The survivors had discussed, before the rescue, how they would handle the question of food. They understood that the answer would be disturbing to people who had not been in the mountains with them. They made the decision to tell the truth: they had eaten the bodies of those who had died.
The first press conferences, in late December 1972, confirmed what several journalists were already speculating. On December 26, three days after the final rescue, Chilean newspapers published photographs that showed, among the debris at the crash site, evidence of what had sustained the survivors. By December 28, the survivors themselves were speaking publicly.
Alfredo “Pancho” Delgado, who spoke at a press conference in Montevideo, was among the first to address the question directly. The survivors had eaten the bodies of those who died, he confirmed. He asked the public to understand the decision in terms of what the survivors had faced: starvation at altitude, with no other source of nutrition, with the alternative being certain death for everyone. He asked the public to consider what they would have done.
The initial reaction in Uruguay and internationally was mixed, as might be expected. There were people who expressed condemnation, people who expressed compassion, people who were primarily fascinated, and people who tried to work through what the decision had meant from a moral or theological standpoint.
The Catholic Church’s response was significant. A priest who was consulted about the survivors’ actions said, according to accounts of the period, that the survivors should not consider themselves damned: they had acted out of necessity, with the deaths of those whose bodies they consumed having preceded any use of them, with no alternative available, and in a manner that was entirely different from acts that the prohibition against cannibalism was designed to address. The survivors had not killed anyone. They had eaten those who were already dead to avoid dying themselves.