Transcript

Todos somos sobrevivientes: Pedro Algorta at TEDxResistencia

You know that I used to live here in this city, actually I used to live in Corrientes, on the other side of the river, and I ran a brewery there. I lived in this area for three years, and during those three years I didn't speak at all about what had happened to me in the Andes. Those three years, like the 35 years I lived from the time I fell in the mountains until I started talking about it, were a particular subject, a private matter. I did n't talk about it except with my children, my family, and very few other people. On some occasions, the subject would come up, for example, flying over the Andes Mountains. Suddenly the plane would start to move, I'd get nervous, and that's when it would just blurt out, and I'd tell the person next to me what was happening. The person next to me would get up and leave. So, it really was a very intense subject. But the bottom line is that during those 35 years, and the three years I lived here in this area, I lived a normal life, a life like anyone else here in Corrientes. I have many friends. I celebrated my 40th birthday, I celebrated my daughters' 15th birthdays. I've come to Resistencia, and I've always been just an ordinary person for whom what happened to me in the Andes was a personal matter. That's why it's so important for me to come here today and tell you that, in addition to having done all those things, I had also crashed in the Andes, and that this is, in a way, my story. What I'm going to do is recount two or three situations, share some reflections, and I'm going to ask you to join me. Today is November 16th, 1972, exactly 40 years ago. It had been 33 days since we last heard from you. We had crashed in the Andes Mountains. There were 45 of us on that plane. After the crash, 27 of us survived. 18 died in the crash or in the days that followed. But 33 days had already passed, and in those 33 days, we had learned some things. We had probably survived the worst. 18 of us survived. In the remaining 37 days, two more people died. But the The first 33 days were tremendous. They were days where we had to get used to living in total uncertainty. I didn't know what was happening. We were a delegation from a team that was going to play a rugby match, and suddenly we found ourselves at 4,000 meters altitude, lost, not knowing what to do, not understanding the mountain, without the right shelter, without the right clothing, completely lost and abandoned. We had a small radio, so we listened to the news about our rescue, and we could even hear our mothers and other people talking about what had happened to us, but they didn't realize we were listening. We realized that people obviously thought we had died. One day, a plane flew over us. It was a search plane. We knew it was a search plane. We immediately went out to signal, trying to get their attention, but the plane flew by. The next day it flew over again, and this time it made a cross above us and moved its wings. We understood that it was a sign that they had seen us, and since they had seen us, we were going to be rescued. So we had a celebration and... We ate all the provisions we had and were left with nothing. We were supposed to be rescued the next day, but the next day no one came looking for us. Instead, we heard on our little radio that the search had been called off, abandoned, and that they were n't going to look for us anymore because there was no chance we were still alive. So the group had to make some decisions. They were n't coming to get us, we had nothing left to eat, what were we going to do? And so, little by little, driven by our simplest survival instinct, we realized that we had the bodies of our dead companions as an offering so that we could feed ourselves. And that's how, without thinking too much, without much discussion, driven by our survival instinct again, we began to eat. And once we started eating, we felt that we had crossed a line, that we were finding our way around the mountain, and that we would be able to last as long as necessary, that we would be strong enough to endure until they came to find us, or eventually, until we sent an expedition to rescue us. We were thinking about how we were going to get out of the plane when one day, near dusk, we were resting in the aircraft when suddenly we heard a very loud noise. We heard a very loud noise outside on the mountain that we had never heard before. And in seconds, tons of snow fell on the plane and came inside through the back, which was open to the mountain. It was tremendous. I was completely covered by the snow. At first, I could breathe because snow is porous and lets air through. I was able to inflate my lungs and stomach and create a space between the snow and my body and continue breathing. But then the snow froze, and when snow freezes, the air stops passing through. So I tried again to get out until I started to feel very tired. I felt so tired I couldn't go on anymore, so I started to fall asleep. I began to surrender very calmly, very gently, and when I was practically out of it, one of my companions took the snow out of my mouth, and oxygen returned to my lungs. And when the oxygen returned to my lungs, the will to keep fighting for life returned, and there I tried again to get up. That snow that had me trapped, they finally got me out. But those days were terrible. That avalanche killed eight people, killed the team captain who had been so important in the first few days, killed the only woman who was still alive. We were left with 19 people after the light. And after the light, the group had to rebuild itself. It was clear they weren't going to come looking for us. It was clear that we had to get off the mountain, and so, from our relative weaknesses and strengths, each of us contributed what we could to that group that was forming. The mountain range didn't matter so much anymore, where we came from, who we were, whether we were rugby players or not. The only thing that mattered there was that we were human beings fighting to survive. And there, in the work of fighting to survive, facing different adversities that came our way, we built that sense, that group spirit that allowed the group to always be organized. None of us wanted to escape alone; we all knew that we would be saved if we maintained that unity. And that's how we chose our Our hikers were the strongest, the most determined, the ones who wanted to leave, but they also waited until the group was ready, until it was somehow obvious that the only thing we could do was start walking through the mountain range in search of salvation. Finally, on December 10th, Canesa Parrado and Vicentina began an immense trek across the Andes Mountains. We watched them climb, each time a smaller black dot on the mountain, until finally they reached the other side. And when they reached the other side, all they could see was more and more mountains, and yet they decided to keep walking, they decided eventually to die walking because it made no sense to go back to the plane and start again. So that incredible trek, in which finally two of my companions reached Chile and sent reinforcements, was the result of the work of all of us, because they were our legs. We worked so that they would have the best chance of getting somewhere. Finally, on December 22nd, the rescue took place. On the first day, of the 16 of us who were still alive there on the mountain, we were rescued, along with the two expedition members. There were eight of us who left that day, and the next day eight more left. That was between December 22nd and 23rd, 70 days after our accident in the Andes. Look, when we fell on the mountain, we were just ordinary kids, between 16 and 25 years old. When we came out of the mountain range, we came out like people who had suffered a lot, who had learned some things. We came out obviously thin, on the verge of death, very happy to be out of the mountains. But on the other hand, with something like anger. No, we were demanding, demanding, because we had never died. We never stopped being alive, even lost there at 4,000 meters altitude. We were always alive, and I remember that people didn't understand how we came back from death. We did n't come back from death; we came back from life, from having lived very close, from having been in a very extreme situation, from seeing ourselves getting thinner every day, from feeling our pulse, seeing that we were alive, seeing how we were breathing. And I didn't understand it because I didn't I had died. It took me time to understand that our story is also very complicated for our family and friends. Because for them, we had died, and 70 days later we returned from the dead. In my family, arrangements had to be made, and imagine, we weren't going to come back, except for my mother, who always thought we were alive. For everyone else, we were already gone. Now, this story, which is obviously difficult for us and our families, is much more complicated for the families of the boys who didn't return. Their only problem was that they were sitting in the wrong place the day we crashed in the plane, or they were in the wrong place the day we had the avalanche. They weren't better or worse than us. Some of them made enormous contributions to the group while they were alive, and they probably would have made much more important contributions than us if they had continued to live. And yet they are not here. They are in us, and the only thing we can do today is silently thank them for what they did by dying, allowing us to survive, to be here, and to be able to tell the tale. I believe we didn't do anything strange. The only thing we did was let our The instinct for survival develops in pursuit of individual and group salvation. We were ordinary people, and what's extraordinary about our story is that it shows how ordinary people placed in extreme situations can truly achieve extraordinary results. Look, when we came out of the Andes, we had already experienced some things. First, that after climbing one mountain and coming down from another, there's always another one, and that's what life is about: climbing mountains. And the fact that I had climbed that mountain didn't allow me to see life in a completely different way. After that mountain, I returned to Buenos Aires to work at the university, I got married, I lived a normal life, and for 35 years I didn't talk about it. And yet I had many other mountains to climb. The other thing that's very important is that, obviously, we didn't save ourselves because we were a team, a group. But that teamwork we did didn't come from our heads; it didn't come from rehearsing or working on anything. That teamwork arose from the individual survival instinct of each of us, which is very strong. But that individual instinct told us that for each of us to be saved, we all had to be saved. Together, and that's why we all worked together, because we shared our goals, and we knew we had to get out together, that no one could save themselves alone. And the other thing we always felt up there on the mountain was that no matter how big our objective was, the important thing was to be alive, always, at every moment, doing everything we had to do to feel as good as possible, even in the terrible conditions we were in. It was important to be well-fed, it was important to be alert, it was important to be focused. No one can afford to give up even a little. If you give up even a little, you won't make it to the end. It does n't make sense to let up even a little because then everything goes to hell. And that was a day-to-day job, 24 hours a day, 24 hours a day. If we were alive tomorrow, it was very important that we were taking the necessary steps for an eventual rescue. We weren't sure if we were going to be saved, or we didn't know, or we sensed that we had some chance, but we worked as if we were going to be saved. We worked hard, thinking that there could be that rescue. Look, if when we fell on the mountain they had told us, "Don't worry, we'll get you there," If they had come looking for us, we all surely would have died. What kept us alive was our attitude, the uncertainty, the need to keep working. Seventy days was too long; we wouldn't have been able to make it, and yet we did. We were resilient. That's for sure, we were resilient. Because up there in the mountains, we weren't alone. We were a group, a group of people who gave each other affection, support, and love. That same affection, support, and love that we've always felt when we talk about our situation. If they had accused us of something when we came out of the Andes, if they had pointed the finger at us, I probably would have spent my life defending you. I could have reintegrated into society, gone back to living a normal life, which is what I value most since then, guys. Thank you so much for listening. [Applause]