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Photo: Rescuers work to reach trapped miners in photograph provided by UtahAmerica Energy Inc. WNDZ News.
Two of the workers trapped in the Utah mine disaster are from Sinaloa and one is from Chihuahua. Its interesting that immigration hasn't been brought up that much in regards to this event. This is a clear example of the dangers inherent in many immigrant's jobs.
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Relatives in Mexico can only pray for miners
For two generations, men from Sinaloa have gone to dig in Utah. The pay is great, but the price may be too high.
By Cecilia Sánchez and Héctor Tobar
Los Angeles Times
August 16, 2007
Labor recruiters from Utah first came to the rural hamlets that surround this town in the western state of Sinaloa two generations ago, with promises of dollars to be made digging deep into the earth.
Onesimo Payan Carrillo, a retired miner, remembers them as "really tall, really blond men" who persuaded him and many others to leave their cornfields for U.S. coal mines.
The bond between this corner of Sinaloa and Utah has remained alive ever since, with sons and grandsons following in the footsteps of those first miners, including two young men who were trapped following the Aug. 6 collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah.
Two Sinaloa natives, Jose Luis Hernandez and Juan Carlos Payan, are among the six miners missing. A third missing miner is from the neighboring Mexican state of Chihuahua.
...Payan, 23, was born in Zapotillo, a village of 800 people outside Mocorito. His family home, a humble building of brick and corrugated tin, has been shuttered for years as he and his brothers sought their fortunes in Utah.
"As a young man, I worked in the mines too," said Payan Carrillo, 70, who is Juan Carlos' uncle. "What you make here isn't enough to live. It's a great tragedy that all this is happening."
Zapotillo is a village with unpaved and unnamed roads, surrounded by corn and tomato fields withering under an unrelenting sun. Farmers in the region often make as little as $20 per week.
In Utah's coal mines, immigrant workers earn more than that for just an hour's work. As elsewhere in Mexico, the pull of such wages has caused Zapotillo to slowly empty. The village is populated mostly by women, children and the elderly.
"They leave looking for better fortune, in search of the green bills," said Payan Carrillo, a dark-skinned man of weathered features. "But it's very risky work. People don't think about the risk."
For days, Mexicans have been riveted by the story of the three compatriots trapped in the U.S. mine.
Zapotillo is too small to have a church. But every Sunday the faithful have been gathering at the village's small chapel to pray. And during the week they have been lighting candles at the Payan Carrillo residence.
"I can't even imagine the suffering of my nephew," said Hortencia Payan, 56, Juan Carlos' aunt. "I just hope God helps those poor young men and that soon they are rescued from that mine."
Antonio Cruz, 66, has three sons working in the Utah mine.
"It's a constant worry for me," he said. "I told them, 'Better to stay here and eat beans,' but they didn't listen."
For complete article
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexminers16aug16,0,6206725.story?page=2&coll=la-home-center
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