About the 33 miners

I have a lot of different ideas about this event. When I heard the news for the first time, I worried about their families and I couldn’t imagine all the suffering they were going through… I think that not knowing about your relatives it’s something terrible.

I’m going to be honest… I really thought that it was impossible for them to be alive. When the day came and the rescueing group found them alive, I was really impressed and relieved thinking about their families. But after this event, all things started getting a little bit weird. First, there was something like a psychotic reaction from everyone, and the 33 o miners became the main characters of a reality show on the news. I mean, I think it’s really important to learn about them and about their physical and psychological condition, but meanwhile lots of important things were happening at national level and they were ignored on the news because the miners were the center of all the attention. The government led people’s attention on the miners issue and this was the perfect distractor to do lots of things which went unnoticed by the public opinion while the government projected the image of a good government worried about the miners. I think if they were really worried about this event, they would check out work regulations and miners’ working conditions.

I think that too many things went unnoticed, such as the militarization of Rapa Nui, the -badly named- mapuche problem, the environmental issue regarding the setting up of the thermoelectric at “Punta de Choros”, the protest for quality education, among other issues.

I think the miners issue affected everybody at national level, and that’s ok but I believe that national concern should be focused on the horrible work conditions and efforts should be made to make improvements on this area rather than telling public opinion if miners want to drink wine or beer for the celebrations of the bicentenary.