In what must be a first, this week’s International Bar Association in Mexico City knowingly welcomed a one-time cannibal.
It was not an academic study of the 1884 case of R v Dudley and Stephens but rather an inspirational talk by Nando Parrado (pictured), the Uruguayan who was one of the 16 survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash. Famously, they lived 72 days on the icy mountain by eating the bodies of those killed.
Parrado was one of the two expeditionaries who made a 60km trek across the highest Andes to summon help. ‘At the top of the mountain, there was a huge door: it was the door of death,’ Parrado told a gripped audience of desk-bound lawyers. ‘Once you cross it, nothing matters. I said I won’t stop until my face hits the ice, I won’t stop until I die.
‘In a tragedy your brain reacts and takes your emotions away,’ he advised. ‘If you panic, you die. Fear saves you.’
Somehow the stresses of office life don’t seem so daunting.
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