33 Men Read Free

oxygen. An ambulance rushed Vega to the local Copiapó hospital, where he was kept for the better part of a week.
    Long-term exposure to the gases and grit led to silicosis—caused by breathing toxic silica particles, which clog the lungs. Year after year, these miners inhale clouds of tiny rock fragments, making the lungs ever less efficient. In advanced cases, known as Potter’s Rot (in reference to the use of silica in pottery making), the victim lacks oxygen and his skin takes on a blue tint. Mario Gómez, the oldest man on the shift, had collected so much dust and debris in his lungs that after fifty-one years as a miner, he was often short of breath and used a bronchial dilator to maximize the portions of his lungs that still functioned. With silicosis, miners like Gómez are slowly starved of oxygen—essentially the same process that would happen to a pickup truck if it were driven through this desert for twenty years with never a change of air filter.
    A pirquinero devotes his life to mining for a week, sometimes a solid month, as he breaks his back in solitary battle with the mountain and, for some, then soothes his loneliness with impromptu sexual escapes that a local doctor described as a “ Brokeback Mountain situation.” A Chilean psychiatrist working with these miners described the phenomenon as “transitory homosexuality,” which, he noted, is a centuries-old practice among sailors, what he called “a practical solution to the ever more desperate lack of female companionship.” When the miners returned to town, they indulged heavily in alcohol, women and a blast of instant pleasures that guaranteed they would soon need another paycheck. Local cocaine—at $15 a gram—was also for many on the list of temptations.
    Samuel Ávalos had spent the past twenty-four hours scrambling to earn 16,000 Chilean pesos ($32) to take the bus to Copiapó. Ávalos, a round-faced, hardened man, lived in Rancagua, a mining town just south of Santiago, home to “El Teniente,” the world’s largest underground mine. Despite the plethora of mining jobs in the area, Ávalos had little experience underground. His job was as a street vendor—his specialty, pirated music CDs. The police harassed him often, sometimes confiscating his stash. But the last day had been lucky—he’d made just enough money to board the last bus with an empty seat to Copiapó. Only later would he realize that José Henríquez, a fellow miner, was on the same bus.
    During the bus ride, Ávalos drank. He transferred to the shuttle bus to the mine still in a daze. “The drinks had their effect. Getting down, stepping off the bus, I practically fell,” said Ávalos. “Then it was very strange. I don’t know what you would call it, but a spirit passed by. My mother. She’s deceased. I asked her, ‘Mom, what are you saying? What do you want?’ I didn’t figure it out. Later I had lots of time to think about that last warning.”
    Ãvalos typically stuffed his jacket with chocolates, cakes, cookies, milk, and juice. With his jacket bulging, he constantly battled to hide the contraband from Luis Urzúa, the foreman who was never happy to see his workers with food. He considered it a distraction.
    â€œThat day I left my food above. I didn’t bring even a single chocolate,” said Ávalos. It was another moment he would relive again and again in the coming weeks.
    As the incoming shift changed clothes and prepared for work, forty-two-year-old paramedic Hugo Araya exited the mine, his shift complete. Even after six years in San José, Araya never felt comfortable inside the mine. The sagging entrance with that rusted sign about safety always seemed a bit of a joke, considering the constant flow of accidents, cave-ins and fainting miners. But then Araya, who worked as lead emergency medical technician in the mine, was the kind of guy