Chile miners face unsteady future

Associated Press

COPIAPO, Chile

Carlos Bugueno is out of the collapsed mine but still lives in close quarters, sharing his small house with 16 relatives. His family welcomed him home by lining the street with white plastic bags filled with air — they had no money for balloons.

Despite donations and the promise of book and movie deals, most of the 33 Chilean miners trapped more than two months have returned to lives of struggle in improvised homes, often in gang-ridden neighborhoods lacking basic services. Some worry it won’t get better.

“Three months from now, what will I be doing? Selling candy on the beach? Wondering what the government has done for us? Nothing,” said Edison Pena. “I’m very afraid, and I would like for things to change.”

All but one of the miners have been released from the hospital since their rescue Wednesday from the San Jose gold and copper mine, where they had been trapped nearly a half-mile underground since the Aug. 5 collapse. Most returned to the mine Sunday for a Mass at the makeshift camp where their relatives had waited for them.

“It’s nice to be here where our families were,” said Luis Urzua, the shift foreman who has been praised for leading the trapped miners through the 69-day ordeal.

The camp on a barren hill in Chile’s northern Atacama region is rapidly being dismantled. Pulled from the mine one by one in a custom-built capsule, the miners emerged as international celebrities, complete with high-end sunglasses that doctors said were hardly necessary to protect their eyes from sun and work lights after months in darkness. Many are still wearing the sunglasses, but their lives have become less glamorous.

Many have returned to poverty in the hardscrabble neighborhoods that climb the hills around Copiapo, the Atacama region’s gritty capital. Some have strained relationships with the families who held vigil, praying for their survival. All face a search for work since the mine that employed them has filed for bankruptcy.

Chile’s government has promised to look out for the rescued miners, and each has about $12,000 in donations waiting for him in bank accounts, but their futures remain uncertain.