Álvaro Mangino, survivor of the plane crash that became known as ‘the Miracle of the Andes'

Yahoo

07-04-2025

Álvaro Mangino, who has died on the eve of his 72nd birthday, was a survivor of what became known as both 'the tragedy of the Andes' and 'the miracle of the Andes', when a plane carrying members of a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in mountains near Argentina's border with Chile; for the next 72 days the survivors resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.
Álvaro Mangino Schmid was born on March 30 1953 in Montevideo; he was not a member of the Old Christians Club rugby union side, but he had friends who were and they asked him to go along on the trip. The club had been founded by Christian Brothers at Stella Maris College in the Uruguayan capital.
On October 12 1972 the party departed on a Uruguayan Air Force flight from Carrasco Airport in Montevideo for Santiago in Chile, where they were due to play an English side, the Old Boys Club. They were in a Fairchild FH-227D, a reportedly underpowered aircraft known to pilots as the 'lead sled' for its sluggishness. There were 45 passengers and crew aboard – players, supporters, friends and family.
The flight was forced to land in Mendoza in Argentina to wait out better weather conditions, then resumed the next day. The inexperienced co-pilot prepared to descend to what he thought was Pudahuel Airport in Santiago but failed to notice that he was out of position.
The plane struck a mountain ridge, losing both wings and the tail cone; three of the five crew members and nine passengers died immediately, while Mangino suffered a broken leg. They had crashed into a cirque, or valley, of the Glaciar de las Lágrimas, or 'Glacier of Tears'.
Over the next few days more people died from their injuries or from hypothermia, while search planes flew over without seeing them. On the 10th day they found a portable radio, which gave them the worst news possible: the search had been abandoned.
To protect his leg – which Roberto Canessa, a medical student, did his best to treat – Mangino had to sleep in a makeshift hammock, which exposed him to the freezing temperatures. But it did mean that he avoided an avalanche that hit the fuselage, in which most of the party had been sheltering, killing eight.
As well as the sub-zero conditions, food soon became a major problem. They had found eight chocolate bars, three small jars of jam, a tin of mussels, a tin of almonds, a few dates, a few sweets, dried plums and several bottles of wine, but despite rationing themselves their stash lasted only a week. One of the party made a single chocolate-covered peanut last three days.
Nando Parrado, an agricultural student, recalled the desperate hunt for anything edible: 'Again and again we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they'd been treated with would do us more harm than good. We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw, but found only inedible upholstery foam.'
With the search called off, and with food rapidly running out, the survivors made a pact: when any of them died, the others were free to eat them.
Roberto Canessa took charge of the operation, slicing into flesh with a shard of windshield glass and eating the first tiny morsel to encourage the others. They went on to drying out the meat in the sun to make it more palatable. Initially they could only stomach skin, muscle and fat, but as their ordeal went on they ate hearts, lungs, and brains.
By mid-December there were only 16 of the party remaining, and Parrado, Canessa and Antonio 'Tintin' Vizintin set out to climb the mountains on the western rim of the cirque to find help, having fashioned a large sleeping bag from the fuselage insulation. Three days into their trek Vizintin returned to the crash site so that the other two would have enough to eat.
Parrado and Canessa managed to hike down into Chile, and were rescued on December 21. The following day helicopters landed at the crash site and evacuated Mangino and the other 13 survivors.
The aftermath proved to be another ordeal: there was an initial public backlash against the survivors' admission that they had resorted to cannibalism, though news of the pact they had made lessened the opprobrium. A Catholic priest heard their confessions and assured them that they would not be damned, and Pope Paul VI sent a telegram condoning their actions.
Mangino lived a private life in the decades following the crash, though he did stay in touch with several fellow-survivors. He worked in the heating and air-conditioning industry and lived for some years in Brazil before returning to Montevideo.
In Alive, the 1993 film adaptation of Piers Paul Read's 1974 book, he was portrayed by Nuno Antunes, while in JA Bayona's 2024 Netflix film Society of the Snow he was played by Juan Caruso; the film was Oscar-nominated in the Best International Feature category.
Álvaro Mangino married Margarita Arocena, with whom he had been in a relationship before the crash; they had four children.
Álvaro Mangino, born March 30 1953, died March 29 2025
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