The Valley of Tears, from the horror of tragedy to the dream of the Oscar

The summer heat has melted the snow. The exhausted visitors recover as best they can and contemplate the Valley of Tears, the site of the Tragedy of The Andesa mysterious corner that can achieve artistic immortality if this Sunday ‘The Snow Society’ wins the Oscar for best international film.

More than half a century later, the film that is also up for best makeup and hairstyling, directed by the Spanish Juan Antonio Bayona and based on the book of the same name by the Uruguayan Pablo Vierci, has raised passions around the world and turned the enclave into a corner of pilgrimage.

At the site of the accident, a border point between Argentina and Chile in the middle of the Andes mountain range, which an EFE team accessed, an unfathomable silence reigns.

The access route – on horseback or on foot – to almost 4,000 meters of altitude is an arduous succession of gorges and hills.

Before reaching the memorial, which requires at least three days from El Sosneado (San Rafael department, Mendoza), visitors must cross icy and violent mountain rivers and climb almost vertical slopes without fear of vertigo.

“We are at a considerable height, people think it is a procedure, but getting here entails a certain degree of difficulty and it is necessary to be in good physical condition”Jorge García, owner of the Pampas Negras tourism company, one of the few that has official authorization to take on the road in the department of Malargüe, tells EFE.

García and his partner Johnny Albino, owner of the alternative tourism company Choique, recognize that the success of the film has been a ‘boom’ for Mendoza tourism greater than that experienced in 2022 with the 50th anniversary of the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which caused 29 deaths and of which 16 people survived after 72 days in extreme conditions.

In this sense, Jesús Araya, who has been accompanying visitors for three decades, believes that the situation “has to be controlled” and to do so he tells EFE that people take extreme precautions and do not face the route without muleteers or local baqueanos.

At the Barroso camp, where we spend the night before and after the ascent, considerations about the mountain are exchanged.

Ramiro and Máximo Negri, 27 and 23 years old, walk with their father, an experienced mountaineer. The oldest of these brothers from Mendoza lives in Australia and values ​​that this experience allows him to be “alienated from society.”

Nature buries daily vices, there is no mobile coverage and amenities are minimal.

Juana, twelve years old, confesses to EFE that she misses a mirror or some reflection where she can check her appearance. The passing of the hours clears the worries of the girl, a rider since she was four years old and a fan of the film, which she has already seen three times, so that she speaks with familiarity about the protagonists.

The first night in the mountain becomes a moment of introspection, before facing ‘The snails’, the hardest section of the route. The height makes it difficult to breathe and the fatigue does not allow us to articulate words. These meters are the opposite of the Hollywood red carpet.

After the tension of the last stretch to the memorial, made up of several milestones in which the tragedy is remembered and where the pilgrims leave their memories, some cry and others remain silent. But everyone wonders how it was possible.

Gustavo Oriozabala, legend of open water swimming in Argentina, takes off his wide-brimmed hat and, together with his brother, holds a photograph of his 80-year-old father, a true connoisseur of the event and who could not accompany them because he was in Wheelchair.

More than a hundred cancer patients and doctors excitedly ask about the details of the accident. It is difficult to separate the personal from the foreign.

“Stone after sweaty stone. “I am excited and I am very well.”, reacts Osiris Seltzer, a cancer patient like his son, with whom he is in the Andes. It is not his first ascension. Years ago she went to this place with one of the survivors, Roberto Canessa, as part of a school activity.

There is no trace of the plane’s fuselage; Yes, a piece of wing, a wheel, a broken window, parts of the engine are scattered… And the bodies of those who died -except one- are under a blanket of rocks. There is only silence and immensity.

It’s cold, but the sun is beating down. Contemplating the way back is terrifying, some close their eyes and others face the remainder of the journey with satisfaction. As we leave the Valley of Tears behind, it’s hard to decide when to deliver a final glimpse.

The small promontory is lost and blurred in the massive canvas of the Andes. There are smiles and many of those who return from the mountain understand that a part of them is still there and will probably never return.

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