There were 16 survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash, which is the basis of Society of the Snow (La Sociedad de la Nieve). The movie tells the story of the 45 people on that plane and the 72 days they spent trapped in the Andes mountains.
It wasn’t until two of them, Roberto Canessa and Fernando Parrado, climbed a 15,260 ft mountain peak and hiked for 10 days and approximately 38 miles without gear to seek help that the survivors were finally rescued.
Today, in 2024, only 14 of the 16 survivors are alive. Javier Methol passed away in 2015 due to cancer, surviving almost 43 years after the crash. He was 36 at the time of the accident, the oldest of the survivors.
José Luis “Coche” Inciarte, died in 2023, also of cancer. He lived 51 years after the crash. He got to see an early version of Society of the Snow before he died, J.A. Bayona confirmed to Spanish newspaper El País.
The other 14 survivors are still alive today, and make a point to reunite every December 22nd – the anniversary of the day they were found.
All 16 of them shared their experiences of their time in the Andes with Pablo Vierci, whose Society of the Snow book has one chapter from the point of view of each survivor.
A few of the survivors also wrote books about the experience, among them Nando Parrado’s Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Roberto Canessa’s I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives, Eduardo Strauch’s Out of the Silence: After the Crash and Carlos Páez Rodríguez’s Carlitos Páez: After the Tenth Day.