Chile miners' rescue drama worth celebrating :: Mmegi Online

The San Jose, Chile mine rescue drama, had viewers worldwide riveted to television screens for two days, watching 33 miners winched one by one to the surface by capsule Phoenix after 69 days in the bowels of the earth; families, friends, compatriots, and well-wishers had been stricken by anxiety about their fate. Mine management and political authority in the form of Minister of Mines and flamboyant President Pinera, were on tenterhooks, pestered by a battalion of media representatives hovering above like vultures attracted by smell of a rotting carcass.

The drama had its genesis on August 5, 2010, when a section of the ancient mine collapsed, confining miners to a communal cell without warders. Modern mines have contingency exits, this one did not, a typical handmaiden of jungle capitalism. For 17 days none knew the miners' condition; fear, anxiety, and grief gripped the miners' families, and ran like a coordinating current through the world community, thanks to modern communication technology.

If you thought the mine rescue was celebrated by Chileans everywhere, you would be wrong. One Stella de Gracia, owner of a Chilean restaurant in the South of London, ostensibly an unforgiving Pinochet victim was cool: "What is there to celebrate?

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