Chilean Miners thread

The first of the 33 miners to reach the surface yesterday gave a long embrace to the President. Sebastián Piñera, who had arrived hours earlier, beamed from ear to ear.

He is acutely aware that the world is watching Chile as never before — and that over the past two months the Government has turned a large-scale and seemingly preventable mining accident into the best publicity campaign that any country could ask for.

When 2010 began, it looked like the conservative billionaire’s biggest challenge as a new president would be to fight off criticism that his supporters were Pinochetistas — defenders of the military coup — and over possible conflicts of interest with his company stocks.

Instead, the year has been full of surprises, with the miners’ unprecedented rescue — its engineering innovation, international co-operation and sympathy for the common worker — a crowning achievement.

The Government believes that this rescue will be the final piece that transforms Chile’s international image. Instead of being known for its history of dictatorship and human rights violations, a reputation that has lingered despite 20 years of democracy, Chile will instead be renowned for its wealth, its minerals, its organisation and effectiveness, and its big heart.

The past year had set the scene for a change of this magnitude to take place. Early this year Chile was inaugurated as the first South American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; then, despite criticism within the country after February’s earthquake, it was praised internationally for the building codes that prevented widespread damage. In June La Roja, the country’s football team, proved a delight to watch at the World Cup in South Africa.

Then on August 5 the San José gold and copper mine partly collapsed. The country is the world’s largest copper producer and mining accidents are not all that uncommon.

David Doll, editor of Diario Atacama, the newspaper in the town of Copiapó, said that he expected the coverage to die down after a day or two. Even family members went to the hospital to wait, thinking that the miners would soon be on their way there. Very quickly, however, the mine’s dangerous reputation became known and the Government fired the top safety officials while the world was watching.

Since the possibility of a rescue became clear, the story has ceaselessly made the front pages of Chile’s newspapers. Over the bicentennial celebrations in September, already a fervently patriotic holiday, families toasted the miners, and lyrics to the traditional cueca music were changed to include their story.

Without a doubt the accident has united Chileans, and made those who usually scoff at unwavering patriotism, flag-waving and religious fervour feel national pride and emotion akin to spiritual enlightenment. And the Government is basking in it.

In July Mr Piñera had an approval rating of 46 per cent. The Mining Minister, Laurence Golborne, was at 16 per cent. After contact with the miners, those figures shot to 65 and 91 per cent, respectively. While Mr Piñera has faced some distracting challenges at home during this crisis he has handled them with aplomb.

It is, however, the mine rescue that Mr Piñera has handled most masterfully. He has repeatedly said “The 21st century belongs to Latin America”, and used the international platform that the crisis has provided to expand on his vision of Chile as a new beginning for Latin America.

That was an image reinforced by Jaime Mañalich, the Health Minister, who this week stopped calling the rescue a marathon — as he has done since Nasa experts visited in September, and began to describe it as a rebirth, saying that after two months, the 33 miners were about to be delivered from the mine into a new life.

The Government believes that the rest of the world will see in this incredible, and so far successful rescue, that a new Chile has been born.