33 Men Read Free Page A

you called in when problems arose. Most of all, he hated the mine’s smell. “Like something decomposing. Like rotten meat,” he’d say.
    With carbon monoxide from the vehicles, gases emanating from the dynamite charges and the men smoking cigarettes nonstop, Araya received the emergency call so often it rarely felt like an emergency anymore. He would then drive the twenty-five-minute, four-mile journey down switchbacks and tunnels, deep to the bottom of the cavern where he’d find a pair of miners sucking on oxygen masks, ready for evacuation. Usually the men could go home that night. At worst, after a day or two in the local clinic they’d be back at the job, hacking, dynamiting, sucking up dust and rarely complaining.
    After his full night’s shift, Araya was coated with a fine layer of coffee-gray dust, an oily mixture that did not easily wash away. That morning as he showered and scrubbed at his home an hour away in Copiapó, Araya felt a deep unease. The mountain had “cried” all night. Eerie creaking groans and sharp reports had left all the men on edge. When a mine like San José cries, the tears tend to be the size of boulders.
    More than a century of picks, dynamite and drills had riddled the mountain with so many holes and tunnels that new workers would wonder aloud how the roof did not fall down on the many passageways. Araya had no way of recognizing that after 111 years of operation, after millions in gold and copper ore had been wrenched from every corner of the now labyrinthine tunnels, the mine had also been stripped of its support structure. Like a house of cards, the mine was now delicately balanced.
    Deep inside the San José mine, the miners stripped to the basic necessities—helmet with lamp, water bottle, shorts and MP3 player with a customized dose of Mexican rancheras, emotional ballads that chronicle the loves, sacrifice and nobility of the working class. “A lot of times you would see the men working in their boots and their underwear,” said Luis Rojas, who worked in the San José mine. “It was just too hot to wear many clothes.”
    Darío Segovia spent the morning of August 5 attaching metal nets to the roof of the mine—a rustic system to catch falling rocks and prevent men and machines from being crushed. Known as “fortification,” Segovia ’ s job was extremely dangerous. He was like a firefighter inside an inferno, attacking small blazes while he was aware the battle was lost. “Before eleven am , I knew the mine would fall, but they sent us to place the reinforcement nets. We knew the roof was all bad and it would fall. To pass the time we drove the pickup to gather some water at the tanks. It was dangerous; the roof was so fragile.”
    Mario Sepúlveda missed the bus from Copiapó that morning. At 9 am he began to hitchhike to the mine. Traffic was sparse and rides impossible along the long road. Sepúlveda was tempted to head back to his cheap boardinghouse. Then a lonely truck arrived on the horizon. When it stopped and picked him up, Sepúlveda felt lucky. He would make it to work after all. At 10 am he arrived at the mine, checked in, joked with the security guards. By 10:30 am he was driving into the belly of the mountain.
    At 11:30 am , the mountain cracked. Workers asked the head of mining operations, Carlos Pinilla, what was happening. According to congressional testimony by the miners, Pinilla was heading down into the shaft at the time. He told the miners the sound was a normal “settling of the mine,” and kept them deep inside the shaft. Pinilla himself, according to the miners, commandeered the first available vehicle, turned around, and immediately headed for the surface. “He left early that day and he never did that. He would usually leave at one or one-thirty and that day he left around eleven,” Jorge Galleguillos testified. “He was scared.”
    Raúl