slumps to the ground, and all that remains are two dripping blobs of ice cream smeared across the window.”

We cover that not to mock Parrado, as it’s a charming story. Like him, as younger men (even now) we were prone to such gaffes.

But that anecdote does highlight who Parrado was prior to the Andes. A shy young man who hadn’t reached his full stride in life—what would occur on a mountain range transformed him into a natural leader.

The Crash Into the Andes

The Andes Plane Crash has taken on urban legend type status, with more rumours than truths flying around.

The 1974 Piers Paul Read account Alive helped to stave off an early media frenzy into the lives of the 16 survivors, and a 1993 adaptation of the book further fuelled interest in the story.

For most people, the mediocre film (starring Ethan Hawke) is how they’ll know the story. It’s only in the last decade the 16 survivors have come forward to discuss the incident in detail.

Nando Parrado was one of the first to do so, with his 2006 book complemented two years later by the remarkable documentary Stranded: I’ve come from a plane that crashed on the mountains.

That’s an exceptional documentary and a must watch.

In freezing temperatures, and with no food, the survivors resorted to eating the flesh of their dead friends in order to survive.

Although this often dominates the story from a sensationalist perspective (the media frenzy after the 1972 event focussed on it heavily), the term more appropriate here is anthropophagy.

That’s the eating of human flesh.

Cannibalism implies many negative connotations, which we think isn’t at all fair to what Parrado and his friends had to endure on the Andes mountain range. These young guys were heroic.

Ultimately, after two months stranded in the wilderness, Parrado and his friend Roberto Canessa made a last-ditch effort to walk out of the mountain range with only a makeshift sleeping bag.

As a physical achievement and act of bravery it’s almost unmatchable. Although he went into the trek expecting death.

As he had done over the previous months:

“I would teach myself to live in constant uncertainty, moment by moment, step by step. I would live as if I were dead already. With nothing to lose, nothing could surprise me, nothing could stop me from fighting; my fears would not block me from following my instincts, and no risk would be too great.”

This cavalier, even reckless, approach is what led to their eventual saviour.

They met a remote Chilean arriero (transporter) called Sergio Catalán. From opposite sides of a river, Parrado was able to throw a hastily scrawled letter. This read:

“I come from an plane that crashed in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days. I have a wounded friend up there. In the plane there are still 14 injured people. We need to get out of here quickly and we don’t know how to. We don’t have any food. We are very weak. When are you going to come to get us? Please, we can’t even walk. Where are we?”

Catalán rode for 10 hours on horseback to alert the authorities.

An incredibly selfless act. For the rest of his life, Catalán (who died aged 91 in 2020) was assisted by the survivors. They even helped to fund a hip replacement operation for him.

Parrado’s Mission to Add Reason to His Ordeal

Canessa and Parrado promptly had the world’s media descend upon them. For posterity, there are remarkable interview clips with the young men shortly after their horrendous ordeal.

To note, Canessa has also since written his own incredible account of this survival story. That’s in the form of the brilliant autobiographical work I Had to Survive (2017).

In the closing segments of Miracle in the Andes, Parrado writes of his personal philosophy regarding life. This is about his personal beliefs about love and family connections:

“I am no wise man. Every day shows me how little I know about life, and how wrong I can be. But there are things I know to be true. I know I will die. And I know that the only sane response to such a horror is to love.”

But he also writes of what people find inspirational in his story:

“We all have our personal Andes.”

Canessa has said the same thing about this recently (late 2023), that so many people have a severe personal trauma to overcome. But in this Andes story they can find solace, and hope, on how to overcome the ordeal.

Miracle in the Andes is a brilliant work. A real tribute to Parrado’s capacity to recall and replicate a terrible ordeal in writing for future generations to read.

And in this story you should find in you the spirit to combat the worst of times you may find yourself in. As that’s what the legacy of the Andes plane crash, now as a stunning survival story, provides to future generations.

This book is a beacon of hope.

Nando Parrado and His Motivational Talks: Offering Hope Beyond Trauma

In the aftermath of the disaster, Fernando “Nando” Seler Parrado Dolgay became a worldwide celebrity. And something of a hero figure.

Having had a long-term interest in motorsport, he actually became a racing driver for a spell. He’d idolised F1 racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart, who took a interest in the survival story and wanted to meet Parrado. The two have since become friends.

Following on from his racing exploits, Parrado moved into business and television. He continued working for his father’s business and expanded that to take up motivational speaking.

With a story like his, a survival tale that needs to be told, we’re very pleased to see he still provides these talks.

As his experiences are there to help others cope with psychological trauma.

He’s also helped two oversee two major film productions on the Andes disaster. The first was a Hollywood production in 1993 with Alive.

The second was the realistic and haunting Society of the Snow (2023), the first South American speaking production that’ll bring this inspiring story to a whole new generation (a very important thing, we think).