“We were a group of half-frozen, starving, dying people who were completely unaware of where they were, hugging each other so as not to die from the cold. Without anything other than affection and intelligence we found the way out, both spiritually and physically.” Eduardo Strauch
Eduardo Strauch Urioste, one of the 16 survivors of the 1972 Andes air crash, recently travelled to Garabandal in the company of two reporters from a Spanish TV programme called ‘Fourth Millennium’. The reporters were preparing an edition on one of the most extraordinary survival stories ever told, and one where the Catholic faith of the stranded men, and of their distraught families, had kept the flame of hope alive. Eduardo wanted to see for himself the remote little mountain village in northern Spain where the Mother of God appeared many times between 1961 to 1965 to four 11 and 12 year old girls. He said this trip was extremely important to him because, as he himself explained, in that small village in Cantabria there was a lot of prayer offered for his return after the accident.
Eduardo Strauch on a hilltop in Garabandal with one of the ‘Fourth Millennium’ reporters.
”My mother was a devout Catholic who prayed constantly”, Eduardo relates. “One day when she was alone at Mass someone came up to her, touched her on the shoulder, and gave her a holy picture of Our Lady of Garabandal. From that moment my mother began to learn about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary there, her messages to the children and the wonderful miracles that had occurred. She also showed my mother a book. In it my mother immediately recognised the name of her friend China Herrán de Bordaberry, at that time the first lady of Uruguay, who later told her that miracles were taking place in the Spanish village of San Sebastián de Garabandal, associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary. She then began to pray non-stop to the Virgin of Garabandal for my return, convinced that the Virgin would work a miracle for her and bring her son home alive. Just over a month after that happened, my mother learned, by a call from her brother Pepe, that two survivors of our flight had appeared, and without even knowing if I was on the list, she took the first plane to Santiago with other parents. Another strange coincidence: on the same flight there was a priest who was returning from having witnessed miracles in Garabandal. When my mother arrived in San Fernando, another happy mother confirmed that I had been saved.“
And so it was. Against all the odds, when after the disappearance of the plane the search and rescue team had been called off, and when most of the world believed all the passengers of the plane had perished somewhere in the vast snow-covered peaks of the Andes mountains, Eduardo and 15 other survivors of the crash were rescued alive 72 days after the accident. The many prayers of their relatives at home, and the Rosaries offered to God through His Blessed Mother by the stranded men, as they huddled together clutching their Rosary beads with frozen fingers in the snowy ruins of their plane, had been heard and answered.
Eduardo says that this excruciatingly painful but transformative experience has made him more sensitive, and with the knowledge that love conquers everything. It has taught him to live life to the full, but he cannot conceive of a life without faith. His experiences are today a tool that he has decided to put at the service of others to bring hope and strength.
Our Lady of Garabandal
From the Garabandal website:
The Virgin of Garabandal in the Miracle of the Andes by One of the Survivors
Eduardo Strauch Urioste is one of the survivors of the renowned “Miracle of the Andes.” The story was told in the book ‘Alive’ by Piers Paul Read, from which a film with the same title was also made. On October 13, 1972, the plane Eduardo was travelling in and that had taken off from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago de Chile, with forty passengers and five crew members on board. The plane crashed 4,500 metres high, in the Cordillera of the Andes. Given up for dead, the authorities gave up their search just a week later. On December 22, 1972, they were rescued after 72 days of odyssey over the course of which they saw their relatives and best friends die. The survivors had to nourish themselves with the flesh of the deceased.
Faith and friendship were the force that sustained them in those difficult days, thirty degrees below zero, with death hovering over them. But they had a “great ally:” the Virgin of Garabandal, to whom their mothers prayed for the miracle.
Eduardo Strauch Urioste was silent about the dramatic experience for thirty years, but then he started to speak. In 2012 he wrote about his experience, matured by years of reflection, in a book ‘Out of the Silence: After the Crash’. Below there are paragraphs in which Eduardo, deeply touched, talks about the rescue and relates it to his mother’s –and other peoples’, including the first lady of Uruguay at that time – prayer to the Virgin of Garabandal, who appeared “in the mountain.”
From the book OUT OF THE SILENCE: After the Crash by Eduardo Strauch Urioste, survivor of the Andes.
“One would think that its meaning had little foundation, but receiving a sign is something very personal and almost non-transferable, because it goes beyond the specific element that produces it and finds its place in the conscience of those who receive it” he said.
“This is how I felt on the morning of December 22, when from the small portable radio in the middle of the Andes, where reception was always defective and weak, Gounod’s Ave María began to be heard, clearly and intensely, and I knew immediately that the young people vaguely mentioned in the news were Roberto and Nando (two of the survivors), who had managed to arrive.”
He continues: “Moments later we heard the confirmation that it was indeed our companions who had finally reached their destination. But for me the news had come before and in a different way. This type of experience may be inexplicable, but it is a personal message that appeals to the deepest part of oneself. In that case, the message had come through the beauty of the music and the emotion it gave me, along with the moment I heard it, when the sun was rising behind the Sosneado, and with the unusual quality of reception. All this made me recognise in the Ave Maria an unmistakable sign that we would continue to live, because our friends had achieved their goal.”
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
Knowing God has heard and answered your prayers interiorly- before actual deliverance is the truest experience of Faith. A most touching story!
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