was still early that Saturday which were still out the last three bodies of 14 miners buried in Pit 3, located in Sabinas, Coahuila. The painting, unlike the chaotic days of the tragedy in Pasta de Conchos (chronic still owe me, because I simply have not yet completed), it reminded me of the color but the loss of that fatal 2006: the same faces of officials manipulators the same shadow on the faces of orphans, widows and parents without children, the same fear and weariness that dragged from the depths of the mine rescuers.
At one point I thought I was living it all over again: for five years I told the story of the Pasta de Conchos tragedy and, indeed, had to be in February in San Juan de Sabinas for material on the fifth anniversary. Go back to the Carboniferous to talk of methane, relatives and irregularities immoral, reminded me that this office has a lot of circles: one day you're on one side, the next back there.
Days before stepping for the first time the camp where relatives were waiting miners Well 3 had gone to the funeral, the cemetery and the homes of some of them. I have been in the departure of Isaiah Valero Santiago Perez at the Pantheon, on the edge of Sabinas. The man was 32 years of mining and had little work in the Well 3 of the Northern International Benefits Company (bins) when the explosion ended his life.
The man was the first of five miners who would be buried that day in that area full of claims under the earth.
afternoon seethed when Isaiah was closed coffin surrounded by his parents, his widow, four children and the same number of grandchildren. Family friends and fellow miners watched silent farewell, accompanied by the sound of the trio Hermanos Martínez, the same as many nights accompanied Isaiah and his friends, after their journeys, in evenings at the Bar tasty Llamas.
"We met there often. We ate stews, kids, and then sang with the trio, and far recordabamelancólico the dismissal, leaning against a truck, his brother Peter, a miner as Isaiah.
Both had lost a brother in another hole dug, branches of labor exploitation and insecurity in the Carboniferous Region of Coahuila.
"We will miss him, of course. I'm going to miss much ...", muttered the man, while playing with one of the flowers that yield a final resting place of his brother.
the rhythm of accordion, bajo sexto and bass, and drowned in tears, Isaiah was given the farewell with songs like "Weeping Willows", "Eternal Love" and "I threw my love for the river," his favorite.
Meanwhile, in the depths of Barroteran Municipal Cemetery, a few miles of the largest mining tragedy in the region during the 20 th century, in the 60's, loved ones of Leobardo Sánchez Flores, 37 years, wanted to get rid of coffin, the only one of five that was open despite the state of the boy who left three very young children, one of arms.
crossed winds raged while relatives said that what he would do, that "Lalo" as he said, had bad luck. So. Accustomed to mourning perpetual.
Nothing seemed worse than that painful funeral, were it not beside the grave of Leobardo, five more waiting for the bodies of other miners still see no light in the well on fire in Sabinas. The backhoe, almost immoral maneuvers since there were still relatives of the deceased worker would do the rest.
Later, in one of the houses met María Alejandra Peña, sitting outside her house with her five daughters literally staring in silence. It is true that the ground seemed to be looking at ordinary life that was up before dawn on Tuesday, May 3, when the hole in which her husband Mario Alberto Anguiano trabajaba explotó y los dejó sepultados a él y a 13 compañeros más, en tanto a un menor de edad, en ese momento de ganchero, ante la tremenda detonación quedó colgado de uno de los alambres del pozo y perdió un brazo.
Rodeada de sus niñas, María contó que su esposo no tenía por qué estar trabajando en el Pozo 3. Entró ahí porque a ella le detectaron displasia en la matriz y debían incrementar los ingresos que obtenían en un sencillo puesto de tacos. Tampoco tenía que estar en el fondo del mineral, casi de 60 metros de hondo: se encontraba ahí porque al faltar dos días por acompañarla a sus citas médicas lo castigaron quitándole el puesto de malacatero by that of coal. Never to return. Possibly
and brought against him, he said, after he insisted the manager of the well, Elias Moreno, to hire not less, to strengthen the reservoir, vented to avoid hell inside. In vain.
For his part, that Tuesday's explosion was the first day of Victor Hugo Silva Santos, a resident of a known address in Barroteran. The 34 year old man left four children for years after refusing to return to the pits.
"That morning he was going to go I said, 'I have fear, not long ago under one'," his widow, Norma García. "I told him not to go, that as wish we could see, I borrowed, but his sons were the most important.
"He was always very strict with them and insisted that will not stop studying for that will not end like him alive, but underground."
But he had no choice. That morning he reached the well 3, and unselfish, he entered this trap into which he was paid 50 pesos per ton of coal faces in the minds of children, 16, 14, 10 and 7 years they would never see him.
latter two families whose parents died as slaves, living in borrowed houses and have debts, so ask for help to have one's own roof. In the same's the rest of the family.
Mortality, however, does not seem to stop. In the past five years there have been 20 accidents in 19 mines in the Coal Region, including the tragedies of Pasta de Conchos and Well 3. All 119 miners have produced official killed by mere negligence. We estimate about 350 orphans, excluding the circle of involvement: widows, nephews, grandchildren, godchildren. Just
tragedy del Pozo 3 left 38 orphans. Thirty-eight lives adrift, sons of coal in that there are even those who do not know their parents, such as waiting in her womb Jesus Maria Estrada after her husband, Julio Cesar Sifuentes did not reach reached in August, month of birth, because the darkness fell upon him. ***
To know what it is I decided to enter the darkness to talk to workers in a hole dug near the Well 3. Transparent, the pair of cousins \u200b\u200bwho introduced themselves as responsible agreed to chat with miners, take pictures and even enter the field, in this case 46 meters deep.
The dynamics are as follows: at the beginning of each day, at least two coal up to the edge of a face-up iron pot, uncovered, just subject to a steel cable to carry out the descent. Then give the signal to malacatero-mate handling cable, so that the distance, then down through a rudimentary electrical system powered by a power plant. Others will follow.
My first test to try the descent was, clinging to the chain, set foot on one end of the edge of the boat and then the other on the opposite side. A wrong step would cause the boat to tip and the person above him slip to the bottom of the mineral.
"for nothing let go of the chain," the miner warned me in a tone that is not forced to do more. In much of the "little wells" are recesses from which the water drops at full speed, liquid that falls as rain.
The tunnel has little vertical extent iron pot in which the miners located in the bottom of the well throw a hundred times carbon travel. This, I thought was a novelty, make thousands of miners every day. Each truck brings
100 kilos of ore and each worker should take three to five tons per day if you want to bring some money home, because each tonne is paid there in 70 wt.
"This is a simple chin ..." smiles one, covered with soot, in torn shorts and boots, describing their daily work.
The decline came in a blink. Down in the hot darkness, several passages were deployed nearby. The longest distance is 100 meters. I received then under heavy rain and water to the ankles, despite the fluid pump that draws a lot of men with tiny bulbs burning on their helmets and they were desperate to empty their trucks into the pot, efforts are recorded with chalk on a blackboard. Time is money.
"Come, come," shouted one wag, who for little feet with his truck rolled full of newly mined coal with air guns. Perhaps the spark in one of them, combined with the high and undue concentration of methane gas, was what blew up the well No. 3, whose roar was heard to the town of Agujita, near Sabinas. The danger of gas is so high in the wells that you can not take pictures with the threat of an explosion from the flash.
These wells have to walk bent over all the time, because the height is not more than 1.20 meters, while the width of the tunnel is equivalent to that of a truck. All figured out. Everything, in turn, primitive.
"You are made Cheves," shouted one, elated at the visit, while others laughed out loud when one emerges from the darkness almost welcomed, "and what they owe the honor?".
"Here ... is tough chin, leaving their lives, it is true, but if you want take a good throw money," boasted one of the cousins.
"As you see from Ledesma ... take care of every last detail, because care is not given the tragedies. Of course, there are wells where the owners do not care nothing about anything."
After about 20 minutes remaining in the passages, the ascent was as dizzying (not before Wade playful boat by miners to unhinge the visitors). A coal, however, as usual, has to go down with the gun in one hand and the other holding the cable that has to drive away and closer to natural light every seven or eight hours.
cousins \u200b\u200bproduction looked pleased as he left the field years: every coal mined is used for something in particular: closest to the surface mulch, the bottom one, with higher calorific value for the CFE and other agencies. The stokers on the outside, it passed hastily separating the stone coal.
Boys were jovial. They said that coal is a good deal, although they unhappy that the Government of Coahuila has recently invented a tax of 80 pesos per ton extracted, whose itinerary is unknown. That and the constant inspection of the Ministry of Labor, more attentive to heavy fines apply that to support the implementation of security measures, putting them at a crossroads. Another outrageous
is to work for organized crime. According to people in the Carboniferous, just go Agujita, Cloete and Nueva Rosita to substantiate how the wells are operated alongside each other for subjects who drive cars without license plates. These sources are the mining business, attracted by money and unemployment at their backs.
In fact, one of the sites, and left on Highway 57, looks to the side altar to the holy death as a symbol of what they are and have been to these places.
unique options, the wells keep hope, but also tragedy. And no, I was not afraid during the descent. I felt sorrow and anger. ***
The camp that Saturday started slow. Press conference Javier Lozano with the media and sporadic reports of those responsible for the rescue. Families, located under a canopy similar to the reporters, they stretched his gaze to the entrance to the pit, covered at that time for the maneuvers were not captured by the bodies. People knew that there came a new body when the chains began to run on top of the structure placed on the site. "Here comes another," he said. "To see who it is now." All plucked from the coal, stones, burned and moisture through the hands of their peers.
The sun began to plummet. 40 degrees were easily exceeded and it seemed that rescue efforts were made slower. "We're not going to leave," repeated the rescuers. "Have us faith, too long". But to each output of the rescuers hope grew and, after the brief ad, grief turned to take over the mourners. "That this is already finished, for God's sake," shouted one relative.
"I like to get in a shootout in Monterrey," said a cameraman, bored by waiting and heat. And is that the hours passed slowly, the hot wind burned cheeks and relatives strongly and wanted nothing to reporters. They wanted to go home to mourn their dead, bathe the children. Sleep. Imagine for a moment it was all a nightmare and not see those mounds of coal, that solitary wilderness.
hours remained slow. The friends of the families of the three rescue miners began to withdraw, as some reporters. Well 3 began to stop the news before the end of the recovery of bodies. Only the relatives were direct, the idea of \u200b\u200bdeath without death.
Suddenly, some of the reporters who stayed called our attention to a screaming kids under acacia. Until then we realized that those children had been not only that day, but every day, and in that corner with tables in which Caifanes, DIF group therapists state, entertained the children of miners. Small sang, drew, was laughing, clapping. Ran quietly under the shade of the tree at the black desert, where he ate his lunch himself running to hug their mothers or nap. His laughter was life in this place of so much death.
did not know how to name things. It seemed a miracle in the midst of tragedy. My fellow photographer Jesús López Bolaños went ahead and started taking them, but later returned with a startlingly beautiful photos by the backlight and exquisite silhouettes. There are no words when reporters snatch beauty even fatal moments. For I restate it now.
The day is burned on the Ejido Sabinas. Above 40 degrees, between ground blizzards, the wait was unbearable for the bereaved. Lozano in his Twitter network that is affection, wrote about what went down: "We bring two crews per shift of four hours each. In total, 11 while rescuers inside. Calor infernal."
Among miners who, like Christ, dragging heavy logs into the well, Martín Madrigal, one of the leaders of the bailout, came about noon, raising again the expectation of the family. Nothing: they worked in a hurry, he said, but with great caution, for what they intended underpin hard to work on eight meters of coal and rock that separated from the previous miners. Patience asked. Patience.
Almost hidden from their children ran laughing into the distance, families let out a cry softly, weary from the heat, the waiting, the pain. Many tried to find what was going down, what they were the difficulties. Then, during the evening someone remembered what he said Lozano at the impromptu press conference morning.
"is that someone asked on Friday for what were the boxes with onions that were getting that day. The Secretary did not know what to say, did not know.
" I think he asked, because mine does not know anything, and said it was for the obvious: to disguise the smell of putrefaction that runs through that pit of hell. "
Hence lime spreading everywhere. Hence the constant spraying.
Hence
also the allusion to hell I was talking about the Secretary-crazed tweets on the day of the longest wait. From that poignant element to the already pathetic drama and poignant picture of the little innocent, I came in the automatic title I gave to chronicle the final days: "Afternoon of games and onions."
*** Night fell. More While the morning. Was 1:30 pm on Sunday when the body of Eleazar López González, the last of the 14 miners who died, was finally wrested from the depths. There
came in a container body Barroteran Boy, 28, by which his fellow miners fought bravely against tons of stone and coal, after that underpinned hellhole. Of course, nobody saw it.
Before midnight Saturday, the bodies of Juan Alberto Sifuentes Avila and Manuel Carmona Nestor Martinez, 38 and 23 years respectively, and parents originally from Sabinas total of five children, were driven equally by miners heroes. There was, however, a confusion with names. The mourners broke devastated when told that no, it was not one, but the other one. What better they were to recognize by clothing, tattoos. Terrible.
In his final press conference, both the Secretary of Labor as the Governor of Coahuila never mentioned the names or the last three and the rest of the dead miners. More attentive to promote policies and to respond to reporters saliva, as well as his subordinates, was the prosecutor handling the preliminary investigation of the crime that the wine business on listing, correctly, at about 3:00 am.
Outraged at what many regard as nonsense insensitivity and immorality on the part of officials to not mention those names in an orderly manner, as those obtained by the prosecutor and now without relatives in the camp, immediately leave the place incident.
Carbonífera I left the next day with the conviction that sooner or later come back to have another tragedy. The laughter of those sons of coal, however, told me that all is not lost.
Not everything can be buried a few meters of that dark surface is everything to these men of coal.
PHOTOS: JESUS \u200b\u200bLOPEZ BOLAÑOS
Courtesy: REFORM
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