Mining history in Mexico is marked by accidents: Pasta de Cochos, El Hondo, Barroterán, Rancherías, Progreso… Since 1883, 3,103 miners have lost their lives in 310 accidents like the one that occurred on August 3.
Between 2006 alone, when an explosion was recorded in Pasta de Conchos, and 2021, 61 miners have died in shafts and another 19 in minitas or caves.
Being Coahuila the most important coal region in the country, it contributes 99% of the national production of that mineral, in the state mines and extraction wells proliferate. Nine municipalities concentrate the extraction: Juarez, Muzquiz, Progress, Sabines, Saint John of Sabines, Piedras Negras, Monclova, Nava and Escobedo.
For most of the men in the region, the options are to work in the maquila for a weekly payment of 1,500 and an eight-hour day or around 2,000 for five hours in the depths of the earth. To obtain a job, sometimes a verbal contract and the promise of a payment of between 100 and 150 pesos per ton extracted are enough, money that is usually divided with a partner since they usually work in pairs.
“It is not valid for the authorities to say that since it was not reported, it was not inspected; so what are they for? Especially since it is a high-risk job, they already knew this area where this well is. Between the inspectors and other colleagues we call it the milpa because wells come out as if they were corn, everywhereOf course they knew her”, says Cristina Auerbach, director of the organization Familia Pasta de Conchos.
