For Chileans, 2010 was to be a celebration-filled bicentenary party. March's earthquake sent the nation into shock and introspection, but the rescue this week of the 33 miners who had been trapped since August has created a new self-belief, writes TOM HENNIGANat the San José Mine, Chile
THE POSTCARD from Ireland is at first barely noticeable. It is tucked in discreetly at the foot of a Mother Teresa statue at the makeshift shrine erected by relatives of the 33 miners during the long vigil they held while their men remained trapped underground.
But there it is, a line of cows on an Irish country road, incongruous amid the Virgin Mary figures, Pope John Paul II prayer cards, goodwill messages and signed miners’ helmets. Addressed to “The Chilean Miners”, it was posted by a family in Oldcastle, Co Meath. It reads: “Dear Miners. You are in our thoughts and prayers each day. Very best wishes from Ireland. God bless.”
The card is another small reminder of the extent to which the very human drama that played out on this remote and rocky hillside over the past 10 weeks gripped people across five continents. It is the story of 33 men trapped deep in their copper and gold mine by a cave-in on August 5th and how, against the odds, they were contacted alive 17 days later to the amazement of a watching world that had given them up for dead.
It is those first 17 days that were the darkest for the men, surviving on spoonfuls of tuna every two days and drinking polluted water, all the while waiting for any sign of their rescuers. For the families on the surface this period was also the hardest. “Until that first contact it was very difficult. There were just the families here and we were praying but knew others didn’t think they were still alive. So when they found them, well, that was the most emotionally intense moment of all,” says Margaritta Rojo, mother of Dario Segovia Rojo.
When all the men were finally brought up to the surface over 22 emotional hours on Wednesday, it was not just the religiously inclined who were talking about the men’s resurrection.
Chileans have taken huge pride in the professionalism of the rescue and the fortitude shown by the men. In sweltering conditions they survived underground longer than any previous group of miners, and their rescuers got them out sooner than was thought possible: when they were first located, on August 22nd, estimates about how long they would have to wait underground stretched as far as Christmas.
The country’s unlimited respect for the miners and their families is also tinged with guilt. “The truth is, most people thought they were already dead,” says a local bus driver, Luis Godoy. “After that amount of time with no contact everyone assumed the worst. Only the families kept on believing they would be found. Then, when after 17 days they were found alive and well and all together, patiently waiting for their rescuers, people felt a kind of private shame that they had not shared the families’ faith.”
Chile is a country well versed in the risks of mining. Its increasing prosperity might be based on stable politics and sound economic management, but much of the cash comes from exporting the huge mineral wealth found in the Atacama Desert. Mining is a dangerous occupation, and Chileans know tragedies are inevitable: 35 miners died at work last year.
Chile’s mining communities are known for their intense faith; it acts as a shield against the inherent dangers of their work. The country’s mining minister, Laurence Golborne, broke down in tears two days after the accident as he told family members that an attempt to reach the men through a ventilation shaft had failed; he was publicly upbraided by the men’s mothers, brothers and colleagues, who told him not to become disheartened so easily.
Golborne had been ordered to take charge of the rescue operation by Chile’s president, Sebastián Piñera, who ignored the counsel of political advisers to distance himself from what they feared would be a tragedy. Instead he went to the mine and ordered the state-owned mining giant Codelco to take over the rescue operation from the pit’s beleaguered private bosses.
Though his minister managed the day-to-day operation, Piñera left no one in doubt: he was running the show, driving on his team and providing regular bulletins to his countrymen on progress. He was there on Wednesday to personally greet every miner as he emerged from the ground.
Piñera is a billionaire businessman famous for his hands-on management style. Only his most cynical political opponents have suggested that he led from the front for any reason other than to try to do all he could to free the men alive. But he has benefited politically from his management of the crisis, and he has sought to use the outcome to overcome the blow to national confidence inflicted by the earthquake earlier this year.
Piñera was sworn in less than two weeks after the huge quake – 8.8 on the Richter scale – in February. In the immediate aftermath Chile received widespread international praise for its earthquake preparedness, which meant that, although the earthquake was stronger than the devastating one that hit Haiti a month before, just over 500 people lost their lives.
But for Chileans the earthquake provoked a bout of national introspection and doubt in what was meant to be a year filled with celebrations to mark the country’s bicentenary. Though Chile’s infrastructure held up remarkably well against the sudden shift in Earth’s tectonic plates, the country was shocked at the outbreaks of looting that followed in the days afterwards.
Some blamed a society where the social bonds were weaker than many suspected after two peaceful and prosperous decades following the return of democracy, in 1990. Others simply blamed the government’s slow response in getting help to the affected areas, leaving quake victims desperate. Either way, footage of shops in the country’s second city being looted shook Chile’s image of itself as a society on the verge of First World status.
Now the government wants the national questioning that followed the earthquake to be transformed into pride in the performance of all involved in the events at the San José mine: the miners and their families for their dignity and solidarity, and the rescuers for their professionalism. The technical expertise displayed by the rescue crews fits in with the idea of a Chile that Piñera says can be ready to join the developed club of nations by 2018, in time to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the final defeat of Spain’s armies in the war of independence.
“Chile is not the same country as it was 69 days ago. We are more respected,” he said on Wednesday. He meant by the countries abroad whose leaders have rushed to congratulate it on the successful conclusion of the rescue. But he could just as easily have been speaking about his fellow citizens, who, after the confused days of late February and early March, once again have reason to view their country as the continent’s sober, can-do nation. Even Golborne recovered from his shaky start, and his sure performance in subsequent weeks has transformed him from the most obscure member of Piñera’s cabinet into a politician with an 87 per cent approval rating who is talked about as a possible future presidential candidate.
The miners’ rescue has even sparked hopes of helping to improve Chile’s rocky relationship with neighbouring Bolivia. The two countries have not maintained full diplomatic ties with each other since the 1879-83 War of the Pacific, when Chile conquered and annexed Bolivia’s only access to the sea. Bolivia’s demand for an outlet on the Pacific has proved a block to normal relations ever since.
On Wednesday the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, came to the San José Mine to stand alongside his Chilean counterpart and greet the fourth man lifted to the surface, his compatriot Carlos Mamani, the only foreigner among the group. In thanking the Chilean authorities for rescuing the 23-year-old he said the events at the mine “bind us together, they strengthen us . . . Bolivia will never forget the efforts of the Chilean government . . . and of the Chilean people.”
It is too early to say if the outpouring of goodwill that has followed the miners’ rescue can help resolve a historical dispute well into its second century. But it must surely help that the two presidents now share a personal bond as they seek to negotiate a tough 13-point agenda agreed by both countries in 2006 as a road map to resolving their impasse.
A more pressing matter for Morales to resolve is the reported rebuff his offer of a gift of land back home received from Mamani. The miner has agreed to visit Bolivia next week. But his family says he wants to remain in Chile – a setback to Morales, who promised to bring Bolivia’s most famous miner home with him.
Piñera should take note: the Chilean miners might also not be as willing to take up the roles of national heroes that he has assigned them. They have got new lives to get on with.
Media frenzy How 1,500 of the world's journalists descended on the mine to report on the rescue
Chileans say they have seen nothing like it before. Not during the aftermath of February's devastating earthquake or even the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, in 1990.
As the 10-week operation to free the 33 trapped miners entered its final stage last weekend, the world's media descended on this remote desert region ready to report the men's dramatic escape.
Flights to the regional airport were snapped up and satellite trucks driven in from neighbouring countries. About 1,500 journalists from five continents registered with authorities, swamping the 370 relatives of the men whose ordeal caught the imagination of the world.
At this remote mine, whose parched reddish hills might be the closest thing on Earth to what being on Mars looks like, a global village of Portakabins, generators and mobile homes grew up around the relatives' Camp Hope, where they had kept vigil since the cave-in, on August 5th.
Phone companies quickly erected temporary masts, to allow reporters to stay in touch with editors around the world, while local companies worked with the local government to make sure everyone received three square meals a day and the mountains of rubbish were trucked out.
So many journalists showed up that, to the amazement of locals, hotels in towns up to 70km away were booked out and rental companies were driving cars in from other regions to meet demand from television crews, their fixers and local translators.
Everywhere reporters scrambled to talk to relatives, who showed remarkable patience as they answered the same questions over and over.
"It has obviously been very difficult for the relatives, but they found the media a support since the beginning, since their presence showed the men were not forgotten," says Br Eduardo Pereira, a local missionary who has provided support to the families. "But now that the men are coming out the majority want some privacy."
Reporters were desperate to talk to relatives because the authorities kept them well away from the rescue teams and the miners once they started to come out. The rescue shaft was sealed off from the media, and instead the government provided a live television feed of events for the press pack – which, like more than a billion people around the globe, saw Wednesday's dramatic events unfold on television.
