Four of the 10 miners buried more than a year ago in the El Pinabete mine in Coahuila have been located

The bodies of the 10 miners buried in the collapse of a coal pit in Sabinas, Coahuila, on August 3, 2022, are slowly coming to light again. The teams searching for human remains found the fourth body this Tuesday at 11:45, according to Civil Protection. “25 days since the beginning of the intense recovery work of the miners in El Pinabete, it is reported that during the operations carried out today the location of the fourth bone remains was achieved,” the institution reported in a statement. The State Prosecutor's Office hopes to find all the workers, trapped more than 60 meters underground for more than a year and a half, within a month.

The first two bodies appeared on December 27, one and a half meters away from each other. They had been buried for 512 days. They were identified as “biological indication 'A' and 'B'”. Two days later, the rescue teams, made up at this point by Civil Protection, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), found the third body. It took more than two weeks to find the room. The remains have not yet been identified, although in the statement released the authorities indicate that “the identification process will begin immediately to provide certainty to the affected families.”

On August 3, a flood caused the collapse of the wells of Pinabete, a company accused of operating “illegally” by the Attorney General's Office of the Republic, but which still had a contract with the CFE (Federal Electricity Commission) for 75 million pesos. As revealed by a portal investigation Political Animal, the public body described the exploitation as “safe” and agreed to the purchase of all the mineral that was extracted between 2020 and 2024. Two men, Cristian Solís Saavedra, a foreman considered a “monster” by the families, and Luis Rafael García Luna Acuña, one of the alleged owners of the company, are detained. A third, Arnulfo Garza Cárdenas, is a fugitive, with an international arrest warrant from Interpol.

The rescue efforts, when the workers were still expected to be recovered alive, were extended until August 29. Little by little hope was exhausted and reality prevailed over the blind faith of the families, professional teams and volunteer miners of the region who worked side by side to save the 10 day laborers. A new phase then began to find the bodies so that their relatives could give them a dignified burial and put an end to the tragedy.

The recovery of the bodies took four months to begin. In December 2022, the CFE began dynamiting the ground to open a huge pit. The main problem was that the galleries were still flooded with water, the main obstacle to overcome during all this time. More than five million tons of earth and rock were removed to drill the 62 meters that separated the surface from the miners. That work lasted a year, until last December when manual labor began to reach the bodies.

The CFE is pointed out by mining experts and the families of the victims as another shadow culprit of the tragedy. The organization is the key piece in López Obrador's electrical reform. 99% of the coal it buys comes from the Coahuila coal region. Far from implementing new safety measures after the collapse, activity in the Coahuila mines continues the same. This July, two men died in another accident at a well, also in Sabinas. They join a list that expands year after year. According to the records kept by the victims' relatives, since coal began to be extracted at the end of the 19th century, more than 3,100 miners have died in that region.

Working conditions at Pinabete were inhumane and did not meet the most basic safety requirements, such as an official record of who entered and left the galleries. “Excavation operations continue in the areas indicated by specialists as those with the highest probability of discovery. The objective remains to locate and identify the six remaining miners trapped in the El Pinabete mine,” Civil Protection now states. The families' wait is nearing its end, after all.

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