It’s Complicated

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

There was good news this week. You couldn’t have missed it. Always happier with spectacle than substance, the American public — indeed, the entire world — took satisfaction as 33 Chilean copper/gold miners were lifted to safety after spending more than two months underground. A rescue of this magnitude had never happened before, and humans had never before survived such an ordeal. Proceeding with an abundance of caution, and taking an entire news cycle to pull each miner through a half-mile of rock, an active government took part in the rescue process as an international team accomplished a technological miracle for 33 of Chile’s trapped citizens.

As it happened: rescue of Chile’s final trapped miner. Chilean miners: ‘We never lost faith. We knew we would be rescued’. Photo: YouTube Video.

Mining is the backbone of Chile’s economy, so it was obviously in the best interests of President Sebastian Piñera to appear devoted to the miners’ welfare. Piñera can be described as an elitist himself, and Chile a country divided between exploited workers and their wealthy masters. The cave-in occurred on August 5, sealing off exits for the trapped workers. Nothing was known for 17 days, until a drill probing for air pockets poked into the small lunchroom where the men huddled in the dark. The drill returned to the surface along with a note. Outcry from the families encouraged government to attempt a rescue at the mine, which is not a series of shafts and elevators but rather a corkscrew configuration sloping gently down over a half-mile. Shafts supplied air; not so food or water. Surviving the weeks before discovery was an act of faith for the disciplined miners, who shared minimal provisions every other day, hoping for eventual relief.

Although mine safety was unsurprisingly lax, Chile did not circle the wagons and refuse assistance from others, as some nations do when facing such a disaster. Instead, Piñera gathered an international team to shepherd the rescue attempt, personally attending to the news cycles over the last two months. This week, he and his wife met each miner for a hug and word of encouragement as they came topside. You can’t buy PR like that, and while I’m sure much of his emotion was genuine, the opportunity to increase national popularity was a major coup for this conservative politician.

President Piñera shows the cameras the written message from the trapped miners and saying: “It will take months to get them out. It will take time, but it doesn’t matter how long it takes, to have a happy ending.”

If that sounds a bit cynical, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the entirety of this rescue was carefully orchestrated, down to the response of the returnees as they were photographed and recorded meeting their families before being transferred to the on-site medical facility. Their diet, their medication, even the news they received from family and friends had been carefully monitored since their discovery. Leaving an environ with a constant of 85 degrees, miners arrived wrapped against cold, protected against light, and subjected to a carefully planned and scripted media spectacle.

The entire panorama, said an admiring FOX newscaster, had terrific “production values.” All cable news agencies flocked to this event, and none so eagerly as FOX News, augmented by Rupert Murdoch’s European network, offering complete coverage of what they called “the mother of all reality shows.” The picture-perfect management of what seemed an almost error-free rescue event was captured by select cameras, translated by state-approved employees, and reported around the world by eager correspondents who were gathered so far from the actual site that they, themselves, were forced to watch on state-issued monitors. The truth of any given situation can seldom be taken at face value; it is, of course, complicated.

Because life is complicated, not all things could be controlled. The families, for instance, caused a bit of a headache when long-range projections of rescue entitled them to compensation claims. Not just wives showed up to register for assistance; mistresses did, too. A lot of them. One miner will be unhappy to hear that his wife, his mistress, his baby-mama and his girlfriend all discovered each other at Camp Hope, the temporary encampment surrounding the drilling effort. On Wednesday, a woman identified as the esposa of a returning miner was televised stepping up to hug him. FOX News determined that she was not the wife but, instead, the mistress; they had been alerted by the wife’s statement that since he’d invited both women, she would stay home as was ‘decent.’ Such problems became so intense in the weeks prior to rescue that specially trained mental-health officials were brought in to deal with the infidelity and multiple-family issues.

Miner Mario Sepulveda is hugged by an unidentified relative after being rescued from the collapsed San Jose gold and copper mine where he was trapped with 32 other miners for over two months near Copiapo, Chile, early Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010. (AP Photo /Hugo Infante, Chilean government)

And because life is complicated, we have to wonder how those who survived this ordeal will fare in the future. Doctors will be poking and prodding, because these are the first humans to live below ground in this manner for so long. Skin and lung problems, complicated by damp and mold, seem likely, and after living underground like bats for weeks on end, each miner wears heavy-duty Oakley sunglasses to deal with light sensitivity. The miners appear unusually pale and thin-skinned, but otherwise in better than expected health. Doctors plan batteries of tests. Physiologically, the miners must be prepared to offer up their bodies’ secrets.

Psychologically, there seems to be considerable fear that PTSD or other trauma-induced problems will occur when the euphoria of rescue turns to depression. NASA studies in isolation are being consulted. “Band of Brothers”-type bonding seems likely, and perhaps useful, as the 33 are now a commodity as well as a game group of survivors. How they will be utilized, perhaps exploited, by an eager government, press and society that celebrate them today seems worrisome in this complex and troublesome age of ours. Endorsements, interviews, books and tell-alls loom. One broadcaster has offered $400,000 for first-hand reports. Will their fifteen minutes of fame be as perilous a passage as their seven weeks underground, or worse?

Still, the good news of this moment is universal, global and very welcome. They seem, all in all, an extraordinary group of men. Perhaps they will sidestep the worst of this experience and make the most of it. A world that seems to get so little right these days has managed to make this moment a happy one. Cable viewers had opportunity to watch an improbable resurrection when those whom logic had deemed hopeless were reunited with a waiting world. We heard each miner’s name, we saw each pulled from the darkness of a subterranean grave, we watched each embraced by loved ones. Death was cheated this time, and even the most cynical among us was moved to empathize with the joy of their liberation.

We’re so accustomed to bad news, the emotions connected to good news can take us by surprise, but we must not forget that these moments carry the possibility of transcendence. Said Mario Sepúlveda, the charismatic, unofficial spokesman for the group during their ordeal, “I would like to see the world united by love, not a religious love, but just no more fights, no more war.”

Me too, Mario. I hope we don’t ALL require a near-death experience to figure out what’s important. I hope some of us can learn by your example. For the human family, this was a good moment, and the future has been buoyed by this week’s events. We can hope that the glow of this moment continues to shine, but as even Mario probably realizes, now that his wife has met his mistress — it’s complicated.