Giving a talk at Palcco last week was Carlos “Carlitos” Miguel Páez, a 70-year-old Uruguyan entrepreneur and former rugby player, and one of the 16 survivors of Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes in October 1972.
For 72 days, the survivors suffered from extreme hardships, including sub-zero temperatures, exposure, starvation and an avalanche. In a story known as the Miracle of the Andes, the passengers resorted to cannibalism to survive. A new feature film of the episode, “Society of the Snow” (on Netflix) has just been released, in which Páez takes the role of his own father.