Chile's trapped miners: Victims of a ruthless drive for profit
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/chil-s03.shtml
By Cesar Uco
3 September 2010
With 33 Chilean miners nearing one month trapped 2,300 feet underground, the
human drama of what could prove a four-month ordeal before they are rescued
has riveted attention worldwide. The struggle of these workers to survive and
their determination and ingenuity in organizing themselves to confront what
for most are unthinkable conditions has elicited the admiration and
solidarity of people around the globe.
However, the extensive media coverage of this dramatic episode gives short
shrift, if any mention at all, to the social, economic and political
conditions that created the disaster in the first place, and the similar
conditions confronting miners in hundreds of other small and unsafe mining
operations in Chile. For the most part, the media studiously avoids the
criminal responsibility of the mine owners and the Chilean government.
The 33 miners have been trapped in the San José mine in the Atacama Desert
500 miles north of Santiago since August 5, when an explosion produced a
massive collapse, blocking the main access to the surface. They survived by
rationing a two-day food supply to a minimum daily diet consisting of two
spoons of canned tuna, a small glass of milk, half a cracker and slices of
peaches with syrup.
Some men had lost 15 to 22 pounds when they were first found more than two
weeks after the accident occurred. Today they are being fed solid and liquid
food and vitamins. The diet has gone up to 1,200 calories a day and is
expected to reach 2,000 calories in a few days.
Doctors who have been in contact with the miners have reported that at least
five of them are suffering from depression. They were having trouble sleeping
and were becoming increasingly anxious and irritable after being confined in
the cramped space for so long, Chilean Health Minister Jaime Manalich told
CNN.
The rescue plan calls for the trapped miners to work around the clock in
shifts to remove 3,000 to 4,000 tons of rock that will fall as a tunnel is
drilled from the surface to the shelter where the trapped men have taken
refuge. Engineers have estimated it will take until the end of the year to
pull the miners to safety. It will be the longest time men have been trapped
inside a mine on record.
There is growing popular anger in Chile over the reckless behavior of the
mining company, San Esteban, which specializes in mining copper and gold. The
record shows that the company was at fault on several counts: it delayed
reporting the accident, had violated several security measures and hadn't
paid social security for the miners, according to complaints. A trapped miner
said that when they reached the shelter “the energy was cut off and there
was no ventilation.”
The San José mine had a record of 80 accidents. In 2004, a miner died after
a cave-in. In 2006, a truck driver in the mine was also killed in an
accident. That same year 182 workers were injured, 56 of them seriously,
according to GlobalPost.
The mine was closed in 2007 after a rock explosion caused the death of a
geologist. The owners were charged with involuntary manslaughter, but the
case was dropped in 2008 after they agreed to pay the family some USD 170,000
in compensation.
A condition for reopening the mine was that San Esteban commits itself to
constructing a ladder that would lead from the shelter to the surface.
Following the cave-in, the miners tried to reach the surface through a
ventilation shaft. They got only a third of the way up before discovering
that the mine owners had never bothered to finish the ladder to the top.
The Argentine daily Pagina 12 qouted José Rojo, who has been a miner for 20
years, as saying that the bosses had “turned a blind eye to the San José
mine. They told us that it was coming down, every so often there were
cave-ins. They knew it was going to happen. At times when I was there with
the Jumbo drill, I had to stop because I saw that the roof was coming down on
me.” On the day of the cave-in, he wasn't working because the machinery he
operated was broken.
The Times of London interviewed Philippe Sanchez, 51, who worked at the mine
between 1987 and 1999 and whose nephew is among those trapped. “It is one of
the worst mines in the area,” he said. “It has always been dangerous. There
are accidents all the time and when you are hurt, you had better not complain
or you will be sacked—there is a culture of silence.”
A former parliamentary deputy for the area and a specialist in mining,
Antonio Leal, blamed the owners for the accident.
“The main ones responsible for the tragedy are the owners of San Esteban,
Marcelo Kemeny y Alejandro Bohn … because they have regularly violated the
law in spite of the many accidents that occurred between 2003 and 2010,
costing the live of three miners and another two gravely injured,” Leal said.
He pointed out that the owners “have been insensitive to the demands for
more security, lying to government officials and the union with promises
never fulfilled.”
The mining unions have also denounced the dangers in the San José mine,
pointing to the many accidents that occurred in the past. This led the
National Service of Geology and Mining (Sernageomin), the state organ
responsible for supervising the security of mining operations in Chile, to
close the mine.
“At the time the manager and owner Alejandro Bohn threatened Anton Hraste
[then the director of Sernageomin] to have him removed from his post if he
didn't reopen the mine,” said Leal.
A lawsuit against the Chilean state and the company has been filed in the
name of 24 of the 32 Chilean miners (one miner is Bolivian). Their families
are complaining that none of the miners has received a paycheck, and they are
forced to rely on donations from the Chilean people to make ends meet.
The company was also ordered by a local judge to freeze $1.8 million in
revenue so that it can pay future compensation to 26 of the families. A
representative of San Esteban said the company may declare bankruptcy rather
than meet these obligations. Meanwhile, it was reported that the company is
planning to begin operations at another mine in the Atacama Desert.
The Chilean House of Deputies has called for an investigation, and Chile's
right-wing president, Sebastian Pinera, who took office last March, said
his government will “investigate responsibilities and sanction those who are
found at fault.”
Such governmental action is routinely announced in an attempt to appease
popular anger when such mining accidents take place. However, the conditions
at the San José mine were by no means unique. It is one of hundreds of small
mines in Chile working under precarious and unsafe conditions in the attempt
by owners to reap a profit from high metal prices. They attract workers by
offering higher than average salaries and benefits.
According to the National Director of Sernageomin, Alejandro Vio Grossi, the
mine was reopened without his knowledge, under the authority of a
subordinate. Vio Gross was fired by President Sebastián Piñera following
the accident.
The reality is that Sernageomin lacks the funds and personnel required to
fulfill its responsibilities. Due to budget constraints, it has just 16
safety inspectors for more than 4,500 mines in Chile. It has only three
inspectors responsible to supervise 884 medium and small mines in the Atacama
region.
Under these conditions, the government proposal to increase personnel from 16
to 45 and its budget from 12 billion pesos ($24 million) to 28 billion pesos
($56 million) by the end of 2011 is barely a drop in the bucket.
For many mine owners, it is more profitable to pay fines for breaking mine
safety rules than to invest in improving safety conditions for their workers.
It should be added that bribery of low-paid government officials is standard
operating procedure for Chilean capitalists.
The mayor of the town of Caldera Brunilda Gonzalez, charged that
Sernageomin's failure to insist on inspections and other normal procedures
before allowing the mine to reopen had been the result of a payoff. “There has
been a bribe,” she said. “There has been influence-peddling and negligence on
the part of the state and public officials.”
In interviews with the Associated Press, relatives of the trapped miners said
the men risk their lives working under unsafe conditions in small mines
because it is the only way of lifting their families out of poverty. Some of
the men travel more than a thousand miles to their hometowns to see their
loved ones when they are not working in the San José mine.
Chile is the world's largest producer of copper, which makes up 40 percent
of the country's exports.
Chile's 4.1 percent annual per-capita growth rate over the past two decades,
as reported by the World Bank, has been accompanied by a widening of social
and economic inequality. Fourteen percent of Chile’s population, or 2.3
million people, live in poverty, with millions more barely making it above
the poverty line.
According to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean,
the Atacama region has experienced “dynamic growth”, but this has not
translated into reducing poverty levels in the mineral-rich region.
Posing as the miners’ benefactor is President Pinera, a billionaire
businessman and political descendant of the military dictator of General
Augusto Pinochet, in whose regime his brother served as minister of labor and
of mining. In the latter capacity, JosePiñera pushed through a
Constitutional Mining Law in 1981, clearing the way for the privatization of
much Chilean mining, thereby creating the conditions for a sharp
deterioration in safety conditions. Sebastian Pinera himself ran for
president on a platform that included the partial privatization of the main
state-owned copper mining enterprise in Chile, provoking miners' strikes in
opposition to his proposal.
Just as in the wake of the earthquake that devastated the south coast of
Chile six months ago, he is attempting to capitalize on a disaster and a
human tragedy to advance his call for “reconciliation” among all Chileans,
an attempt to suppress class struggle and bury the past of torture, mass
executions and repression for which virtually no one has been held
accountable.
The right-wing president has tried to claim ownership of the rescue effort,
appearing at the mine site and attempting to turn the entire operation into
an exercise in patriotism. When first contact was made with the miners,
officials cautioned their families that it could not be confirmed and waited
until Piñera could make it to the mine and appear before the TV cameras to
read the note that had been brought up from the mine shaft stating that all
33 men were alive. The presidential palace this week announced plans to
organize the entire country in singing the national anthem on September 18,
with the miners dragooned into the exercise via a video broadcast from the
damaged mine.
Pinera's call for unity with those who Pinochet viciously repressed has not
gone unanswered by his ostensible opposition, the Socialist Party, which had
ruled the country in partnership with the Christian Democrats for 20 years
before Pinera's election. This was symbolized by the embrace he received at
the mine site from Socialist Party Senator Maria Isabel Allende Bussi, the
daughter of former president Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in the
September 11, 1973 military coup.
The unity of the big business-backed politicians, however, cannot conceal the
deep-going class divisions and hostilities that underlie the Chilean mine
disaster. An Associated Press article on the trapped miners made the
perceptive observation that their courage recalled the “moving stoicism and
hope which could be observed in previous decades in the demonstrations of the
victims of the Pinochet dictatorship.”
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