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## The World That Went On Without Them
While the survivors were on the mountain, the world continued.
October and November 1972 were eventful months in global politics and culture. The United States presidential election in November saw Richard Nixon re-elected in a landslide. The Vietnam War was in its final phases of American involvement; the Paris Peace Accords would be signed in January 1973. In Uruguay, the country from which the aircraft had departed, 1972 was a year of significant political tension: the Tupamaro guerrilla movement was being suppressed, and the military’s power was growing toward the coup that would come in 1973.
None of this was visible from the valley. The survivors heard news broadcasts on their radio, including the report that their search had been called off, but the content of those broadcasts was otherwise part of a world that was unreachable.
The disconnection between what was happening on the mountain and what was happening in the world has a particular resonance for the survivors’ families. The families who had been told that the aircraft was missing, then that the search had been called off, then that there were unlikely to be any survivors — these families were living through the deaths of their relatives while simultaneously navigating the demands of ordinary life: work, other family members, the approach of Christmas.
Nando Parrado’s father Seler Parrado refused to accept that his son, daughter, and wife were dead. He organized and partially funded a private search for the aircraft after the official search was called off, working with Carlos Páez Vilaró — the artist father of survivor Carlitos Páez — who conducted his own independent search. Neither search found the crash site. But the fathers’ refusal to accept the official verdict is documented as a fact that the survivors received with significance after the rescue: their families had not given up on them even when the authorities had.