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| Interview with Carlos Paez: October 2002 |
Interview carried out by Old Boys Magazine Set. /Oct. 2002 
Before
making the interviews we wanted to consult some interviewee’s relatives
about the way in which we were going to approach the matter, and above all,
we wanted to know if there was anything they wouldn’t like to talk about.
Nacho talked with Madelón Rodriguez, mother of Carlitos Paez and friend of
him. Then we were both at the same plane to Buenos Aires.
It was very useful talk with her, as usual. She gave me confidence and,
like in other occasions, we talked a lot about the Andes matter. She
played an important part in this story and her point of view seemed
essential to me.
It doesn’t call my attention that when the plane stops and prepares to
take off, Madelón cross herself.
Carlos Paez welcomed us with his natural kindness.
The confidence the years in which we worked together gave us makes
everything develop with calm and naturalness.
I think he hasn’t lost his innocence, his freshness and his admiration for
himself and his friends. But as he says “I’m a public figure and I pay the
consequences”. Sometimes he seems to be somebody whose words don’t affect
him emotionally, but when I ask for the photo which is above the table the
expression of his face makes a complete change.
It is a black and white copy with white frames. Typical photo that
appeared on the press; there it is Carlitos drinking a toast, with who
knows what, in a thermos’ lid.
Few minutes had passed of the rescue and, incredibly, he doesn’t show
signs of malnutrition like the rest of his mates.
By his side one of the Strauch leans over something that is probably food.
It’s not known to whom belongs that skinny hand that shows by one side
however, it attracts as much the attention as the guard’s face behind
Carlitos, hearing to something he will never forget:
- Take it as it is (with frame and glass) and you give it back to me in
the same conditions.
I recognize in that expression the person I think Carlitos was at the age
of 18. A revel and believer boy who was becoming an icon of hope, without
realizing it, hope that many times men seem to have lost.
- Of course- he answered -As I take it I give it back.
I keep the photo carefully in my bag and I sit.
It’s time to turn on the recorder.
Life before the accident
- What memories do you
have of the time when you were at the Stella Maris School?
- I spent a great time there. I used to study little and have a lot of fun.
I lived I Carrasco, a privilege for any child. We went school by bike and
in the way we used to chase frogs, you know…
I have a great memory of my childhood
- What was your place at
the rugby team?
- I was pillar and I wasn’t good. I did only one try in my life and
it was shared with others, so I could never realize if I was the one who
did it or were the others. I was pillar at the First XV of the School.
- Did you choose that
sport or it was the only sport played at the school?
- No, you could play football at school as well, but as I was
horrible in that sport I decided to play rugby. The truth is that I wasn’t
good at sports (he laughs).
- Could you define me
the word rugby?
- Basically, the word rugby means team.
- Did your physical
formation help your survival at the Andes?
- I think it didn’t, truly. I think that the reason of our survival
was more cultural than physical. There were a lot of things which helped.
The firs one was the innocence, we were all young and unconscious.
Then it was the fact that we all knew each other, which was very important,
and we belonged to the same social level and cultural background. Those
were things that helped a lot, and the religious part was very important
too. I don’t think that the rugby united us; actually not all of us were
rugby players. I was not going to play, for example. We weren’t event from
the same School; in fact 7 of the 16 survivors weren’t from the school.
- What about your
religious formation, did it help?
- My religious formation helped, obviously. When we had no hope, God
was our only hope, there wasn’t anything else.
- The God you met there
was the same you believed in or saw at the mass?
- No. It was a different God. At school we had the image of an old
bearded God who was walking through the clouds and all the other things…
There we met a God who was closer to the indifference of material things,
to the humility, to the fact of not having anything. The more stripped we
are of material things, the better we get the figure of God.
- Tell me about your
expectations, your plans and dreams.
- My plan was working in the country. As a good bad student, together
with the fact that my family had some pieces of land at the country, I
decided to work in there. I studied at the Sarandí Grande’s Agrarian
College and graduated as a Farming Technician, so I worked at the country.
Then I realized that it wasn’t for me. I’m a sociable guy and in the
country you’re a bit limited to be in contact with people. I’m very
anxious as well, and the work at the field is slow. The processes are very
slow.
The tragedy
- What things do you
remember from that horrible October afternoon in the Fairchild?
- We had left Montevideo the 12th October in the morning, our destiny
was Santiago de Chile but we had to stop in Mendoza due to the weather
conditions. We spent the night at Mendoza and we ate at a restaurant of a
Uruguayan we met that day. We divided ourselves in groups; we were having
a great time. It was our first “long” trip.
In the next day the possibility of returning to Montevideo was considered
because the weather wasn’t improving, but finally the pilots decided to
fly, in part because we put press on them.
We took off to Santiago at two in the afternoon. Little after that the
first clouds appeared and the turbulence started. We realized that the
plane was going down and we were told that the decent to Santiago had
started. In that moment we fell into the first big turbulence and then two
more came, big long falls that seemed endless. The engines made a very
loud sound, which I think was the raising attempt, one of the wings
crashed against the mountain and all the impact came after that. I thought
that everything was part of the normal navigation; I didn’t realize we had
crashed. The only things I manage to do were putting my head over my hands
and pray. Between Our Father which is the longest prayer and Gloria which
is the shortest I chose the Ave Maria which is medium. It was almost
certain that I couldn’t have finished with Our Father, and the Gloria was
too short and I didn’t want to be in bad terms with God. It’s incredible
but I thought about all those things. So I started with the Ave Maria and
when I finished with it the plane stopped. That episode is clearly
documented in the film…
- Didn’t you really
realize that you had crashed and were sliding down the mountain?
- No I didn’t until it stopped. It’s difficult to realize when you
are having an accident in a plane due to the speed in which things happen,
and it’s even harder if you had an accident and you are alive.
- And, when did the
plane stop?
- The seats made a sudden movement forward and we ended up all
cramped. It took me half an hour to get out. It was in that moment I
started to understand what had happened there. Canessa was close to me and
I asked him if somebody was dead “It’s a disaster” he answered. I left the
plane remains and I saw Françoise sat, very quiet, and smoking. It was in
that moment when the chaos started.
- How was the fist
night?
- Horrible. There were lots of people dying, and they actually died
that night. If you ask me a definition of hell I would answer “that
night”.
- Do you think that
having only 19 years-old helped you in the sense that you weren’t
completely aware of the seriousness of what was happening?
- Absolutely. It was all crazy. What Canessa and Parrado did, for
instance, walk across the mountain for ten days without the appropriate
equipment and after two months of undernourishment, is completely
unthinkable to anyone. Not long ago we were at the mountains and I had a
bad time in there. We are older, is true, but I think that the
unconsciousness of the 18th played an essential part in our lives. The
fact of not having any qualms about what we did was what took us out of
there…
- Had you ever thought
about death before the accident?
- You always think about death. It seems to you like something far
away, because human beings are very arrogant and in some way they think
that nothing ever is going to happen to them. I remember a definition I
heard in a wake. One guy was asking another “What do you think about death?”
and the other guy answered “death annoys me” I think that’s a good way of
defining the topic. I’m afraid of death. I really don’t like it.
- How did you manage to
change so quickly you view about the topic, about never live with the
death?
- We lived more with life than with death actually. Although 29 dead
people surrounded us, hope and faith in life made us live more with it
than with death in spite of being in a cemetery.
- What themes did you
talk about?
- We talked about food generally. We were so hungry that talked a lot
about food. We had done a list with 130 restaurants from Montevideo. It
was pure masochism.
- Did the money have any
value in Los Andes?
- I had 70 dollars, which was all the money I had and I offer it to
Françoise for a cigarette. I offer him 70 dollars for one cigarette and he
didn’t sell it to me. I don’t know if that answers your question…
- Did you argue?
- We argue a lot. It’s said that the best way of making two friends
argue is having both at the same place for a long time. But we were
basically close. Obviously, the ones who worked were more integrated to
the group while the others were a bit less, but we were a close group.
- Why some of you didn’t
work?
- For several reasons, some of them were feeling bad, others for
weakness. The only thing I know is that I worked my fingers to the bone.
- After the avalanche
those who survived thought that they must live up to the end, how did the
death of Arturo Nogueira and then Turcatti affect you?
- Actually, it affected us less than if had happened here, in the
civilization; their death and the other’s because we were fighting for our
lives. Even Nando’s situation, without getting involved in his feelings, I
think that it’s not the same that your mother dies here than in the
mountains where you have to fight for your life. You are in a complex
situation where the feelings might play a dirty trick on you and might
kill you. The deaths we unfortunately had to contemplate were warnings of
what might happen to us. The deaths of my friends here in the civilization
affected me much more than at the mountains.
- Like living with
permanent risks…….
- All kind of things happened, in the book doesn’t appear, but there were a
couple of tremors and in a rock-fall one passed very close to my head. The
avalanche was different. We never imagine that it could happen however, it
happened.
Were you more afraid of madness or death?
I didn’t realize I was going to die. We were at 4000 meters high and there
wasn’t much oxygen, so I though slower, my state wasn’t normal. I wasn’t
afraid of madness. I remember specific moments of fear, like after the
avalanche; when we were literally buried under the snow, I was afraid of
suffocating.
- Were you 3 days buried?
- Yes, from October 29th to November 1st. We were inside the plane on
my birthday. But I went out on November 1st to play tribute to my father
and my sister who celebrated their birthdays that day. There were others
who spent more time inside in a very small place, without light, soaked to
the skin and suffering temperatures of 25 degrees below zero. We were 19
people cramped one over the other.
- How did the expedition
you have to face and the returning the following day affected you? (With
Vizintín and Harley)
- It was really hard. The third member of the team who would go with
Nando and Roberto had to be chosen. Roy Harley, Antonio Vizintín and I
went on an expedition. The snow starts melting at midday due to the
temperature, and that makes it difficult to walk. There was a moment in
which I couldn’t walk anymore and I said “leave me here”. After that they
dragged me the rest of the way. Then Roy got very tired also so it was
decided that Vizintín would be the third member.
But I did lots of expeditions before that, looking for the batteries to
connect the radio. Those batteries were found later by Canessa and Parrado
near the plane’s tail.
- Did you get used to
those expeditions?
- No, never it was too hard. The place was too complicated. We were
at 4000 meters high with 25 degrees below zero and without equipment to
support that.
- Describe us the
surroundings, the place were you where.
- It was crazy. On one hand you realized that you were in a beautiful
place but on the other it was awful to me. It’s an inhospitable place.
Look, in March as I said to you we went to the place where the plane is
and we did it with all the necessary equipment, tents, clothes, cellular
phones, food. It was the same to me, I almost die. From one side is awful,
from the other beautiful.
- How did the awareness
of the group function?
- I thought some times “that’s enough; I don’t want this any more”.
The good thing is that when you are in a group the group helps you. When
one member of the group falls, the others try to raise his spirit up, they
help him.
- Do you think that this
group awareness was imposed by the ones who played rugby or it was
generally imposed by all of you?
- It was undoubtedly of all of us. Only 5 out of the 16 survivors
were rugby players. Naturally, when the time of doing the bloodiest things
came, they were the ones who take charge of. They were better trained. But
we all knew that the only possibility of getting out of there, if there
was some, was keeping that group awareness....
- What
was your spiritual support?
- I clung to the rosary. On the afternoon, we used to talk about food
and restaurants as well as say the rosary; it was a good peaceful moment.
- Did that become a
routine?
- Yes, naturally. Men are creatures of habit, and that wasn’t the
exception. But sometimes the inclemency of the weather made you change it.
- What does the sentence
“losers are left behind” suggest you?
- I don’t know if it is so strict. Sometimes you stay behind and you’re
not a looser. I would rather say “those who don’t want to live are left
behind”; “those who have not enough mental health are left behind”. Dr.
Mendilá, one of greatest psychologists in Uruguay told me once: -Carlitos
you have your health assured for life. And it’s true. You have to be
healthy minded to deal with what we had to deal, to continue your life
without traumas.
- Is true that you had
encouragement words towards each other?
- I don’t remember having that habit. You have to keep in mind that
the author plays an important part too if you’ve read the book.
What I do remember is that Roberto Canessa had the best title for what
would end up being “Alive!” That title was “Maybe Tomorrow”, in connection
with our hope of being rescued. It was undoubtedly the best title but I
don’t know what kind of editorial problems happened and it couldn’t be.
- Were you really sure
you were going to survive?
- We always thought about getting out of there. Look, to understand
how optimistic we were, there is a photograph in which I am outside the
plane without shirt. I was sunbathing to be in good conditions on my
arrival in Punta Del Este..
Life after the accident
- What things do you
remember about your return to Montevideo?
- The arrival at Montevideo was one of the most beautiful and saddest things
that ever happened to me, because from one side I was very happy and from
the other I was very sad.
- ¿Do you remember the
mass at the Stella Maris?
- In that mass I cried all the things I hadn’t cried before at the
mountains.
- And that press
conference?
- On our arrival at the School we found 300 journalists and lots of
friends and we couldn’t greet them because we were being kept away. The
only thing I wanted was to greet my friends but we had to fulfill the
press requirements. It was the moment in which we were going to talk
worldwide, that’s the truth.
- How did the press
treat you?
- They treated us well. With the years and after having worked enough
with the press, I can tell you that what happened was treated with respect.
There was some tabloid press, there always is, but it wasn’t much. What
happened to us moved everybody, every society of the world, and it was
taken with respect.
- How did the society
receive you?
- With a lot of respect too. There was no reason to take it another
way, but I know that it could be taken differently and, in fact there were
some people who did think differently and it was that what produced some
misunderstandings or some disrespectful situations; But you have to
analyze the context in which those situations happened.
- How did you feel when
after your arrival you started to know all the things your parents did to
find you?
- I found it natural. It wasn’t a surprise for me to meet my parents
again, because it felt like I was on a two months and a half trip.
They had the problem. I knew they were alive, they didn’t. I imagine that
seeing me again must have been amazing for them.
- The Church doesn’t
consider what happened as a communion but as an act of inspiration, how
did you feel when you saw that some people mistake that communion with
cannibalism?
- I agree with the Church. To me it wasn’t a communion either. We ate
human flesh to survive. It’s as simple as that, and the Church took it
that way. As a catholic it was helpful to know that there is body and soul,
and the body is matter. When you die your soul leaves and what remains is
the body, which is in fact matter.
- Were there some people
who condemn you?
- When we had to promote the film we traveled around the world and
the only ones who didn’t understand what happened were the Koreans. But
even Pablo VI, which was that moment’s Pope sent us a blessing telegram.
If this happened to me again, I would do the same things. Maybe I wouldn’t
wait those ten days we waited.
- It took you ten days
to take that decision?
- 10 days. And those ten days were decisive for the ones who were
weakening more and more as the time passed, and then died. I don’t know if
those deaths were due to not having taken the decision on time. What I do
know is that today I would take it before. The book Alive! In Italy was
called “Tabu”. Do you know why? Because there was not previous information
about the topic; it was the end of a taboo.
- But, why did you take
so long?
- For people who have just suffered a terrible crash, under those
weather conditions and without any food, the weakening must have speeded
up.
We broke that taboo and it wasn’t easy. We didn’t think we were weakening.
We were trying to understand and overcome what we were just about to do.
On the other hand we thought that we were going to be rescued, that they
were looking for us and that delayed the decision. Then, when we knew that
the search had been stopped, that we didn’t exist any more for the world,
we had to take a determination and we didn’t have anything to eat. That’s
the reality.
- It was “a miracle” to
you having survived, or it was just “something provoked or made by men’s
hand”?
- If there is a miracle, that is certainly “the man”, how is he been
created with the ability to support and adapt to extreme situations. But
this was not a miracle. Some people entitle it as a miracle and called it
“the Andes miracle”, but I think that it’s more a natural men’s fight for
life. We keep the holiest human right up to the end, which is fighting for
our lives. More than a right, it is an obligation. I think that God
influenced in this, but it would have been a miracle if the 45 of us would
have appeared alive after 70 days. This is not our case.
- Did your attitude
towards life change after the proof you had to pass?
- I wish my attitude had changed, but it hasn’t changed much. It is
useful to me as a parameter to think and to complain less about things.
But I complain like everybody else, what I should do is go back to the
Andes and say “I hadn’t light in there, and here I am messing about for a
power cut; while at the Andes I could live without light during 70 days”
People tend to think that it was very helpful for us, and they push to
make us say something that I don’t know what is. I really don’t know if it
has served me that much. I learnt what I would do in some situations,
things that I would never suspect I could do.
- Was it difficult for
you to go back to your normal life?
- It was hard because in these countries people is always keeping an
eye on the others. The society is like the judge of our attitudes; whether
we acted right or wrong. Actually we started to be famous, even if we didn’t
want to, and we became more exposed. In my case it was even worst because
I worked in things connected with the press. It was bloody hard, I assume
that price, but we learnt how to live with the civilization’s cannibalism.
- When you work with
international press, do you notice they know about the theme, do they show
any interest on it?
- Always. I realize that they try to find the way to talk about that.
It’s the same that would happen to me if I knew a survivor from the
Titanic.
- Do you keep in touch
with the other survivors?
- We met every 22nd December, and now that the 30th anniversary is
coming we met every Tuesday at Canessa’s home.
- Do the Andes always
come out in the conversation?
- Yes, always. For some years we left the women apart in the meetings
because we felt it was our moment, and we relived some events from the
mountains, generally the funny ones.
- Does this story still
make you come out in goose-pimples?
- For me the most impressive moment, which is the one I see the most
in the film, is when the helicopters appear because that was for me the
end of the story. It was the moment in which we left a civilization to go
back to the world. For me that was the end.
- Did you like the film?
- It was done with a lot of respect, but I think that something
better could have been done, I don’t know if I’m a good judge in this
story. Each of us has his own story. The writer of “Alive!”, some years
ago, challenged any other writer who could write a script everybody agrees
with, and I think he’s right. Each of us lives his on mountains.
- If you could, would
you change something from the Andes?
- No, besides I can’t.
- Would you like to
leave a message for the people who are interested in this?
- I wouldn’t like to leave any message of anything. I don’t have
enough arrogance to do that. I’m not a prophet. The only thing I do is
being always ready to tell this story, if somebody wants to make any
conclusion, O.K go ahead. I try to make my own one.
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