Gómez Urrutia: at 17 years, the industrial homicide in Pasta de Conchos continues unpunished

Andrea Becerril

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday February 19, 2023, p. 3

Today marks the 17th anniversary of the tragedy at the Pasta de Conchos mine, where 65 workers lost their lives, and also 17 years of impunity for that industrial homicide of Grupo México and its owner, Germán Larrea, warned the national leader of the Mining Union, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.

In an interview, the senator from Morena stressed that his demands are still the same as those he formulated in February 2006, after the explosion that left the miners buried: that their bodies be rescued, an in-depth investigation to punish the company’s negligence and fair compensation to the families of the dead.

In this sense, Gómez Urrutia demanded that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador intervene again, since despite his commitment to rescue the remains of the 63 miners, still trapped in the bowels of the coal mine located in Coahuila, federal authorities and offices of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS) have hindered the process.

The widows, children and in general the families of the dead miners, he said, are frustrated and desperate, because the rescue work only began last year, they are paralyzed and there is little more than a year and a half left until the six-year term ends .

Criticism of the STPS

It is unfortunate that the Ministry of Labor has opted for a rescue in the way that Grupo México has always proposed, to open new tunnels behind the mine, instead of doing it directly through the ones the workers used to enter and exit.. He noted that they are going to spend 75 million dollars and take more than four years on this task, that an independent group, headed by engineer Fernando Acosta, almost completed it in two years and with less than 5 million pesos.

This has to change, the rescue must be undertaken seriously and the remains of the comrades delivered to their family, but it seems that the STPS authorities take more care of Larrea’s interests than of the victimshe stressed, and insisted that the businessman cannot continue in impunity, further increasing their wealth, since everything indicates that even a bank will obtain, without paying for the dead, the toxic spills in rivers and the violation of labor rights that it drags behind it.

Gómez Urrutia commented that in 2006 he accused Larrea of industrial homicide because the fatal explosion in Pasta de Conchos was due to the lack of security in the mine, where not only union members worked, but also personnel from contractor companies, who were forced to work in exploitative conditions, with large concentrations of gas and even to carry out welding tasks inside the mine.

“That was extremely dangerous, but it was done with the complacency of the government of Vicente Fox and his Secretary of Labor, Francisco Salazar, who ignored the inspections of the mine.

It was also criminal that just five days after the explosion, the company decided to suspend the rescue efforts, without knowing if the 65 miners were still alive. And it is possible that many still were, there are testimonies from engineers who at that time worked for the company, who attested to this..

The Morenista senator pointed out that one of them told his wife –who was accompanying the widows– that they had introduced cameras through the contra-pits, which are smaller breathing wells, which are built every 200 or 300 meters inside the mine so that the air can escape. gas, and in one of the videos they had seen a group of miners sitting, praying and waiting to be taken out.

That engineer disappeared the next day, he was never seen again, but there are also experts who maintain that they could still be alive and Grupo México, with the support of Fox, decided not to rescue them and then put all the obstacles so that the bodies remained inside. of the mine, to hide their responsibility.

From this, he stressed, he filed a complaint for industrial homicide in Mexico and later before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, that angered Larreaand the tycoon undertook a criminal and media prosecution against him, which forced him to leave the country, or otherwise, would have destroyed me and the Mining Union.

From Canada, however, he continued to lead the union and support the widows of Pasta de Conchos, demanding that there be justice. Now, with the government of the 4T, he insists that there be a plan B for the rescue of the bodies, fair and dignified compensation for each of the families and an independent investigation to determine the causes of the tragedy and punish those responsible. This is what Larrea fears the most, who never showed his face, not even condolences to the relatives of the victims.

Not even, he stressed, did he compensate the widows, it was the State that assumed that responsibility. Thus, We hope that President López Obrador will take charge of the problem to put an end to this injustice..