#history posts

On October 12th, 1972, Eugenia Parrado purchased a pair of red baby shoes in Mendoza, Argentina. She intended them as a gift for her baby nephew, the son of her eldest daughter, Graciela Parrado.

The following day, October 13th, Eugenia boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, bound for Santiago, Chile. She was accompanying her son, Nando, and his rugby teammates for what was promised to be a fun long weekend in Santiago de Chile.

Tragically, shortly after boarding the flight from Mendoza, Eugenia would lose her life when Flight 571 crashed deep in the Andes mountains. Her daughter, Susana, was left with severe internal injuries, and died 8 days later. Her son, Nando, spent 3 days in a coma with a severe head injury, but miraculously awoke on the 3rd day on the mountain. From the moment he awoke, he was filled with what seemed to be an insane desire to escape; to make it home to his father, Seler, who assumed his entire family had been lost in the crash.

The little red shoes were found soon after the crash, as the survivors combed desperately through scattered luggage for any scraps of food or warm clothing. The shoes became a talisman of hope, a reminder to the boys of their families waiting at home and praying for them to survive.

When the survivors, led by Nando, began mounting expeditions to attempt escape, one of the little red shoes always accompanied the expeditionaries.

Shortly before Nando began the final desperate expedition to the west, facing the 20,000 foot peak of what he would later name Mt. Seler in honor of his father, he took one of the shoes and handed to Carlitos Paez. He said, "when these are a pair again, we will be saved."

11 days later, on the 22nd of December, 1972, the little red shoes were reunited at Los Maitenes as the 16 survivors of Flight 571 descended from the rescue helicopters.

Magaly Solier, a Quechua Andean actress depicting the Lady of Cao in the theatrical play, “La Dama de Cao”.

The Lady of Cao is a female Moche mummy rediscovered in 2006. She was a leader suspected to be in her mid twenties when she died. The Moche predates the Incas and they were succeeded by the Andean Wari culture and people. 

In 2017, eleven years after the Lady of Cao’s remains were rediscovered, a reconstruction of her face was created; Andean and Indigenous Peruvian people could take pride in her beauty once again.

While the animated film presents a positive view of the Romani, much of the merchandize and marketing materials were riddled with stereotypes.

For example, Disney trademarked the term “Gypsy Magic” to add a cultural gimmick to a line of horses that accompanied the Barbie sized line of Esmeralda dolls back when the film came out. 

I’m not sure what Gypsy Magic is, but as far as I am aware there is nothing in Romani culture that is suggestive of such a concept. In all likelihood, this was a marketing term built up about stereotypes for Gypsies, about them being superstitious practitioners of witchcraft.

Such stereotypes and accusations have served to justify persecution of Gypsies in Europe and Africa, especially in the Middle Ages.

The film is about the harm of such stereotypes, but much of the merchandise and marketing relishes in them for the sake of profit. 

The line of trading cards featured a sub-set of “Gypsy Spirit” cards. These cards featured fortune telling games on their backsides and featured Tarot-esque imagery. 

The Gypsy Spirit theme - an ill defined term that is a catch all for all of the magic and superstitious stereotypes that are spread about the Romani - is not inherently meant as an insult, but it is a deformation and commodification of an actual people with actual religious and cultural practices and turned into a personality trait.

Such has been the case for various New Age beliefs that have spread out over the past thirty years and have seen a recent revival for some reason. (Spoiler alert, there is no such thing as magic, crystals are just rocks, and Gypsies are people and not some quirky personality type). 

But you wouldn’t know that if you were a subscriber to Disney Adventures magazine in the mid ‘90s. This issue features a “Gypsy Spirit Quiz” that encourages readers to answer questions to assign a Gypsy Spirit to them.

Which is literally ascribing largely random qualities to an ethic or cultural group.

The treatment of Romani cultural and religious traditions was much different than how French catholic culture and tradition was portrayed in merchandise. The former is rendered into a spiritualist and superstitious caricature while the latter is either entirely ignored or treated with a degree of respect. 

For example, there were no quizzes in Disney Adventures magazine about one’s likelihood to be accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven after death, nor was there a line of dolls that claimed to be empowered by the Holy Ghost of the Christian trinity. If there was a mass produced and Disney licensed candy that claimed to undergo the theological concept of transubstantiation once you put it in your mouth, I have yet to see it. 

Perhaps the only exception to this might be a cathedral stained glass kids art kit, but this could only be guilty of secularization and sanitization of religious culture, and is far less egregious than the use and invocation of Romani culture for marketing purposes. 

There are few words to describe how beloved Marcelo Pérez del Castillo was as a son, brother, friend and captain, as well as a surrogate father figure to his two younger sisters, Stella and Claudia, after the tragic early death of his father in 1968. Marcelo is described as charming, cheeky, loving, and energetic, with a magnetic and mischievous personality and a deep love for the sport of rugby. Whether he was running the Old Christian's Rugby Club (of which he was a co-founder along with his best friend, Eduardo Strauch), working in his architecture studio with Eduardo, riding his motorcycle along the streets of Montevideo or procrastinating on his homework, the testimonies of those who loved him make clear how much he lit up the world during his short life.

His deeply caring personality continued to shine through even in the worst of circumstances. Survivor Javier Methol wrote of Marcelo: "What those young boys needed was strong direction stemming from love, in a setting of orderliness and camaraderie. And what was Marcelo? He was all of that."

From taking immediate action in the moments after the crash, organizing the rescue of survivors trapped under crushed airplane seats and building the luggage wall that kept the survivors from freezing to death the first night, to volunteering to hand out the rations of dried human flesh after it became clear that rescue wasn't coming, Marcelo lived and breathed his values of honor, integrity, courage and kindness until the very end.

Today, the 26th of March 2025, would have been his 78th birthday. Today, I hope you take a moment to remember a brave, kind and beloved boy, who fought until his very last breath, and reach out to those around you with the same warmth and care Marcelo showed every day of his too-short life.

Happy heavenly birthday, Marcelo. I hope you're up there having the biggest party and dancing your heart out with your friends and family 💛