If you thought you’d never again hear the sound of giant bees in a buzzing frenzy after the World Cup tournament ended in South Africa, you were wrong. The piercing sound of the vuvuzela resounded throughout Copiapó in Chile last week as the 33 miners brought to the surface in that dramatic rescue were taken to the unremarkable little city for medical observation. The dramatic rescue operation, carried out with scientific precision, military discipline and Hispanic panache, was followed moment by moment by admiring television audiences in every corner of the world. The miners became instant celebrities now facing lives completely changed by the rockfall which trapped them in a 121-year-old copper mine for 69 days.

The doctors who examined them minutely say they are amazed at their good physical condition after being imprisoned in the ground – initially for 17 days without any contact with the surface. But what surprises them even more is the miners’ apparently sturdy psychological condition. They could still show problems as the weeks and months elapse, but we will have to wait to find that out. In any case, they’ll be under constant medical surveillance for at least six months.

The Chilean government’s response to the accident and the clockwork rescue operation has received much praise and favourable comment. We should not forget, too, that live television coverage is often of unpleasant or tragic events. This one, for all its drama and tension, was of an event which had the potential for both disaster and success. As it turned out, the only disaster was the blockage of a tunnel which caused the whole thing in the first place. But the day after the triumph in Chile, four men were trapped in a mine in Ecuador (and are still there) and the very next day 26 were killed in a mine explosion in China.

Favourable as the outcome is for the 33, it masks a less than happy history for Copiapó and other mining towns scattered along the oddest-looking country in the world when viewed on a map. (Chile occupies a narrow strip of land between the high peaks of the southern Andes mountain range and the Pacific Ocean. It stretches some 4600 kilometres from Peru to Cape Horn, but hardly exceeds 150 kilometres in width.)

Chile’s worst mining disaster happened on June 19, 1945, when more than a thousand men had descended into a copper mine known as El Teniente near the city of Rancagua, a short distance south of the capital, Santiago. An explosion deep in the ground trapped 355 of the men who succumbed to dense clouds of smoke. It was later determined that the ventilation equipment to provide life-saving air wasn’t working. Just four years ago, at another mine near Copiapó, two trucks collided underground, causing an explosion which killed two miners, injured two more and trapped 70 men. Fortunately, workers at a nearby mine came to the rescue and after seven hours of digging, freed them.

Men have been digging ever deeper holes into the ground to extract minerals since pre-historic times, and since then untold millions have lost their lives in pursuit of gold, copper, diamonds, iron, coal and all the other minerals – metallic and non-metallic – without which modern life would be impossible. Until an astonishingly short time ago, if you were trapped deep underground, you were effectively dead. Early mines were largely dug by hand and the roof areas were often not properly supported. Poisonous dust and gases, especially in coal mines, took serious tolls even when there was no collapse. Before the advent of modern equipment, miners carried cages containing canaries to sense the presence of toxic gases and give them a chance to escape.

In the past century mining has become considerably safer, but far too many mines pay only lip service to safety practices, which are labour-intensive, time-consuming and expensive. China right now has the worst safety record, with anything from 5000 to 20,000 lives lost each year. We can’t be more accurate since the Chinese don’t give out much information.

Even when miners aren’t buried under many tonnes of rock in collapsed tunnels, they suffer lung damage from coal dust or the super-fine particles of asbestos; they face explosions from methane or coal dust (which goes up just like propane); poisonous gases such as hydrogen sulphide; being struck by pieces of detached rock; hearing loss from loud machinery and blasting; flooding from underground streams and accidents involving heavy machinery or explosives.

Chile’s president, Sebastián Piñera, has announced that his government will undertake a sweeping revamp of laws governing safety in all dangerous occupations, but Chile already has reasonably good mine safety regulations. The problem is less than energetic policing of those standards, especially in smaller mines.

Copiapó is a modest burg in the Atacama desert, about one-third the distance between Santiago and the border with Peru. Apart from serving the mining communities surrounding it, the town is also a springboard for the relative handful of tourists who want to experience the desert. But it also holds some very nasty memories from a dark period of Chilean history. On September 11, 1973, the army chief, General Augusto Pinochet, led a coup which overthrew the elected president, Salvador Allende, because of his socialist policies. His 18-year dictatorship began immediately with a reign of terror against all whom he perceived to be Allende supporters. People were rounded up en masse and taken to public places like football arenas. Many were “disappeared” and to this day their families can’t tell you exactly what became of them.

Pinochet also unleashed the army on targeted supporters and one task force became known for its special brand of brutality as La Caravana de la Muerte (Caravan of Death). Just weeks after occupying the Moneda palace, Pinochet dispatched a death squad under Brigadier-General Sergio Arellano. The team flew from town to town by helicopter, punishing army officers they felt were too soft on the opposition and rounding up prisoners who had complied with a military request to turn themselves in. They snuffed out the lives of 97 people who were officials of Allende’s government or members of his political party.

On October 16, the Caravan reached Copiapó, pulled 13 prisoners out of the city jail and drove them away by truck. The squad either shot or knifed the men and later claimed they had been “executed while trying to escape”. They then buried them secretly in the local cemetery. For the families who still grieve over relatives whose bodies they have never located, even the miraculous and dramatic rescue of Los 33 is of limited consolation.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca