Down But Devout: A Chilean Miner’s Tale

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by The One’s editor, Ben Dickins, to go to a talk given by a man who had been trapped in a dark hole with little to no food, scant hope of escape and where one of the few things to do to amuse oneself was to test the echo.

No, not Jordan’s gynaecologist but Jose Henriquez, one of the 33 miners who survived 70 days in a collapsed Chilean mine. However, Dickins had somewhat ambushed me. He’d given me the impression that I would be going to a forum-type discussion on Jose’s experiences. He informed me that the talk was to be held in the cathedral.

At first, I thought this was a bit odd but then shrugged it off thinking that perhaps the organisers thought holding the event in one of the usual suspects of 24s, Castle or Palace Green would’ve been a bit of a busman’s holiday for old Jose, what with all the low ceilings, dim lighting and confined spaces. But no, the cathedral was in fact the location because (and, admittedly, I should have seen this coming) I was attending not so much a talk as a full on religious service with all the bells and whistles. What this means is that Dickins had tricked me into going to church. The last person to do that was my Mum about ten years ago. I love my Mum. I don’t love Dickins.

Once we’d finished the third hymn and stopped muttering out loud to someone who may or may not have been in the room, we finally were able to hear from the man himself (to a certain extent). For obvious linguistic reasons we were told of Jose’s experience with the help of a translator, which was certainly very welcome as I missed that GCSE Spanish vocab lesson on modern day mining machinery and the power of Christian prayer. Because that was the centrepiece of Henriquez’s message: that his experience would have been impossible to bear had it not been for his faith.

It is certainly indisputable that these miners needed something to sustain them as they were in dire straits before contact with the surface was made after 17 days. Only 3 days of rations were available for those first 17 which meant the miners were restricted to half a teaspoon of tuna and a solitary biscuit per day. Now this 'Chilean Miner Diet' may not sound like too much of an ordeal to certain ribcage-bearing Durham students but when all there was to wash it down was a bit of dodgy milk and a negligible amount of water, one begins to realise the complete helplessness of those first weeks (especially when many of the miners had serious alcohol dependency issues).

So Jose and some others turned to prayer. We were told in the cathedral how ‘prayer is the oxygen of a Christian’, which is almost as useful as, you know, oxygen. A prayer chain was set up at 12 and 6 every day and this was doubled once contact was made with the outside world, which, when trapped with 32 other men, is certainly a better way to spend your time than buggery (especially if you’re a Christian). This all meant that by the time the miners came to the surface, Jose had managed to convince 22 out of 33 of the miners to ‘commit themselves to Christ’.

Obviously, even the most ardent religious sceptic would be churlish to denounce their conversion as it is evidently something they drew great strength from but parts of the rhetoric that Jose espoused was somewhat hard to stomach. He spoke of the ‘unbelieving scientists and geologists’. Well, quite, those unbelieving scientists who pioneered cutting edge techniques to free you from your subterranean incarceration: what b***ards. Furthermore, there was no mention of the 11 people who weren’t converted. What on earth sustained them? Not only were they in a desperate situation, but they had to share it with the kind of people that knock on your door and ask if ‘you’ve heard the good news’.

In fairness, this religious zeal is understandable considering his convictions and the gravity of his experience. Jose Henriquez is an incredibly impressive chap who, by the sounds of it, defused an awful lot of tension between his fellow miners. However, my one regret is that Jose did not get a chance to tell us about this as the questions posed were often quite underwhelming. I’d have preferred to hear what on earth one does in a mine once hide and seek gets dull, and is it true, as Girls Aloud would have you believe, that ‘the sound of the underground’ is the ‘beat of the drum going round and round’ or is the sound of the underground in fact a middle aged Chilean man masturbating himself to sleep? Although, understandably these questions were never going to be raised in a church and I would’ve known that if I’d been told beforehand. Cheers Dickins.