EATING HUMAN FLESH
That’s how Carlos Páez
Jnr survived for 70
days on the Andes Mountains with only 15 other survivors out of the 45
people on board a Uruguayan Air Force plane that crashed in October
1972. He now gives lectures on survival and motivation to company
executives. Carlos’ father is the multitalented Uruguayan painter
Carlos Páez Vilaró.
February 22, 2009
Interview by: Mariano Przybylski,
Perfil.com.ar Translated by Al Gallo
“It’s not easy to be the son of someone famous. There’s always
competition, and trying to be like my dad led me to difficult
situations. He is hard-to-match, not your normal guy. As I couldn’t
measure up to his standard I took a different way that was the road to
disaster. It was very hard for me to recover,” says Carlos Páez, who
recovered from drug and alcohol addiction after several years of
therapy. He calls this period his ‘second Andes Mountains’, which is
the subject of his up-coming book. He was involved in the first Andes
Mountains story that spread all over the world. It was a group of young
upper class Uruguayan rugby players who were going to play a match in
Chile in 1972. Their plane crashed and only 16 of them survived for 70
days with temperatures down to minus 40 
degrees Celcius. It was an
extreme situation that could have meant the collapse of any human’s
fortitude.
Mariano Przybylski: In
perspective, how do you see that epic today?
What is important is that it happened to common people. We crashed at a
height of 4,200 metres and I wasn’t an alpinist. There’s no snow in
Uruguay. We remained there for 70 days when I was 18 years old. It was
purely a group story, very hard. I’d never seen a dead person and had
to coexist with 29 corpses, but we always kept a positive attitude.
Mariano Przybylski: What
changes has that experience brought about in
you?
Firstly, I feel I don’t have a right to complain about anything.
Knowing what I’ve gone through, I can’t whinge when there is a
black-out or I get a flat tyre, because I always recall that story.
Mariano Przybylski: You wrote a book titled ‘After day 10’. What
happened on day 10?
That was the worst day; we heard on the radio that the search for us
had been called off. On the other hand, from that day on we ceased to
be survivors and really came alive. Roy Harley was an engineering
student and made a sphere to be able to listen to a Spika radio. Two
aeroplanes had flown past and we thought they’d seen us. Roy, who was
listening to the radio suddenly came in and said to me: “Carlos, I’ve
got good news; they’ve finished the search for our plane”.
I was the spoiled and stubborn child of a divorced couple. I had
breakfast in bed and everything else I wanted, and now this guy tells
me that we’d been abandoned there… He added: “Do you know why this is
good news? Because now we only depend on ourselves”. This is the right
attitude when facing adversity.
Mariano Przybylski: Were
there leaders in the group who took the
decisions?
The decisions were taken by the majority, though those of us who did
most of the work carried more weight. I’d been frivolous since my early
childhood, never did anything and my word didn’t count. I suddenly
changed and felt valuable. We got out of that place in the wrong
direction, following the longest way. It was a mistake, but made by a
voted decision.
Mariano Przybylski: Was
the decision to use your dead mates as food
taken by all?
That was very simple. We entrusted those who were medical students to
take care of that and no one was opposed to it. That offered us the
only possibility of surviving on the mountain range without vegetation
or any other kind of food. There was nothing. What’s more, if that
happened today I wouldn’t wait 10 days to take that decision.
Mariano Przybylski: Has
anybody ever questioned your actions?
No. Never. This may seem unbelievable, but the worst nightmare came
about when they were rescued and he had to face his famous father.
Carlos no longer had survival on the mountain as a day-to-day clear
objective.
My feeling was ambivalent, a mixture of happiness and angst, having to
leave behind all that we had created. I was scared to face what was
coming next.
Mariano Przybylski: What
about your first few days in Montevideo?
Well… it’s not easy for an 18-year-old to suddenly become famous. It’s
even worse when you haven’t looked for it. Bill Clinton came to Uruguay
and he wanted to meet us. All of that happened merely because we
survived.
Mariano Przybylski: How
was the reunion with you father, who had a
leading role in the search?
It wasn’t so special; I knew my parents were alive. It was a problem
for them, something like a reunion with Lazarus. My mum and my
grandmother, possibly more that my dad always believed I was alive,
which made him continue the search.
Mariano Przybylski: You
wrote in your book that your father had seized
your tragedy. How’s that?
What’s happened is that life has given me the opportunity to have a
story that would allow me to compete with my father. When I live that
story, dad ends up being the most important guy, as well as Parrado.
[Fernando Parrado was also a survivor of the Andes tragedy] I wrote
that, after years of therapeutic treatment.
Mariano Przybylski: You
suffered from alcohol and drug addiction before…
I took the wrong way, until I realized that after so much fighting for
my life I shouldn’t get myself into a death project, such as drugs or
alcohol. I’ve been free from all that during the last 17 years.
Carlos got his life going again; he got married and then divorced. He
has two children –María Elena and Carlos- and now he has a girlfriend.
Carlos was involved in publicity and later in rural business. Now he
gives lectures about survival and motivation to company executives,
based on his own experience.
Mariano Przybylski: Do
the survivors keep in contact?
Yes, we get together every 22nd of December, which was rescue day. It’s
like a kind of annual therapy for all of us.
Mariano Przybylski: Did
you ever feel guilty for being alive?
No, never. Some of them did, not me. Perhaps a little, at the
beginning, but there’s one day when you get rid of that baggage.
Mariano Przybylski: Is it
true that raw meat is nowadays your favourite
meal?
Steak tartare, yes, though I enjoyed it since before all that.
Mariano Przybylski: It’s
amazing that after going through such an
experience you travel so much and are not scared of aeroplanes.
I’d rather keep on going forwards, though some of the other survivors
never set foot on a plane again. I was somewhat apprehensive during the
first year, but aeroplanes are a safe means of transport.
