Collapse of Dignity Read online

  FOUR

  THE EXPLOSION

  There is no gold mine, not even the most valuable in the world, that can pay for the life of one worker.

  — NAPOLEÓN GÓMEZ SADA

  On Saturday night, I slept restlessly. I was exhausted from the anniversary celebration and all the work we’d done that day to prevent Morales and his band of traitors from taking over the union. It seemed unimaginable that Salazar and the labor department would so brazenly collaborate against us, compromising the democratic elections of both the Labor Congress and the union my father had left in our hands, but I knew better than to be too surprised.

  After a few hours of sleep, I was jolted awake by the ringing of my phone. It was 5:00 a.m., and the caller was José Angel Hernández, the executive committee’s delegate for the state of Coahuila. His grave tone immediately indicated that something was wrong. In a tense, shaky voice, he informed me that there had been an explosion in Mine 8 of the Pasta de Conchos Unit, a site owned by Grupo México in the municipality of San Juan de Sabinas. The accident had occurred at 2:20 in the morning, and there were many miners missing. There were still no reports of the magnitude of the disaster or of the exact number of miners dead or trapped in the mine, and José didn’t know whether the affected men were contract workers or union members.

  As I listened to the horrific news, I was immediately sure that Grupo México’s negligence was to blame. I had visited Pasta de Conchos and knew it was a dangerous mine, poorly maintained by the company. I had demanded that Salazar conduct intensive inspections there, proposing that they stop work at the site altogether and pay the miners’ salaries until it was decided whether the mine should continue to operate or be closed. There was no response, no action taken.

  Now a catastrophe had actually happened.

  “You tried to tell them,” José Angel said before he hung up. “We all tried to force them to prevent something like this. But with the government on their side, they didn’t think they had to.”

  Still trying to wrap my mind around the phone call, I woke Oralia to explain what had happened. Right away, she was up and ready to go. Her first thought was of the families of the miners; they would need comfort and support while they waited for news of the men. With total sincerity, she offered to go with me anywhere, anytime.

  In the dead of night, I began calling the other members of the executive committee. I asked each of them to be at union headquarters on Sunday at 9:00 a.m. for a formal committee meeting and made arrangements for some of us to leave later that morning for Coahuila. It seemed unbelievable that this disaster would happen directly on the heels of the Labor Congress’s sham election and Grupo México’s attempt to place Elías Morales at the head of Los Mineros with the collusion of Vicente Fox’s government. In the chaos of those early morning hours, I actually entertained the possibility that the Pasta de Conchos event had been a deliberate attack, a way for Grupo México and the labor department to divert public attention from the miners’ widespread refusal to accept a puppet as their general secretary.

  I made phone calls nonstop as the sun rose that Sunday morning, doing my best to stay calm as we arranged for a group of us to leave for San Juan de Sabinas. I also designated a few union men to stay and maintain surveillance of our headquarters in Mexico City, in case Morales and his gang of thugs decided to return for a second round.

  My bags were already packed when I got a call from the union’s secretary treasurer, Héctor Félix Estrella, and the secretary of the union’s Security and Justice Council, Juan Linares Montúfar. Linares and Estrella had been discussing the wisdom of leaving for the site that morning, and they were now adamant that we delay our trip by a day in order to finish dealing with the damage done by Elías Morales and the thugs. At first I disagreed, insisting that we get to Pasta de Conchos as soon as possible to assess the situation and help save any lives we could. But as I listened to their argument, I began to see what they meant. If the entire leadership of the Miners’ Union left Mexico City, we couldn’t proceed with the complaint we’d filed against the four attackers who had been captured and then released. Even though we had been replaced in the eyes of the government, our lawyers’ power of attorney was still valid, and we were determined to have the assailants of the union headquarters prosecuted.

  On top of that, we would be financially strangled if we left right away: Morales and his crew had stolen huge stacks of checks and other bank documents during their assault, and we’d been forced to close our bank accounts on Saturday. We had to jointly sign for the opening of the new accounts, but we could only do that on Monday, the bank being closed on Sunday. (At this point, the banks were still cooperating with us, despite the government’s decree that we were no longer the union’s leaders. Soon enough, they would receive orders to act otherwise.)

  Upon reflection, I had to accept that I must stay in Mexico City until the next day to avoid paralyzing the union, though this acceptance came with renewed outrage. I now saw that this was exactly what our enemies had intended when they sent Morales and his minions to vandalize our building. Although I now saw that they hadn’t anticipated the Pasta de Conchos collapse, they had succeeded in throwing up roadblocks to keep us from operating effectively during the most trying time we’d faced under my leadership thus far. They had replaced our typically efficient mode of working with anger, confusion, and impotence.

  That Sunday was one of the worst days of my life. As the day dragged on, heartbreaking details from Pasta de Conchos trickled in. It seemed that the number of men missing after the explosion was around sixty-five, but still no one could say exactly where they were in the mine or whether there was any chance that they were still alive. A good number of the men seemed to be union members, while the rest worked for the contractor General de Hulla, which Grupo México hired to operate the mine. My colleagues and I were in shock, wondering how something of this magnitude could have been allowed to happen, and we were all desperate for the details of the accident and the truth of what had happened.

  For most of the day Sunday, I pictured how the miners must have felt at the moment of the explosion, and imagined the desperation any survivors must be feeling. Every coal miner understands the high risk that comes along with his profession, especially when he’s working in a mine run by a miserly company that refuses to take safety precautions seriously. But now the worst possibility had come to pass. Our colleagues were either dead or trapped in the complete darkness of a collapsed mine, separated from sunlight and air by tons of rubble. I paced the living room, enraged and feeling absolutely helpless, cursing Germán Larrea and his reckless company. How many times had we told them that this type of accident was inevitable? The union’s Joint Health and Safety Commission at Pasta de Conchos had insistently denounced the conditions at the mine, verbally and in writing, only to be threatened with the loss of their jobs.

  I was on the phone all day Sunday, trying to find out whether any miners could have lived through the blast and working on a strategy to rescue them if it was a possibility. Knowing Grupo México, I was sure that bringing the men to safety wouldn’t be their priority. I also got calls that day from several journalists who wanted my thoughts on the explosion, and I agreed to talk to one of them—a respected journalist named Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa—the following morning, after he finished his radio show.

  Monday morning came at last, and my first appointment was with Granados. We met for breakfast at a café on Xola Street and discussed the previous week at length; we were both eager get to the bottom of the mine collapse as well as the labor department’s outrageous support of both Elías Morales and Victor Flores. I explained to Granados precisely who was responsible for the attack on the union’s headquarters, and I explained how the government had attempted to unlawfully oust me and put Morales and a group of expelled union members in charge of the union. Most importantly, I told him what I knew of the explosion at Pasta de Conchos, placing the disaster in the long history of shameless abuse and
criminal greed, stupidity, and insensitivity shown by the operators of Mexico’s mines. I told him bluntly that it was impossible to get companies like Grupo México to provide safe work conditions as required by the Mexican Constitution, Mexican labor law, the International Labor Organization, and the collective bargaining agreements they signed with the union—especially when these companies had the unconditional support of the Fox administration and were free to act as they pleased. The owners and operators of Mexico’s mines hold profits above all else, I explained, and they routinely ignore their duty to provide adequate maintenance of the equipment and facilities. This was industrial homicide.

  Granados took detailed notes while we talked, and he listened with a sympathetic ear. He hailed from Hidalgo, a state with many mines (and where the Miners’ Union was founded on July 11, 1934), and understood Los Mineros’s struggle to secure safe working conditions and a decent standard of living. I had hope that the truth of the matter would make it into Granados’s radio show, or one of the columns he wrote for Reforma newspaper and Proceso magazine.

  After the interview, I met Linares and Estrella, and we set about taking care of the Miners’ Union business before our flight to Coahuila. We first went to the bank to confirm the cancelation of our old bank accounts, open new ones, and get provisional checkbooks. With that done, we regrouped at headquarters, where I gave instructions on how best to clean up and repair the damage from Friday’s assault. I also made calls to my fellow labor leaders to explain the situation and ask for their assistance. I spoke with two of my colleagues and close friends from the United Steelworkers—Leo Gerard, international president, and Ken Neumann, national director for Canada—as well as several union leaders in Spain, asking that they send any rescue specialists, rescue equipment, or trained workers they could spare to Pasta de Conchos. Without even seeing the site yet, I was certain that Grupo México wasn’t doing enough.

  We managed to wrap up our business and collect our personal belongings by late morning, and we were on our way to the Mexico City airport by noon. Accompanying me on the trip were Oralia and three fellow members of the executive committee. Jorge Campos of Peru, the International Metalworkers’ Federation’s director for Latin America, and Jorge Almedia of Argentina, an assistant director in the IMF, had both taken flights to Coahuila as soon as they learned of the explosion.

  Several hours later, we touched down in Múzquiz, a small town about an hour away from the mine, and transferred to a small caravan of vehicles. José Ángel Hernández, the committee’s delegate from Coahuila, had met us at the airport with a group of our union colleagues, and as our SUV sped through the arid landscape of northern Mexico, José described the terrible events of the previous day. He had been down in the mine that morning, and he confirmed what I’d been told over the phone: The condition of the mine was catastrophic. The explosion was so powerful that most of its main tunnel had collapsed, and it was going to be very difficult to rescue our colleagues, if they were even still alive. Thirty-seven of the missing miners were contractors belonging to General de Hulla; three were employees of Grupo México, and the remaining twenty-five were unionized with Los Mineros. The families, José said, were gathered around the mine, deep in anguish, and neither Grupo México nor the government was giving them adequate information about what was going on.

  When we pulled up to Pasta de Conchos at dusk, around 5:30 p.m., the gray, cloudy day had turned to night, and there was a chill in the air. A horde of grim-looking soldiers guarded the entrance to the mine. We got out of the SUV, and an army truck drove us around the site to a back entrance, since the soldiers had cordoned off the main entrance. There, more army guards were waiting to check our IDs to verify that we were affiliated with the union.

  As we passed the guards, I saw close to a hundred journalists and other members of the media, along with a throng of volunteer workers, relatives of the miners, and Red Cross workers. Though they all looked somber, several reporters rushed up and asked me for a statement. I told them I had plenty to say but that I first needed to see the families and get a report on the latest developments.

  We crossed the darkened work site to the company offices, which displayed a large sign reading “Industrial Minera México”—the name under which Grupo México operated the mine. Most of the family members were gathered in a large corridor, wrapped in silence and grief, with looks of profound desolation on their faces. Oralia and I began greeting each of them, one by one, hugging them and expressing our support and love. They said that the company hadn’t notified any of them that there had been an accident in the mine. Instead, the news had spread through word of mouth, with some relatives hearing the first vague reports on the news.

  By 8:00 in the morning on Monday, February 20, family and friends had begun arriving at the mine, only to find it already blocked by soldiers hired by Grupo México. The smell of burnt rubber was strong in the air. The mayor of Múzquiz was also there, and when he told the families that the mine had collapsed, they tore through the barrier in a wave.

  Now, a day later, they were devastated by the lack of updates on the rescue, though they were still clinging to hope that a miracle would bring their trapped loved ones back to the light of day. Many were angry at the scattered, conflicting reports the company was giving about what happened inside the mine. At first they had been told that it was a small explosion at the mouth of the mine, but there was some confusion about whether it was an explosion, a collapse, or both. They had gone so long waiting outside the offices without an official update that they were ready to burst. I ensured them that I would speak with the company and share any new information I could get. I told them that I was going to do everything in my power to rescue our colleagues—that was my commitment.

  At the end of the corridor was a set of closed doors that led to the company’s main office. After spending some time with the families, I entered the office and found an assembly of directors, managers, and technicians from Grupo México and General de Hulla, the subcontractor who ran the mine. When I appeared in the doorway, a man named Rivera—an engineer brought in from the steel company Altos Hornos de México—was speaking loudly and jovially, as if a tragedy hadn’t occurred just outside the office. He cut off his sentence the second he saw me, the smile quickly falling from his face.

  Labor Secretary Salazar, flanked by his personal secretary and other assistants, was also in the room, along with Xavier García de Quevedo, president of Industrial Minera and longtime member of Grupo México’s board of directors. Spread on the table before them all was a map of the mine; it showed the depth of the different tunnels and described their interior. Except for the relaxed engineers from Altos Hornos de México, who didn’t seem to understand the magnitude of what had happened, they all looked absolutely terrified, and they had reason to be. None of them would look me in the eye.

  I demanded an explanation from Salazar and García de Quevedo. I told them we would settle for nothing less than a detailed and truthful description of the possibility of rescuing the miners. Many looks were traded before anyone spoke; no one wanted to speak a wrong word. They knew that outside the office, pressure from the families, the union, and the media was mounting.

  At last, Grupo México’s engineers spoke, explaining that there had been a huge explosion that caused several rock slides, or “falls,” as they are known to miners—showers of coal and rocks that blocked and closed off access to the inside of the mine at certain points. They said that the blast generated temperatures exceeding 600° C (a body incinerates at around 400°) and, according to the technicians and experts, it generated an immediate reduction of oxygen to levels of 3 percent and a correspondingly high concentration of methane and carbon monoxide, which in some parts of the mine would have amounted to greater than 100 percent. They said they weren’t sure whether anyone in the mine was alive, but judging from this report and the apparent lack of air below ground, it appeared that it would be difficult for our colleagues to survive under those
conditions.

  I could sense the pessimism and despair in Grupo México’s engineers as they explained the situation. It felt like they were already making a case for their being unable to rescue our colleagues, though they assured me that they were hard at work devising a strategy for bringing the men up. I demanded that they do everything humanly possible to rescue our colleagues, alive or dead, in the least possible period of time, and said that my colleagues and I, while not experts in rescue, would help in the rescue activities however we could.

  I left Salazar, García de Quevedo, and the others holed up inside the Industrial Minera offices and followed several executive committee members to the mouth of the mine to hear a report from the rescue workers themselves. The volunteer workers were ready to continue their rescue operations, but with the succession of falls blocking their way into an unstable mine with no other points of entry, every course of action was complicated and perilous.

  Earlier on Monday morning, some of our colleagues from the executive team had descended into the mine, before the rescue team had been assembled. What they saw didn’t give them hope: they ran into the huge rockslide that prevented entrance into the body of the main tunnel. Later that day, the first rescue workers confirmed the poor state of the mine. They determined there was little possibility of finding the miners alive, plus high risks involved in treading any deeper into the cavity. The rescue party had progressed about one hundred feet into the tunnel but had slowed considerably once they encountered a thick wall of collapsed rock that blocked them from whatever lay deeper in the mine. Management of the rescue efforts, they told us, had been chaotic and disorganized from the start. No one from Grupo México, General de Hulla, or the labor department had any strategy for handling this deadly situation. Grupo México, finding itself short on men, borrowed workers from other companies to assist them, but they had no resources and no safeguards to protect the rescuers.