Mexico: 10 miners trapped underground for a week after clandestine shaft collapsed

The El Pinabete coal mine, located in the municipality of Sabinas, in the Mexican state of Coahuila, flooded on Wednesday, leaving 10 workers trapped on site.

The miners were near a shaft, where they were working with hand tools when the tunnel walls collapsed. Since then, the families of the victims have refused to give up hope, even though the workers may have been trapped underwater.

After the collapse, the El Pinabete mine was found to be clandestine, operating without safety conditions, and only a few meters away from another mine that was abandoned almost 40 years ago and is full of water, reported El País.

The Attorney General's Office informed on Sunday that it is investigating the commission of possible federal crimes in the operation of the Sabinas mine.

On Tuesday, the authorities announced that several solid elements and the high water level prevented them from seeing inside the mine. However, the national coordinator of Civil Protection, Laura Velázquez, claimed that the rescue crew are only "hours away from carrying out the rescue."

Despite this information, the families claim that authorities have not informed them of the progress of the rescue efforts.

On Sunday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) went to the coal mine to supervise the work of federal agents sent to rescue the workers. In addition, he was to meet with the miners' families to learn about their situation. 

 However, after meeting with those responsible for the rescue, AMLO left the site and avoided meeting with the relatives, to whom he had promised to talk. The president allegedly left the mine "angrily" after some of the miners' relatives had a confrontation with members of the Army and the National Guard who were guarding the president, according to El País.

"Mr. President: I thank you for your visit to this area where the pain is right now. I thank you for coming to take a picture of my pain, I hope that my pictures will be useful for your policy. Thank you for the visit you came to pay us," lamented a woman in a video posted on TikTok.

One week after being trapped, a total of 672 members of the Mexican government, the state of Coahuila, and the municipality of Sabinas have worked 158 continuous hours to try to rescue the 10 workers.