An amazing story

33 Chilean coal miners are alive - but still trapped - after 17 days in a collapsed mine.

We pray for their continued survival and a successful rescue.

Comments

[pablo]

Chile's record on mine safety is generally very good in comparison with the rest of the world.
Since the mid 1950's the Communists and Socialist parties have been strongest in the mining areas.

It would be proper to draw a correlation between both facts above.

Copper mining has been Chile's chief export for well over a century. Until the mid 1950's conditions in the mines were deplorable. Anyone who may have read Che's Motorcycle Diaries would have gotten an eyewitness account of the living hell endured by miners working in the copper concessions. During those darker times a career in the mines might last some seven years before accident of lung disease brought things to a close.

1947 marked a turning point for worker rights in Southern Chile while it wasn't until poet Pablo Neruda was elected as Senator for the Atacama (as a communist) did conditions dramatically improve.

Once workers began having dignity the US concessions launched an all out offensive against the workers collectively and against Neruda personally; driving him into exile. In particular, it was the pressure placed on Dulles by AT&T (who needed copper wire for telephony) that interfered with the sovereignty of a free peoples and the battle between the Chilean people and Washington ran unabated for over 25 years until 9-11 (the other 9-11) crushed democracy in Chile.
Another sorry chapter in the picaresque history of empire that is (alas) not covered in the survey course at college.