33 Men (15 page)

With the restrictions lifted, the families began to pack
la paloma
with secret gifts. For miner Samuel Ávalos, the change was a godsend. An avid reader, Ávalos was bored by the pamphlets from the Jehovah's Witnesses and the feel-good psychology texts sent by Iturra. Ávalos wanted drama, something so shocking it would transport him from the inside of the mine. “I read
El Tila
,
a biography of a psychopath killer in La Dehesa [a wealthy neighborhood in Santiago]. It was fantastic. I read it three times,” said Ávalos.

“I think this was a mistake. I was in favor of control,” said Katty Valdivia, who is married to Mario Sepúlveda. “One woman snuck a letter to her secret lover inside the mine—one of the miners. She told him that she was pregnant,” said Valdivia. “Then the wife found out and it was very tense for everybody. That kind of message should not have been sent down.”

With the relaxation of the rules, more than just letters were making their way down to the miners. Valdivia described how the families “started inserting cigarettes, pills, even drugs into the
paloma
. It should not have been so free. Some miners became angry and bad feelings developed.” Amphetamines were reportedly sent to the men. According to Valdivia, some authorities were aware of the contraband but turned a blind eye. Meanwhile, chaos ensued below. “The opening of the gates created conflict below in the mine, among the men,” said Valdivia. “They went from strict controls to suddenly no controls.”

“Before we noticed, the families managed to smuggle contraband down there,” said Dr. Romagnoli. “The miners were not allowed to have candy because of all the dental problems, but still the families smuggled down chips, chocolate and candy.”

Even a simple infection, like Zamora's inflamed tooth or a spike in insulin levels for Ojeda, the diabetic, could spiral quickly into a crisis. Doctors above ground were determined to avoid the most drastic scenario: having to guide Yonni Barrios in surgery. Yet the shadow of fear that Barrios might be forced to operate was always present. Delivery of unsanctioned food increased the odds.

Ávalos noticed that some of his colleagues were now acting suspicious. They were peeling away from the group in small cliques, wandering toward the bathroom—to smoke a joint, he suspected. “They never even offered me a toke,” said Ávalos. “When you saw five of them headed up to the bathroom, you knew what they were doing.” Ávalos was desperate for a quick hit, a high that would relieve the stress of nearly a month underground. “We went over to the area where the guys used bulldozers; we knew they smoked marijuana. They worked inside a plastic cab that protected them, and they could smoke a joint, then smoke a cigarette and no one would know. We looked everywhere for a
colilla
[stub of a marijuana cigarette].” They could not find one.

With group unity and long-term health key factors in the men's ability to survive, the temptations of short-term pleasures—alcohol, cocaine, marijuana—were in direct conflict with the needs of the group. Having small amounts of drugs circulating in the community created more tension than it relieved, instigated jealousies and threatened to alter basic tenets of the communal living conditions. Officials from the Chilean government became so concerned that they discussed putting a drug-sniffing dog at the
paloma
station. “We'll turn it into a border crossing,” said one official, only half in jest.

But the men's greatest need would not fit down the tube: women. With physical health improving rapidly, sex became a topic of conversation both for the miners and for the rescue team. The men's sexual impulses were surging back, though they were still far from normal. “I am sure they put something in our food, something that kept us from thinking about sex,” said Alex Vega. In fact, the medical team was working on another plan: how to appease the expected rise in sexual desires.

“There was a guy who offered inflatable dolls for the guys but he only had ten. I said thirty-three or none. Otherwise they would be fighting for inflatable dolls: Whose turn is it? Who was seen with whose fiancée? You are flirting with my inflatable doll,” said Dr. Romagnoli. “It was supposed to be a relaxation tool. . . . The miners had a special place where sex with the doll could take place and they asked us to send four or five dolls and condoms. They could take turns. It was all planned. If we had thirty-three dolls there was no problem and each could do as he wanted with his doll . . . but I couldn't ask them to share.”

The dolls were never sent; instead the men received pornography and pinup posters from
La Cuarta
, a Chilean tabloid famous for its girls known as
Bomba
4.
When the miners felt the need for privacy, they would block the government camera by sticking one of the pinups on the camera lens.

DAY 44: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

The Chilean Independence Day offered a welcome break from routines for rescuers, miners and families alike. This year September 18 was also the nation's much-anticipated bicentennial. Instead of battling over censored letters or plastic dolls, the miners agreed to a government-staged event: they would hold a holiday ceremony, eat special foods and sing the national anthem.

Chile's long-awaited bicentennial was overshadowed by Los 33. Above ground, Commander Navarro of the Chilean submarine fleet led a flag-raising ceremony on the flattened area used for the daily press conference in an effort to provide institutional symbolism to the historic date. Next to the flag, a banner with the men's faces had been strung up.

Two thousand three hundred feet below, a simple ceremony was under way. Omar Reygadas pulled a string that hoisted a small Chilean flag. Inside the tunnel, Reygadas raised the flag as high as possible, barely 3 feet above his head. Then Sepúlveda began his unique rendition of
la cueca
. With his miner helmet in one hand, a white towel in the other, Sepúlveda began to dance. He spun with the gusto and pizzazz of a
huaso
, a Chilean cowboy. A traditional
cueca
is a dance of courtship in which the macho man with a wide-brim hat slams elaborate silver spurs to the ground while the woman spins, sending her long hair and skirt into a flirtatious whirl. She skips aside, not to dodge the man's sexual offers but to encourage them. Sepúlveda's
cueca
was a solitary show.

The miners had built a small stage; a plastic orange tarp was hung on the wall and covered with a crudely written copy of their motto:
Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33
. A Chilean flag was taped to the middle of the tarp and from the ceiling hung a series of patriotic buntings the colors of the Chilean flag: blue, white and red. On the edge of the tarp was written the names of the three groups:
El Refugio, La Rampa, 105. The barren cave was now garish in the bright lights, like a crude theater set. In rubber-soled shoes, long white socks and hairy legs, Sepúlveda jitter stepped on the sharp rocks as his
compañeros
watched with obvious boredom. On the final stanza, he dropped to his knees, opened his arms like a devout pilgrim in joyous rapture and sent his energy skyward, through a half mile of solid rock. “Thank you all—our close colleagues who are out there working for us! We are grateful for what's been done and want to thank you.” Sepúlveda's voice broke—a testament to the burdens of leadership. The camera panned the men—their faces impassive, showing few smiles and little interest. Instead of accident victims, the men were now beginning to feel like actors.

DAY 46: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20

In his daily press conference, Mining Minister Golborne was optimistic. “The three plans are advancing as expected,” he said. Plan A—the first operation, which began on August 29—had reached 1,066 feet, nearly halfway to the men. Both Plan B and Plan C, said Golborne, were now advancing at the rate of 3 feet an hour.

As the media circus at Camp Hope mutated into a full-fledged zoo, media expert Alejandro Pino was designing a strategy to help the miners cope with their newfound status as celebrities. Pino, a lanky sixty-seven-year-old with five decades' experience as a journalist and public speaker, conducted a five-hour class on media strategy for the men. The abbreviated course included interview techniques, marketing opportunities, how to handle tough questions and overall guidance on how to survive a pack of paparazzi.

As a longtime journalist and head of the regional division of the ACHS, Pino was neither paid nor obligated to provide media training but he felt a sense of responsibility for the men's welfare. He had a strong desire to help them with the oncoming onslaught of microphones and cameras.

Pino's early-afternoon classes were a welcome break from the technical talks about designing the rescue shaft or the much discredited psychological counseling. The miners gathered at their makeshift stage at the bottom of the mine. Pino, microphone in hand, worked out of a shipping container that had been outfitted with a white couch, some plants and a large TV screen on which he could see the miners down below.

Instead of warning the miners about the perils of media overexposure (as many people speculated), Pino went straight to the pocketbook. “If you do not look at the camera, if you give a boring interview, you will never be invited back for another interview,” Pino told the men. “This is an opportunity, and you must learn to use body language, to be excited.” An exuberant personality with a booming bass voice, Pino was practically evangelical in his effort to turn the shy and confused miners into media stars.

The miners gravitated to Pino's daily lectures. Though many remained invisible to the camera, they continually chimed in with questions, ideas and comments as their confidence and rapport with Pino grew. Given their animosity toward and distrust of Iturra, some of the miners refused to accept Pino, including Samuel Ávalos. “After the bullshit with the psychologist, we did not want to talk to those kinds of people,” said Ávalos. “We did not like the idea.”

Other miners were practically desperate to talk; they adopted Pino as their de facto psychologist. In the middle of a talk on media strategies, one of the older miners went off topic and began to confess to Pino: “If there is anything I have learned down here, it is that the last twenty years of my life have been a waste. . . . When I come up, I am getting divorced.”

Divisions among the group also began to surge. Luis Urzúa was unhappy that some of the miners, including Victor Zamora, had acquired a video camera and were filming the others. And when a copy of
Ya
magazine arrived with an interview in which Sepúlveda bragged that he was “the leader” of the pack, further squabbles erupted.

“There were quarrels and little fights. They were getting very cocky and fighting verbally, but not fistfights. . . . No one lost their mind,” said Dr. Romagnoli, who said
his
biggest brawls were in confrontations with the engineers topside. “I had problems with the guys on the surface. They did not understand the importance of the health care operation. They could have their Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan whatever, but if the guys die? Then all those drilling plans are useless.”

DAY 47: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

For years Professor Nick Kanas had studied astronauts. He knows all too well the pattern of behavior when men are confined and stressed for long periods of time. In what he described as “third-quarter syndrome,” confined men become increasingly anxious and irritable toward the end of a mission—in this case the rescue day. “After six weeks, people tend to get territorial. There is often not a lot of joking and banter, although they try. They will start to form subgroups,” said Kanas, who works at the University of California, San Francisco, and has been a longtime consultant to NASA. “After six weeks, the situation turns sterile and confining. What was once quirky and fun—like the jokes of a colleague—becomes irritable and tiresome.”

The men had now been underground for forty-seven days. Whether it was footage of a miner unscrewing the
paloma
and pulling out food or footage taken as they raised the flag and sang the national anthem, their entrapment was being captured on video. TV reporters repeatedly attempted to smuggle cameras down the
paloma
so the miners could start producing an underground documentary.

When Chilean detectives working for the Polícia de Investigaciones de Chile (PDI) needed evidence to document details in the criminal case against the mine owners, they taught the miners the basics of crime scene photography. For a week the miners were like stars in
CSI
as they documented and filmed faulty security inside the mine. Florencio Ávalos went to the far corners of the mine to film cracked walls, rusty piping and the huge boulders strewn across what was once the main road inside the mine. An estimated forty hours of criminal evidence was filmed by the miners and then shipped above ground.

DAY 48: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22—THE DRILL FALLS DOWN

On September 22, the miners received a surprise delivery from above. When Plan B reached 280 feet, the bit snapped and one of the four drill heads went into free fall the length of the shaft and fell into the floor of the mine. No one was injured as the metal hammer plowed into the mud, but Plan B was halted.

Mario Sepúlveda called the rescuers. “Ah, I think we have something of yours down here,” he said in jest. “I believe that it is called a bit, a drill bit. But what is it doing here?”

Juan Illanes, one of the miners, hauled the bit out of the mud. The miners had vast experience with heavy machinery; the reality they lived every day was constantly fraught with broken parts, last-minute improvisations and setbacks. But this was unbearable. The frustrations began to boil up. “They are working to rescue you and you have this kind of failure? It was depressing,” said Samuel Ávalos. “It means two more days—five more days. We were receiving food from
la paloma
, but we were confined. Trapped! That was killing us.”