#Book Credit: Roberto Canessa and Pablo Vierci. Translation credit: Carlos Frías

[flags-planes-and-fire]

Photo credit to Roberto Canessa on Instagram (26/02/2024)

In honour of his fathers (Juan Carlos Canessa) birthday, Roberto uploaded the above images to his Instagram.

He wrote the following caption.

Loose English translation (Alt ID in Spanish):

Today my dad Juan Carlos Canessa would be 96 years old, great father and an excellent cardiologist who dedicated his life to family and medicine. From him I learned the importance of family, and a lot about the profession of Cardiologist. I was lucky enough to start as a doctor by his side and work with him for many years. My father, was another of the "crazy people" who kept looking for us, he's the one who found out we were alive listening to the radio in a taxi. On December 22, 1972 he was already embarking on the return to Montevideo without good news to spend Christmas, and it is in the taxi that took him to the airport where he hears my name. 🤍

Happy birthday Dad, wherever you are 🙌🏻

--- Tangent about the caption under the cut ---

Roberto talks of the "taxi that took him to the airport where he hears my name", this is discussed in his book, I Had to Survive.

Please note I only own the English version of the book, so I am unable to give a Spanish version, my apologies.

His father writes -

I wanted to put this conversation to rest.

"Im the father of one of the boys whose plane crashed into the Andes. But the incident they're talking about yesterday happened to me, not to the boys. We're the ones who were the survivors. I'm one of them."

"You really don't know, do you?" the driver said, now animated as he looked at me through the rearview mirror. "They found two of the boys who were on the plane with the rugby players!"

"What are you talking about?" I found my voice was rising.

"It's all over the news!" the driver said as he flipped on the radio, "They're even naming the survivors!"

The first word I heard when he turned on the radio was his name.

"Roberto Canessa and Fernando Parrado are the two survivors who reached Los Maitenes," the announcer said.

The driver swerved and slammed the breaks as I broke down and lunged toward the front seat to hug and kiss him, yelling, "That's my son! That's my son!"

The driver and I jumped out of the car and hugged each other.

I began to cry as he hugged me tighter, then began to cry just as hard, right there in the middle of the road. I don't remember anything we talked about from that moment until we reached my cousin Gregorini's place; I was floating off somewhere else, crying along with the taxi driver who could barely drive he was crying so hard.

He continues on, but this passage in particular stood out to me -

I've thought a lot about that taxi driver, whose name I never learned, the man who gave me back my life just as I had given up.

Juan Carlos Canessa relayed this story on December 27, 2008, six months before his death. (Note given in: I Had to Survive)