Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
From Wondery, I'm Mike Corey, and this is Against the Odds. Over the last four episodes, we've told the story of 33 men trapped 2,000 feet underground in the depths of a Chilean mine. The men face staggering heat and humidity, starvation and uncertainty as they struggle to stay alive long enough for rescuers to find them.
69 days later, all 33 emerged to the surface. It's one of the most miraculous stories of survival in modern times, and one that made headlines across the world.
Today, we're speaking with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Hector Tobar for his book Deep Down Dark, the untold stories of 33 men buried in a Chilean mine and the miracle that set them free. Hector interviewed all 33 miners and many of their family members. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, and The Best American Short Stories.
Hector Tobar, welcome to Against the Odds. Thanks so much for having me. For your book, you got to spend time with all 33 of these miners from Chile, and I'm sure they told you some amazing stories. But I'm curious, how did you first come across their story? Yeah, I first heard about this from, well, the media, the way everybody else did. I was finishing another book in 2010 when the miners were trapped. And several months later, I got a call from my agent telling me, Hector, you know,
did you hear about those men trapped in a mine in Chile? And would you be interested in writing their book? And I asked him, well, do you have their rights? And he said, yes. And I said, how many of them? And he said, all of them.
And the reason he could say all of them was because when these guys were still trapped underground, 680 meters, almost 2000 feet underground, they had made an agreement among themselves that they would share the proceeds of any book and or movie deal amongst all 33 of them. Because it was clear to them when they were still trapped that there was a lot of interest in their story.
And that they could very soon, you know, be become international media stars. And so it was a possibility that maybe only four or five of them would make any money off of this. And the other, you know, 28 or so of them wouldn't get anything.
And since they had all really stuck together, there was also a lot of fighting, but they did sort of stick together and they all realized that it would be patently unfair if only a few of them benefited from it. And so while they're still trapped in this horrible place where it's, you know, 100 degrees heat and, you know, 80, 90 percent humidity, they made this agreement. I'd flown to Santiago, Chile to meet their attorneys first.
And then with the attorneys, I flew up to this town of Copiapo, the town that's closest to where the mine is. And there was about 20 or so, 25 or so of them there in this restaurant where we met.
And I said, Senores, your story is the great adventure story of our times. This is like when, you know, the Greeks went off on the ships to fight in Troy and, you know, and then Homer wrote the Iliad or when Odysseus was trying to get back home, you know, and Homer wrote his Odyssey. Homer wrote these stories of these famous Greek men. And so my job is to be your Homer.
They were a little bit confused by that. But I think they sensed that I was earnest and that I really wanted to tell their story and tell it in the most accurate way possible and also to capture the beauty of it. In our fast-paced, screen-filled world, it can be all too easy to lose that sense of imagination and wonder. If you're looking for new ways to ignite your creativity and open your mind to fresh perspectives, then let Audible be your guide. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or any genre you love,
you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and new ways of thinking. There's more to imagine when you listen. Plus, as an Audible member, you'll get one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. If you're into mythology, then I recommend the title Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. He's an amazing storyteller that narrates this unique version of the Norse myths.
Listen along. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash the odds or text the odds to 500-500. That's audible.com slash the odds or text the odds to 500-500. Against the Odds is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast? With Progressive, it is. Just visit the Progressive website to quote with all the coverages you want. You'll see Progressive's direct rate. Then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare. All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you'd like. Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.
Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. When you first sat down with the miners, what were your first impressions? The first man I spoke with, Richard Villarroel, it was very clear that he was suffering from a very intense trauma. That he had been through something akin to a natural disaster or a torture session or a battle.
And he described, you know, the way the mountain had tortured him, the sounds of sort of constant sounds of collapse inside the mountain. In fact, the actual accident that led to them being trapped was something akin to an earthquake underground, right? A really, really powerful earthquake. And not only that, the sense that they were going to die and they lived with, you know, 69 days with the fear of death. Richard was someone who had been orphaned as a child.
And he knew when he went into the mine that his wife was pregnant. And so his fear was that he was going to leave his unborn child as an orphan. Yeah. Back around full circle. And where stories like this, are these feelings common for all the miners? There's still this, this PTSD. Oh,
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think they all had it at different levels. Another minor I met in those first early days, Alex Vega, he was starting to tremble. And I said, is everything okay? And he, you know, he started talking about his inability to sleep and then the nightmares he had when he, when he did fall asleep. So it was, it was clear that most of them were suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress or another.
And when you're down there, you're interviewing the miners and you know you're going to write a book and you want to make it epic, like the epic of Homer. What story were you trying to tell? What was the seed there? Well, you know, I sort of enter with a hypothesis. I mean, I think the thing is that you're trying to discover a truth that you don't know yet and you can only guess at it.
And my guess was that these were ordinary men who sort of were thrown into an extraordinary situation. And very soon it became clear that these were all really hardworking guys of lower middle class, working class status.
who, you know, had a lot of weight on their shoulders even before they went into the mine. They're guys who are, you know, trying to pay mortgages off or trying to send their kids to college or trying to pay alimony to their ex-wives, you know? And so all these guys are just carrying this tremendous amount of, you know, this burden.
Many of them grew up extremely poor. I interviewed one man who lived in a ravine, in a shack in a ravine that flooded every time it rained. And so, yeah, I think that for me, heroism comes from ordinary people facing an extraordinary situation. That word itself, you know, hero, was one that a lot of the men were really ambivalent about.
But if there was heroism, it was going to come from the lives of these ordinary men. And I had to know as much about them as I could before I wrote the book.
I mean, obviously, it's very important to speak to all the men in the families. I guess I'm wondering, did you visit the mine, the San Jose mine at all to see what it's like? Yeah, I did. Well, I went to the mine several times. The mine, it was sealed off. You could sort of walk up to the entrance and there was this mesh, you know, wire fence in front of it so you wouldn't go in. But once myself and some of the people working on the movie, the movie that was based on my book,
we walked a little bit into the mine and they, you know, it was, and Luis Ursua, who was the leader of the, of the miners who was with us, he was like, no, no, you guys don't go any further. This is too dangerous. Yeah. You know, and we stepped out, but then I was later able to go into another mine, a sort of sister mine, very similar. And it's, it's amazing because you're talking about these huge underground structures. You know, the San Jose mine was this spiraling passageway that basically
move down into the ground parallel to this seam of, of ore of copper and gold ore. And they had been dug over hundreds of years. And this other mine that I went into was that similar sort of structure you drive in and it's, you know, after a few, you know, a hundred feet, it's pitch darkness, but also there's like a internal weather system. So you can sort of feel these breezes moving back and forth because it's such a huge space that's been carved out inside.
And there are these spaces that are kind of like these internal valleys that are just empty space.
And you could sort of walk up to the edge of these abysses, toss a rock, and it would take like 20 seconds for the rock to strike something. But it was all pitch darkness. And so you're in these tunnels. And it sounds like you felt what the miners felt. Yeah. You sort of are at the mercy of another kind of element. You can be at the mercy of the elements on the surface. But underground, you're at the mercy of...
geology. I mean, this edifice can come tumbling down upon you and often does. I mean, even in the San Jose mine, there had been accidents before. I mean, there had been people killed in that mine when let's say a wall can suddenly explode. And so because you are sort of entering this space of danger and unpredictability, there's all this mysticism that goes with working in a mine.
You know, the miners would say that when you entered the mine, it was like entering into the body of a woman. Right. So that spirituality, the sense of like that you're in a place that is both holy in the sense that it has these riches that that you're allowed to mine and that help, you know, help you become affluent. And it's also a place of incredible danger and death.
The rocks exploding is something that I can't even fathom. Makes me appreciate the hard work that goes into that job. So a lot of these mines don't quite meet safety standards. And obviously the San Jose was one of those. And that was a concern specifically of Mario Sepulveda. Yeah. So in the days and weeks before the accident, several miners had noticed that
cracks in these passageways that had been carved through the diorite of the harder rock of the mine right so for many years no problems and then suddenly they notice you know cracks in the walls of these passageways much like you might notice a crack in your ceiling you know and and so that's a concern and in addition to that you know the miners were hearing this sort of distant rumbling
So what happens is that this place is so huge that if there's a rock fall further down in the mountain, the sound will carry through the mountain and you'll hear the sound like a sound of distant thunder.
And so in the days before the accident, they were hearing more and more rumbling. Some rumbling is not uncommon, but to hear it sort of constantly, that was another source of worry to the miners. And, you know, the problem was that it was run, the San Jose mine was run by a pair of brothers, sons of a Hungarian immigrant.
who didn't really have much money to invest in safety and who were sort of trying to get as much, you know, as much money out of the place as they could before the whole thing collapsed. Wow. Given how dangerous this work is, why do people, because the miners were from all over Chile, why would they come so far to work in a place like this? Because the wages were so good.
The wages were really good money. And so, you know, you're also talking about guys who, you know, aren't college educated and working class guys, but the money was really good. And so the guys from the South would, you know, take a bus from Santiago or from even further South and take a bus for a couple of days, actually.
And then come to Copiapó for a couple of weeks and stay in a little rooming house and get there, you know, two or two weeks of labor in and then go back home to rest. I guess same with crab fishing up north or oil rigs, kind of the same idea, right? Go put your time in the trenches and make some money and come back and your family can be better off.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So then in August 2010, what everyone fears could happen happens. The mind caves in and blocks a spiral route from the surface. And when you were speaking to the 33 men, how did they explain that moment to you when they all realized that they are trapped underground and buried alive? They could feel the mountain collapsing around them.
it was tossing boulders down the ramp at them. So they would see these boulders sort of rolling towards them and run for their lives or hide behind a truck. Another man described seeing the walls of the ramp
They undulate, you know, these are solid stone granite walls undulating like you'll see in an earthquake. So they were absolutely terrified and they hid in this little space called the refuge or wherever they could find shelter. Then they all begin to gather and they, you know, they start trying to drive to the surface in this panic. You know, let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. And they come up to this flat piece of stone. You know, it was gray and gray stone.
And one of the men told me it looked like the stone that they put in front of Jesus's tomb, which was a wonderful simile.
When you were interviewing the miners, did religion and superstition come up a lot? Oh, absolutely. There are certain caverns where men died. There were monuments underground. In the mine itself. In the mine itself to the places where people had died. You know, there was this sense that there was evil inside the mine, you know, and that or that the men were sort of doing something evil there.
by going into the interior of Mother Earth and violating her, right? Pretty soon it became very clear to these miners that there was no way to climb out or dig themselves out. And as the weeks rolled on, the men began to hear drills, but the drills kept on missing them over and over and over again. When you were interviewing them,
Did they express that feeling? For me, I would just think that that would be just absolute depression, hearing those drills miss and miss and miss over and over again.
Yeah, it was a real roller coaster of emotions. And, you know, one of the times the miners would follow the sound of the drill all the way to the bottom of the mine and just hear it sort of until it stopped because the drillers hadn't found anything. So that was absolutely, you know, heartbreaking to a lot of the men. And it kept happening over and over again. And pretty soon, like in the, you know, 15th, 16th day, a lot of the men believed that they weren't going to be found and started digging.
writing letters to their loved ones, letters, farewell letters to their loved ones. If you or I were forced in a situation where we thought we were going to die and we had to think about what our last words would be to our friends and families, that is a powerful moment in a man or woman's life, for sure. Yeah, it's a moment of reflection. You reflect on how you led your life. You reflect on your relationships and the beautiful moments in your life and the hurt you're going to be leaving behind, you know?
And so absolutely, these were very powerful personal and spiritual moments for those men when they thought they were going to die. And it was also when they were the most united.
Ah, the holidays. Time to come together with friends and family, be thankful and merry. Or, after a few strained pleasantries, a time once again to realize there's a reason you do this only once a year, and to begin plotting an escape. But you can't just leave. No, the escape you need is a mental one. Travel, metaphorically, to a faraway place, a place called Minutia. Pick up your phone and get lost in an amazing storyline. Find collectible characters and
and tons of fun puzzles, all in quite possibly the best puzzle game out there, Best Fiends. With Best Fiends, you can play anywhere, even your weird uncle's place with no Wi-Fi. With Offline Mode, you can play Best Fiends wherever and whenever you want, and it's always challenging. Best Fiends has literally thousands of levels, with more added all the time, so there's always a fresh challenge waiting for me, especially if I'm trying to escape the challenges of in-laws, mystery casseroles,
We're trying to explain what a podcast is again. And yes, that's right. It's like a radio show on your phone. The same place you can download Best Fiends free today in the App Store or Google Play. That's friends without the R, Best Fiends.
When you're hiring, time is of the essence. That's why more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide use Indeed to find exceptional talent fast. Indeed's powerful matching engine works quickly. So quickly that, according to Indeed data worldwide, every minute 23 hires are made on Indeed.
But it doesn't stop there, because Indeed also helps you hire better. 93% of employers agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent Indeed survey. That's because their matching engine is always learning from your preference. So the more you use Indeed, the better it gets.
So let Indeed be your go-to for making great hires quickly and easily. And listeners of the show, get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash the odds. Just go to Indeed.com slash the odds right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash the odds. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.
These days, it feels like we're all just on the hunt for ways to optimize our health and feel our absolute best. The only problem is, with all these supplements out there, it can be really tough to know which ones are actually worth your time and money. That's where today's sponsor Symbiotica comes in. Symbiotica is a premium supplement brand that's raising the bar when it comes to purity, potency, and efficacy. Their supplements are formulated with high-quality ingredients. That's why their formulas don't have any seed oils, preservatives,
toxins, artificial additives, or natural flavors. Plus, while most supplements can taste chalky or sulfuric, Symbiotica's supplements have amazing flavors like citrus lime, vanilla chai, or wild berry. I've been loving the magnesium supplement from Symbiotica. Being low in magnesium, I've made it a priority lately to take it consistently. I love how I can take it on the go and ensure I'm never missing a dose. Feel more energized, alert, and balanced with high-quality supplements that work.
Head over to Symbiotica.com and use code ODDS for 20% off and free shipping on your subscription order. The Against the Odds podcast is about survival and it's about leaders, maybe leaders who don't even know their leaders, but people coming up to rise to the occasion to overcome the odds in a situation.
And this story definitely has something like that, right? With Mario Sepulveda. Can you talk to us a little bit about your time with him? This man who emerged as a leader during the crisis. Yeah. So Mario Sepulveda, to me, was just an incredible human being. He wasn't just one Shakespearean character. He was every Shakespearean character, you know?
He was the heroic guy sort of calling the men to be united and to be strong in the face of death. And he was also the guy who had breakdowns and who said he wanted to kill himself. And he was kind of a clown sometimes, said crazy things. And he was vain. He knew that he had become famous. And at the same time, he made the men believe in themselves and
And so he was just so many different kinds of Shakespearean characters. But, you know, he's a man who wasn't born into a mining family. He was orphaned at an early age. He was raised by his grandparents.
a lot of alcoholism in his family and a lot of physical abuse, a lot of suffering. And at the same time, Mario, just somebody full of life. You know, I've never had, I've never had anybody else except Mario tell me how he conceived his first child. I mean, I didn't even ask him, but he was describing his youth and his love affairs. And, you know, it was like, really Mario, thank you for sharing that with me. TMI, Mario, TMI. And, um,
Just somebody so full of life and such energy. And also, you know, he had a secret, which is that he suffered from bipolar symptoms and he was taking medication to help him with that. But of course, when you're trapped in the mind, you've left your medication on the surface. There's no nothing you can, you know, there's no help for you. So he was having these incredible mood swings. But more than anything, he really was the sort of the spirit of life.
underground, a lot of the men, you know, said Mario Sepulveda was our true leader. The real leader, the man who was supposed to be the leader was Luis Urzúa.
Luis Sousa is the foreman of the mine. And a lot of the men told me that he abdicated his responsibility. And when I asked Luis about this, he told me, look, I just knew we were screwed. I knew we were screwed. That's honesty, I guess. Yeah. And he said, but I couldn't be honest with the men about that. So I didn't really know what to do. And so he was sort of paralyzed by all that he knew about how dire the situation was.
And so it irked a lot of the men that when they reached the surface, the rest of the world celebrated him as the leader, as Luis Rousseau, as the leader, as the man who kept them all together. And so when Mario was really the leader, but Mario was such a strong personality that the miners really got sick of him after a while.
So when the minors came out, Mario was the second one to get get out because they said they wanted him out of there as soon as possible. And then they sent one of Giannis to keep an eye on Mario to make sure that he wasn't giving up the whole story, breaking the pact of silence they were all supposed to have.
Oh, man. I also heard that in an interview, he told you that he had a corazón de perro. Oh, yes. Can you tell me what he meant by that? Yeah. So his nickname is Perry, you know, and I asked him about where does that come from? And he said, I'm called Perry because I have, you know, tengo un corazón de perro. I have a dog's heart.
And he collected stray dogs back in his home in Santiago. You know, he said that I'm like a dog. I'm very loyal. But if you attack me or you attack my people, I'm fierce and I'll bite you. And so Perri was Mario Sepulveda. And that's how he got that nickname. Well, there's leadership and then there's cooperation, which is how a group works together. And what do you think got this group through this experience?
Well, at first, you know, I would have to say that the intense emotion of being trapped in a place where you're facing death, essentially you're trapped in your own tomb in a place that looks like a tomb. And also the trauma that they had survived. All of that, you know, bonded the men together.
And then also spirituality, you know, these nightly prayers when they would share their thoughts, they would apologize to each other. And so that sort of that element of just spiritual unity really, really kept the men together. And then, you know, the other thing that was really important was just that everybody had these different skills and everybody sort of contributed what their skills were.
You know, there was one man who was an electrician and he was able to sort of rig lights together down there. Right. There was another guy who had been an athlete and he was sort of really attuned to the body and, you know, the injuries of the man. He sort of tended to people's injuries. Very, very kind, you know, man, you know, he had experience giving shots to his wife. And so they appointed him to be the doctor.
And there was another guy, you know, Juan Yanez, who was just in ordinary life, kind of a busy body and kind of, you know, someone who talk on end.
But suddenly when you're trapped, the guy who can tell stories and wants to talk on, and that person's really useful, you know? So Juan Yanez would tell stories about when he served in the Chilean army. And then he would talk to them about Chilean labor law and say, look, if we die down here, man, don't worry. The Chilean government is going to be obliged to pay all this amount of money to our families. We'll be, they'll be okay. So, you know, many different people step forward with different skills. And I think that, that in that situation,
Just realizing that people are different and that everybody has something to contribute is really one of the most important things that you can do. And then after 17 days of psychological torture of drills, just narrowly missing over and over one finally punches through and then everything changes.
Did the miners explain what that moment was like? A lot of the men fell to their knees. It was, you know, because first of all, the drill bit is this, you know, object from the surface with these teeth that are very fine. It looks like something like, it looks like an alien. It looks like something from another world. And it certainly burst into their, into their space where they've been trapped. And, you know, many of the men fell to their knees and started praying. It's like, oh my God, it's happened. It's happened.
And the man who had been leading the prayers, you know, the self-appointed pastor, he said, Dios existe. God exists.
And so it was this profoundly spiritual moment and they all started to celebrate. You can, there's a picture of them that they took of themselves underground in the moments after they look like guys celebrating, like, you know, at some frat party, you know, they're all without their shirts on because it's so hot and they're all sweaty and everything, but they have their arms around each other and they're holding these bottles of dirty mine water that they've been drinking, but they are absolutely ecstatic because they, they've been given another life.
There was a lot of initial excitement when the drill did break through, but I think that excitement probably dwindled quickly when they found out that they're not getting back up to the surface tomorrow. It might be months until they get out. What became their major challenge at that point? That was a cause of a lot of depression and anxiety among the men. The idea that they were going to have to sort of wait in this marathon for
What happened is, well, first of all, the men start getting letters from their family members, which at first are very, very, you know, just they're exhilarated to get these letters. But then they start hearing about the problems on the surface and then they start getting newspapers. And so Mario Sepulveda, for example, Mario Sepulveda filmed a video, um,
just to show kind of almost like a proof of life kind of thing to show the people on the surface, the conditions they were in and their sort of general state that they were in. So, so when that video comes out, Mario becomes a celebrity. And so Mario is being celebrated as super Mario. And the men can see that Mario Sepulveda is suddenly being touted as the leader of the miners and
And who speaks for them. And so there's this, you know, this real, you know, sort of animosity begins underground and a lot of jealousy. And then there's a split between the Catholics and the evangelicals who had all been praying together before, right?
But then somebody sends down a whole bunch of, you know, religious articles, Catholic religious articles and the evangelicals. Well, they don't believe in, you know, in praying to images. And so they're like, I don't we don't want that. And they all they all argue about that. There was a physical fight between a couple of minors over something where they were sort of, you know, hitting each other. So there was a lot of that.
A lot of tension, you know, attention caused by number one, the fact that they're still trapped and they can't get out. And number two, by the fact that the whole world out there is going crazy over them. And yet they're still trapped. And so NASA psychologists recommended that the men have a little bit of contact with their friends and families, but not too much. But these these families did play quite a role in getting the men out, didn't they?
Oh, absolutely. They were essential in transforming the story of the miners from a story of tragedy to a story of resistance. Right. And so the mining families, very traditionally, whenever there's a mine accident, the families go to the mine and they wait and they conduct a vigil. And so when the Chilean government took control of the rescue.
The family start pressuring the minister, the government minister, the cabinet minister who comes to sort of supervise the rescue, the minister of mining, Lawrence Goldborne.
And so they pressure him and they tell him, you know, you can't give up. And, you know, and so Minister Goldborn responds to this by getting resources from all over the country and people from all over the world want to contribute things. And so, yeah, the families really became the face of the disaster. There was one in particular who emerged as a leader, Maria Segovia, who, you know, is this
Woman in her 50s. She's a great grandmother in her 50s. Dark skinned street vendor. Grew up very, very poor with her brother Darío. She emerges as this powerful figure, the leader of the families. And, you know, just doesn't allow the government to give up. Doesn't allow the media and the world to give up on their families, on her family and their families. And is a really, you know, instrumental in the rescue. Yeah, they called the camp Camp Esperanza and which is Camp Hope Esperanza.
It would be fair to say that without the pressure from the families, it would have been easy for the government to say, oh, they're probably dead and everything just dissolved. Right. I think that, you know, as those of us who work in journalism know, you know, stories don't really work unless they have people, you know, at the heart of them. And so with the miners trapped, they're an abstraction. Nobody could see them.
but they could see the families. And so the families became the expression, you know, of, of these men, the symbol of these men and we're on television, you know, Campo Esperanza was on, you know, television all over the world. They were, you know, it was coverage from, from all the continents of the world. And so, um,
Absolutely. Yeah. That was, they were essential to the, to the, to the dynamic that led the government into transforming this mine rescue into what they called, you know, the Chilean moonshot. So for the president and for the, you know, for his ministers, this became a way to show what Chile can do. You know, there's this whole sense in Chile because Chile is now one of the most developed countries in Latin America that we are becoming part of the first world. Right. And
And so, you know, we're no longer in the third world. We're becoming part of the first world. And so they would show the world just how badass, you know, Chilean technicians and miners were by rescuing these men. You know, this seemingly impossible task of rescuing these men. I want to talk a little bit about the rescue itself. Can you put in perspective for me and the listeners what these engineers were up against when they were drilling down into the San Jose area?
Well, yeah. So the rock is really, really hard to drill through, but it's drillable. The problem is that you have to drill down the length of this mine, a space that's essentially as deep as the tallest building on earth is tall. It's almost 2000 feet that you're aiming for a spot that's 2000 feet away. And you have very bad blueprints of the mine and you're working against time. The mountain itself is very unstable. And
And so it's sort of like, you know, like when you, I'm in California. And so in California, we have aftershocks after earthquakes. And so after the huge collapse of the mine, there were all of these aftershocks, you know, the, the mine had these smaller collapses continually happening. And so there was this fear that even if they did manage to,
carve a tunnel down to the miners, which they, when they found them, they started to carve this sort of channel that that channel itself might collapse thanks to the instability of the mine and trap the mine, one of the miners inside as he was being pulled out.
So nothing like this had ever been done before. You know, there was a similar rescue, for example, I think in West Virginia and a coal mine where the, you know, the rock is not nearly as hard, but also it was just maybe a hundred feet or so. So having to drill almost 2000 feet through this hard rock, a really, really difficult thing. And once they even started to drill this drill, drill this bigger hole, sometimes the drills would break, you know, under the sort of pressure and the weight of what they were trying to do.
And finally, you know, the Chilean government has to come up with a way to get them out. So they contact the Chilean Navy and the Chilean Navy designs this capsule and they call it the Phoenix, right? Because rebirth and the Phoenix. And that's how the rescue ends up proceeding. When you see these Phoenix capsules, because the footage is all online.
I don't know. I, I, my jaw dropped honestly, because it looks just like a little bobsled or like a skeleton sled. You know what I mean? And it,
I would imagine there's not even a centimeter on either shoulder and you'd be in that thing because the journey was 40 minutes to the top, right? Yes. At the beginning, it was very, very slow. Yes, absolutely. That's a long time to think about everything that you just went through. Yeah. And that was really, that was one of the nice, most remarkable things that I remember from my interviews was talking with a couple of the men who described how they had this moment of seeing their lives flash before them.
So, Florencio Avalos, who was the first one out, said, you know, I remembered the day that I met my wife. I remember the day my children were born. I remembered all the things that happened to us in the mine. And it was like seeing a movie of all the things that had happened to us and to me in my life. And it was this rebirth.
And another thing, too, was that on the surface, you have mostly women, the women of the family sort of organizing the families on the surface. And one of them told me, you know, I was really worried because I thought of the men coming out of that mountain. It was like they were passing through a birth canal.
And anyone who's ever given birth knows that it's a dangerous and potentially deadly process. You know, a baby can get stuck. It's a very, very sort of, you know, tenuous kind of moment. And so there was this sense that the mountain was giving birth to these men. And so all of that, all of that was part of the sort of psychological experience of being rescued.
This season, Instacart has your back-to-school. As in, they've got your back-to-school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back-to-school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.
Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply.
The 33 were trapped underground for 69 days. And I read that gave them a Guinness World Record, right? Yeah, it was a world record of, yeah, absolutely. And what's the aftermath of something like that? How did their lives change after they exited the mine? I think that the hard part was dealing with the celebrity of it and dealing with the fact that you had a whole country calling you a hero.
When you, in fact, felt small and you felt crushed, being buried alive for 69 days, it makes you feel almost as if you've been abused by nature. And so you had men who are recovering from this abuse and who have the psychology of survivors of abuse and trauma, which is a message that tells you you're not worth anything.
And yet you have the world telling you you're a hero, but you don't feel like a hero. One of the wives of one of the miners told me that was the worst thing they ever could have done was to call them heroes. The Chilean Congress gave them a gold medal of Chilean heroism. And so that was very, very difficult for many of the men.
Then you also have people asking you for favors because there was this movement around Chile to provide money to the miners. One Chilean entrepreneur said he was going to make sure that every miner had a million dollars, you know, to his name. Didn't really happen. So suddenly the rest of the world thinks that you're a rich guy. You know, one miner told me, I have relatives who I haven't heard from in years coming up to me and asking me for loans, you know, or telling me, hey, you know, my...
My roof is collapsing or my son is sick and I don't have money for the doctor. And to feel the pressure of that, you know, and not being able to help, you know, because you don't have that much money. I think they got the equivalent of like a year's salary is probably what they all got. But, you know, they had these expectations of becoming wealthy and rich that never really materialized.
And many eventually realized I need to go back to work. Fortunately, the vast majority of them found jobs in mining companies or other companies where they didn't have to go underground.
A few actually did go back down underground, which itself was its own psychological catastrophe for some of them to have to go back underground. So it was difficult. It was really difficult for them. And then in Chile, they became such objects of media scrutiny that to a lot of people, they became a joke.
A lot of reaction was like, oh, these losers, you know, these guys who get trapped and they think that they're entitled to be treated like heroes. And, you know, yeah. And they treated them like reality television stars. You know, they had that sort of level of disrespect for them.
Interesting. So while they were being called heroes, they weren't being treated like heroes. And for these men, even on a normal day, let's forget about the 69 days trapped, going from a minor to international celebrity without that experience in the middle would be a pretty sharp adjustment. But with this coming fresh out, you're born into the world again. And then all of a sudden you're thrown into all of this fame. No wonder you don't know what to do. Yeah.
I don't blame them. No, absolutely. And they did receive some attention to their psychological needs. A lot of them did group therapy sessions. And I remember one describing to me going into these first sessions and just getting extremely nervous when the therapist closed the door to the session room. Don't close the door. Leave the door open. It was that kind of level. Yoni Barrios, his girlfriend described to me him coming home and
And waking up in the middle of the night and putting on his mining helmet and the flashlight and just, you know, just having because he was having this nightmare that he was still trapped in the mine. So there were there was a lot of sorrow and a lot of suffering that they went through after they were rescued. But, you know, most of them have found sort of small ways to sort of continue the journey of the mine. You know, many of them give talks.
you know, for free or sometimes for money at different places. Mario Sepulveda got into politics a little bit, you know, Juan Yanez wrote to me, Hey, I'm running for mayor in my town, you know? And so they all had sort of these different experiences. And, you know, I think that,
I would say that most of them would say that it was the adventure of their lives. It was this trauma, but also this incredible adventure. I mean, I got one of the last times I saw many of the minors was at Roman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, where the film was screened. And I was up in the balcony with a group of minors.
On the red carpet with flash bulbs going off and whatnot. So it was, I'm sure, a wonderful experience for them. And it was really an honor for me to be their chronicler. For the 33 men, did getting a second chance at life change their outlook on it at all?
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I say the vast majority of minors that I talked to had some sort of epiphany about their lives. Franklin Lobos told me, I learned once that celebrity is passing because he was a soccer star and then he had his, his, his fame faded. And then he had to go work in a mine driving a truck, you know, underground. And then he became famous again. And so he, he saw that lesson toy. He told the other minors to look, this celebrity is going to fade.
And so a lot of them learned that lesson about life. But many of them just absolutely, when I see them, just they'd always been family people, but the experience in the mind had sort of confirmed to them how important family is.
And so that experience of just simply being present with your family and how important that is, I think that that's something that all the men learned. And just how deep the love that their families had for them really was. I mean, because they heard the stories of what the families did on the surface and
One of the miners got reunited with his ex-wife because his ex-wife would show up at the mine and she would show up because he was the father of their children. And so she felt like she needed to show solidarity with the family, with her children. And after that, they got back together. And so, yeah, I think it was a deep learning experience that the vast majority of them would say was extremely valuable to them and something that made them appreciate the smaller things in life.
And I'm curious, did writing this book change you at all? And what did you take home from speaking to these men? Yeah, I think that for me, the most beautiful part of this experience was just that I was able to tell a story about family and love. And that when I started off writing this book, I thought I was writing an adventure story, a story about these men trapped in a mountain and how they got out.
When in reality, I was really writing a story about the power of familial love and of brotherhood and sisterhood to help us endure through the trials and tribulations of life. And that to me was so reaffirming. You know, I looked at my own life differently. I think I developed a greater appreciation for
for the rhythms of life. I was just looking at a portrait of my kids and from 10 years ago when they were small, because they're all pretty much grown up now and looking at all their clothes and their lunch bags and thinking, oh my God, my wife, she did so much work to sort of keep that our family going. And that's what I learned about this, that family is this beautiful process of
The families learned about this disaster about dinnertime when they were expecting their husbands to come home or their lovers to come home to meals. And it interrupted that sort of cycle, that cycle of daily life.
And so the rescue effort was for them. It was trying to keep that rhythm together, keep it going, keep the family rhythms, the rhythms of life going. And just being in the presence of so many men who had learned that lesson about their own lives, I think was really important for me. Hector, thank you so much for your time today. And it was so good to hear this insight a bit deeper into this incredible story here on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It was a total joy.
This is the final episode of our series Chilean Mind Collapse. If you'd like to learn more about this event, we highly recommend the books Deep Down Dark by Hector Tobar and 33 Men by Jonathan Franklin. I'm your host, Mike Corey. This episode was produced by Peter Arcuni. Brian White is our associate producer. Our audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Our senior producer is Andy Herman.
Our executive producers are Stephanie Jentz and Marshall Louis for Wondery.
Hey, podcast listeners, have you heard you can listen to your favorite podcasts ad-free? That's good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts. That's amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.
