Over and over again during his 72-day ordeal in the Andes, Nando Parrado would tell himself, \u201cI am already dead, I am already dead.\u201d That mantra allowed him to vanquish the fear that gripped him \u2014 and perhaps also explains why, when given a miraculous second chance at life, he has lived ever since with such gusto.<\/p>\n
Mr. Parrado, 56, is perhaps the best known of the 16 survivors of the crash of an Uruguayan Air Force plane in the Andes Mountains in October 1972, as it was carrying his rugby team to a match in Chile. Mr. Parrado\u2019s mother and younger sister were among those who died there in the Andes, his sister succumbing to injuries and cold as he held her in his arms. It was he who, with a single companion, trekked through the harsh cordillera with virtually no supplies or protection and eventually guided rescuers back to the crash site to save his friends and teammates.<\/p>\n
Since that deliverance, chronicled in the best-selling book \u201cAlive\u201d and a subsequent movie, Mr. Parrado has been a race car driver, television host, motivational speaker, business entrepreneur and, most recently, author of a book called \u201cMiracle in the Andes.\u201d But no matter what he does, he says, his actions are guided by the lessons he learned and the conversations about life, death, God and religion that took place during his struggle to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were lucky, extremely lucky,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have any food, clothes or water, and they weren\u2019t searching for us. So how could we survive? I lost everything, my family, friends and future, but I was resurrected. I came back to life from the grave.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the ordeal, Parrado became a successful businessman in Uruguay. But in 2001 and 2002 this country was drawn into the financial crisis that struck its much larger neighbor, Argentina, with banks and businesses collapsing. Mr. Parrado\u2019s friends and partners were frantic, spending sleepless nights worrying their companies would not survive, and marveled at his composure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose endless nights in the Andes were terribly, terribly, terribly cold, and so we burned all the money we had,\u201d he said. \u201cI can tell you that a $1 bill burns in the same amount of time as a $100 bill.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over and over again during his 72-day ordeal in the Andes, Nando Parrado would tell himself, \u201cI am already dead, I am already dead.\u201d That mantra allowed him to vanquish the fear that gripped him \u2014 and perhaps also explains why, when given a miraculous second chance at life, he has lived ever since with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2434,272,5198,85,4681,621,5197,725,2433,638,5196,1611],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}