The desperation of the relatives of the 10 miners trapped in Coahuila has crossed a new border this Saturday, 10 days after the workers were imprisoned after the collapse of a coal pit in the municipality of Sabinas.
Given the lack of progress in the rescue and the complete opacity of the authorities when it comes to providing information, the relatives have issued an ultimatum to the Mexican government.
“The authorities tell us to wait, that there is a long way to go, that there is little to go, they don't even know what account they can give.
What we want is help to get our relatives out.
The thing remains the same, they bring us with pure lies.
We want help, either from here or abroad”, said Javier Rodríguez Palomares, brother of Margarito Rodríguez.
Under the four in the afternoon sun, protected by tents and surrounded by dozens of journalists, the relatives of the miners have appeared together for the first time to demand solutions that take too long to arrive.
Several of them have taken the microphones to explain their impotence in the face of the failure of the rescue;
what they consider a lack of collaboration from the Government and the fear of a repetition of the Pasta de Conchos tragedy of 2006: the bodies of 63 miners killed in a gas explosion - there were a total of 65 deaths - continue to be buried under the tunnels of the mine.
"Imagine, [the families] are already well worn out, ten days and nothing," adds Rodríguez Palomares.
The interveners have also requested a face-to-face meeting with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who already visited the place last Sunday, but left quickly without meeting with the families.
His passage through the mine generated a moment of tension between family members and the National Guard.
But they still trust that the president can fix his situation: “It is what we all want most at this time, because he would come to put order at work.
We are hoping that he will come and give us the results we want”.
In the meeting before, the media have launched a whole string of reproaches against the authorities, especially against the head of Civil Protection, Laura Velázquez, whom they have accused of deceit, "profanity" and have requested her relief at the head of the rescue operation.
“We need someone to help us, not to bring us long and lie after lie.
The only thing we want is help, from foreign countries or I don't know, we already want our relatives," said Marta María Huerta, the wife of Sergio Gabriel Cruz Gaitán.
The son of the miner José Luis Mireles Argüijo, Claudio Mireles, has assured, visibly agitated, that the work is not advancing due to lack of interest from the Government and that the authorities are not providing them with data on the rescue.
“We have information because we ourselves are working in there.
They say that they are working, but if they let you [the press] enter [the security perimeter guarded by the military, to which the media has denied access] you would see that they are not working, they just take a photo, they leave and post that they are working.
Those who are working are family and friends [...] and they just ignore us”.
The constant fear, the idea that has been repeated the most, is that time continues to pass and every minute is gold, one more lost opportunity to rescue the miners, who have already been held incommunicado without drinking water or food for more than 240 hours.
It is not known if they are alive or dead, although the odds are not good.
The miners of the community, experts in the field, have requested that they be allowed to descend into the mines, since they consider that the Army divers are not doing their job.
“The experts do not leave us because they say there is a lot of risk.
We know that there are risks, but we told the Ministry of Labor that we signed a paper, we take responsibility for what happens to us and that they let us go down to get them out”, Rodríguez Palomares defended.
The relatives also fear that they will be prohibited from staying inside the security perimeter or participating in the rescue efforts.
They have been claiming for days that the police and the military are threatening to expel them and even report them to the Prosecutor's Office if they leak information.
That is one of the reasons why they have decided to give a press conference together and not individually.
"We are afraid of reprisals, that they will not let us in," explained Claudio Mireles.
Relatives have argued that the lack of media access to the mine is a way of hiding information.
"There's a reason they keep them separated, they keep their families separated for a reason, because they're afraid of this," Mireles said.
Last Wednesday, August 3, a flood caused a collapse in three coal pits that trapped 10 miners.
Since then, the authorities have deployed a huge rescue operation that 10 days later has not borne fruit due to the level of water and the obstructions in the galleries, according to the official version.
But the relatives have lost what little patience they had left after seeing how the hours go by and the results never come.
"They are playing with us, they want time to pass and hope to end," says Mireles.
"We are not going to leave until they are delivered to us," another of the women finished.
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