Featured Image Credit: EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: World News, YouTube
Claire Reid
One of the survivors of the 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 plane crash in the Andes Mountain Range said the group had a pact before turning to cannibalism to survive.
Carlos ‘Carlitos’ Páez Rodriguez was one of 45-people onboard the plane that crashed into the mountains.
Of those on board, only 16 made it off the mountain, with the rest either dying in the crash, succumbing to their injuries or being killed when an avalanche struck the fuselage of the plane the survivors were sheltering in.
The 16 that did live were forced to turn to cannibalism after the small amount of food supplies on board the plane ran out - the survivors cut ‘matchstick sized’ piece of flesh from those who had died and left it to dry out in the sun.
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Rodriguez was just 18 when the plane crashed, and actually turned 19 while stranded.
During their time stuck on the mountain, the men learnt that search efforts to try and locate them had been called off, and they decided to send two of the men out to try and make it back to civilisation and raise the alarm.
The incredible story has now been turned into a Netflix film Society of the Snow, which centres on the harrowing incident.
In an interview for LADbible’s Minutes With series, Rodriguez said that the 16 men made a pact before eating human flesh.
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He explained: “When we got the news on day ten that the search had been called off, that’s when it started to dawn on us all at the same time that our only possible option was to feed on our dead travel companions because there was no other way.
“The first thing we did was make a solemn pact between us all that if any of us were to die, the others could use their bodies.
“And the second thing we did was to appoint the medical students, who had embraced their role as doctors, to take care of the matter, and they took care of it.
“The poor medical students. They were first year students, who had never seen dead people before, but as they’d embraced their role and they’d genuinely considered themselves doctors, they stepped up to the task. And we resolved one issue that needed to be resolved, because we still had the most sacred of all rights: the right to life and the right to return home."