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| Interview with Jose Luis Inciarte: December 1997 |
- Why did you come
back to the tragedy place twenty-five years after it?
- It wasn’t the first time I was there after the accident. I had
already been there two years before with some friends I lived the Andes
experience with. But this time was different because my wife and my three
kids came with me. They stayed at San Fernando (180 kilometers to the
south of Santiago), the village where Fernando Parrado and Roberto Canessa
were seen in December 1972, when the laborer rescued them.
- What was your
feeling when you saw that landscape from which, 25 years ago, the only
thing you wanted was escape?
- It was a big impression and an extraordinary emotion. Not because
of the things I lived there in 1972, but because I understood what my two
friends Roberto Canessa and Fernando Parrado, to whom I owe my life, did
when they decided to go walking through the snow to find some help. What
they did, nobody, but absolutely nobody, can do it. The mountaineers who
went with us told that not even the “guanacos”, which are animals used to
that weather conditions, got to walk and move through the mountain like
Canessa and Parrado did.
- What dramatic
moments from the Andes accident did you keep in your mind?
- I’ll never forget what Canessa said to me when we where in the
plane and we heard on the radio that the rescue teams had stopped the
search: “We die looking each other faces, or we die walking.” They had the
courage to walk without a certain course and they saved 14 people who
remained at the plane’s fuselage. I had already set in the Andes, as a
limit, the 25 December or I would die. And I would have died because I had
already lost 45 kilos and I hadn’t enough strength to survive.
- How did your wife
and kids live this trip?
- It was very moving for all of us. My wife lived it in a very
special way, because we had already started the relationship when all this
happened. We started dating at the age of 19 and she went to Santiago to
see me when we were rescued. So she is part of this story too. My kids
lived an unforgettable human adventure. Not only did they live the
geographical context of the story –which I told them many times when they
were little-, but they could also consolidate the ties of friendship, that
already existed, with the kids of the others survivors who traveled with
us. And they remained, or we all remained very impressed by the respect
and the admiration, which even today, the Andes story generates in San
Fernando.
- How did you live
this trip?
- Never in my entire life did I receive such a warm tribute like
the one that the inhabitants of there played to us. Almost all the village
was there and we had the pleasure of participating in a mass celebrated by
Andres Rojas, the priest who received us in 1972 when we were rescued.
Rojas, in those times was recently ordained and it was the one who
celebrated the mass on the unforgettable Christmas of 1972. The doctor who
assisted us in San Francisco 25 years ago were also there. We cried a lot.
- You said that your
children gave last week in Chile, a geographical context to the story they
have heard so many times. How did you tell them what you live at the
mountains?
- Since they were little I told them the story as if it was a tale.
When they were littlest I used to make gestures as well. I showed them
with my hands how did the plane crash. Then, when they were growing, they
asked me to tell them more details. “Don’t tell us the things so fast –
they said-; we want to know more details.” Sometimes were their friends
the ones who wanted to know the story they have heard at their homes or in
the school.
- Are you a religious
man?
- I’m a man of deep Christian faith, but I don’t practice it in the
church, I practice it at the street, in the quotidian life. I don’t go to
church to hit my chest; my bet is for Life and I devote myself to it.
- Was the Andes
experience a miracle to you?
- Maybe, to many people was a lottery; to me was a miracle. Having
survived a crash into a mountain, in which the plane traveled at more than
400 kilometers per hour, was a real miracle. It was a miracle also having
survived the avalanche which buried the plane’s fuselage while we were
sleeping. It was a miracle that Canessa and Parrado, malnourished, could
walk during seven days through the snow, climb mountains of more than 6000
meters high without the appropriate clothes. It was a miracle that Parrado
could find with the Chilean Air force the exact place where the plane and
the others survivors (including me) were waiting. I don’t know if my
family is also a miracle, but what I do I know that is a gift from life.
- How do you see “The
Andes Miracle” after twenty-five years?
- I see it as an experience of love, solidarity and commitment.
There the friends that couldn’t come back gave the maximum a human being
can give, just what Christ did: give his life for the others. I’m in debt
with them, they honor the human specie. |
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