Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette photos Elvira Martinez, her husband and three children were a week from moving into the home they worked 10 years to build, but her husband was one of 65 miners killed at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine Feb. 19. She is the only widow or family member who refused a $75,000 payment Grupo Mexico offered as compensation for the deaths.

By Jerome L. Sherman
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette SAN JUAN DE SABINAS, Mexico -- Six months after this country's worst coal mining accident in a generation, Elvira Martinez is still waiting for her husband to come home.

She last saw him Feb. 18 as he prepared for an overnight shift at the Pasta de Conchos mine in a barren desert plain about 80 miles south of the Texas border. A few hours into the shift, a methane explosion triggered rock falls, trapping 65 workers. One body has been recovered.

	For a multimedia presentation on the coal industry in Mexico, click on the image above. Related coverage: Labor turmoil following disaster draws in USW Copper, not coal is firm's specialty About the authors Part 2: Tiny coal mines escape inspections

Now, Elvira waits.

Almost every day, she and a group of wives and other relatives sit at the mine's entrance. A blue tarpaulin protects them from the sun; a rattling fan provides token relief from summer temperatures that regularly top 100 degrees. Nearby, a security gate is draped with dozens of white sheets, each bearing a message for the mine owner and for the world.

"We want our loved ones. Now!"

For months, the story of the widows of Pasta de Conchos captivated Mexico. Television crews camped out near the mine during the accident's aftermath, beaming shots of anguished family members to all corners of the country. Human rights organizations and a Catholic bishop weighed in on the progress of the recovery effort and the feud among relatives, the federal government and Grupo Mexico, one of the world's largest mining companies.

The accident also contributed to months of labor strife that led to strikes at Grupo Mexico's huge copper mines and Mexico's largest steel mill.

Grupo Mexico officials have promised to recover each body trapped in Pasta de Conchos. They are pouring millions of dollars into a cleanup operation that has cleared 10,000 tons of rock from the 1.4-mile-long mine and could last months, if not years. They have organized an extensive assistance program, with scholarships for children of the miners and triple salaries for the widows.

Soon after the accident, the company also offered each widow a lump sum of $75,000, an enormous amount in a region where miner wages of $1 an hour are typical.

But many relatives still doubt the company's sincerity, and they see a continued presence at the mine as their only leverage.

"We think they want us to go away," said Guillermo Iglesias, son of a deceased miner and a spokesman for the families. "We want the bodies first."

The makeshift camp is a breeding ground for rumors. Some relatives suspect that Grupo Mexico is preparing to seal the mine, while others see coal, not deceased miners, as the primary focus of the recovery effort. Company officials say none of that is true.

The number of relatives who regularly show up at the mine has dwindled. On a recent afternoon, a dozen people -- sons, aunts, fathers, widows and children -- sat on plastic chairs and snacked on soft tacos.

Elvira Martinez is the only one of the widows who has turned down the company's $75,000 offer. She sees it as a buyout, an excuse to keep her away from her husband.

Unfinished business

Almost everything in Elvira's life is on hold. She has left her job. She has stopped all work on her family's new house, although she, her husband and their three children were planning to move there at the end of February, a week after the accident.

A slight woman with brown skin and shoulder-length hair, Elvira, 33, approaches each day with poise and focus concealing her grief. Her children sometimes complain about the long hours she spends away from home. She explains her motives to them in a calm, even tone.

"I don't feel like he's dead," she says, "because I haven't seen the body yet."

Elvira's unfinished home is in Palau, a town of about 15,000 people in the heart of Mexico's only coal mining region, a place where seemingly endless days of clear skies run up against the peaks of the Sierra Madre mountains.

Map/Info: Coal mining in the U.S. and Mexico

Two hundred million years ago, the Gulf of Mexico extended across this area, allowing lush vegetation to thrive. Fossilized plants are now buried deep below the desert, and their remains yield about 12 million tons of coal a year.

When an Austrian engineer discovered these energy riches in the late 19th century, northern Coahuila state quickly transformed from a sparsely populated region of cattle ranchers to an industrial powerhouse. Thousands of Japanese immigrants came seeking work; some of their descendents, with Japanese surnames, are still here.

Coahuila coal feeds steel mills in Monclova and Monterrey, the country's third-largest city. Two coal-fired electric plants near the Texas border supply as much as 8 percent of Mexico's electricity.

As a result, dozens of towns live and die on mining, none more so than Palau. Its central plaza features a statue of a gold-tinted miner and a memorial for a 1939 accident that killed 67. At the main church, the priest and a seminarian are former miners.

All know the risks of one of the world's most dangerous professions, and, for the most part, they accept those risks.

The family's story

Jorge Bladimir Munoz took his first mining job more than a decade ago. He had been working at a factory near the U.S. border, but he wanted to be closer to his new wife, Elvira Martinez. They grew up blocks away from each other on Palau's dusty back streets.

Sonia Godina Guevara Esposo, 28, left, lost her husband, Jose Luis Calvillo Hernandez, 28, in the Pasta de Conchos explosion. Here, his brother, Saul Ulises Calvillo Hernandez plays with her son, Eduardo, 15 months. Click photo for larger image.

"I didn't like him. He had a big ego," Elvira said of Jorge, who, as a boy, loved to boast of his prowess on the soccer field. Gradually, Elvira's impression changed, and the two started dating. At a New Year's Eve dance in 1991, he proposed. They married six months later. He was 20, she was 19.

Jorge was a thin man with a trim goatee and a serious demeanor. His children brought out his playful side, challenging him to wrestling matches in the living room or soccer games on the dirt road in front of Elvira's parents' house, where they all lived.

In 1996, Elvira and her husband began clearing a plot of land on the edge of town to start work on their own home. They spent two months using machetes to hack away thorny huisache trees. When money was available, Jorge and his friends would construct the building, piece by piece, using concrete blocks.

Two years ago, Jorge found a job at Pasta de Conchos. It paid him 600 pesos a week, about $60, an average wage for a miner. A few weeks before he started working, an inspector from Mexico's labor ministry discovered dozens of violations in the mine, including poor ventilation, gas and oil leaks, and excessive amounts of highly explosive coal dust, according to a report released this summer by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission.

Safety issues

Soon after the inspection, the mine's joint safety commission, comprising managers and union officials, told the government the most serious issues had been addressed. The government, which has five work-safety inspectors for more than 100 coal mines and dozens of factories in northern Coahuila, would go a year and a half without conducting a follow-up inspection.

Arturo Bermea Castro, an engineer and general director of operations for Grupo Mexico's mining division, said the company assiduously powdered the mine to prevent the spread of coal dust. Government representatives said they never received complaints from workers about dangerous conditions.

Some miners or their relatives say the company threatened to fire those who complained, although Grupo Mexico officials hotly reject that charge.

Jose Luis Calvillo regularly complained to his wife about high levels of methane in Pasta de Conchos. He wanted to leave, but he had no options. His father, a former miner who now works for the government, had been trying to find him a new job.

"I was scared, but there was no other work," said Sonia Godina Guevara, Mr. Calvillo's wife.

Fermin Rosales Martinez, one of 11 survivors of the Feb. 19 accident, said coal dust was a significant problem, along with exposed electrical wires. The company did not seem to take such things seriously.

Last year, a supervisor yelled at him for wearing an earring.

"There are worse problems in the mine," he told his boss. He was suspended for two days.

On Feb. 7, three months after their own verification deadline, government inspectors returned to Pasta de Conchos. They found that many of their safety concerns had been addressed, although their report said coal dust was still an issue in closed sections of the mine.

The accident

Jorge never told his wife Elvira about mining safety problems. He did, however, spend hours discussing the approaching date when they and their three children, Tania, Christian and Estefania, would move into their own home.

After 10 years of work and almost $30,000 of expenses, the house was livable. It still needed a master bedroom, but, as work continued, the couple could sleep in the living room with the children.

Jorge left for work at 9:30 p.m. Feb. 18, a Saturday. He told his wife he had bought a bag of cement to work on the house.

"See you tomorrow," he said.

In Nueva Rosita, a nearby coal-mining town, Mr. Calvillo and his wife also were preparing to move into a new home. Mr. Calvillo had spent part of the day installing electrical outlets. Before leaving for the mine's night shift, he kissed his three children and told his wife to stop doing chores. He said he'd help her finish the next morning.

Fermin Rosales Martinez, 30, is one of the miners who survived the explosion. He says he still gets nervous and is easily agitated and that his home life suffers from his change in personality. Click photo for larger image.

About 2:30 a.m. Sunday, Fermin Rosales was standing on a platform just inside the mine entrance, waiting for equipment to arrive.

He heard an explosion. He felt a powerful blow to his back.

Two hours later, he said, he regained consciousness. He was in the same place, on the platform. He felt sharp pains all over his body. Huge rocks, support timbers and steel beams littered the mine floor. An engineer took him outside on a train car.

The Pasta de Conchos explosion was Mexico's most devastating coal-mining accident in 37 years. Everyone -- the federal and state governments, the company, the Mexican Congress, the mine workers union -- promised a detailed accounting of what went wrong.

Yet that accounting has been slow in coming. The recovery effort at the mine sometimes proceeds inches a day, as workers use pickaxes and jackhammers against 40-foot rock falls. On June 23, they found the body of Felipe de Jesus Torres, the only unmarried miner to die in Pasta de Conchos.

"We are responsible. Of course we are responsible. But we are not guilty," said Juan Rebolledo, Grupo Mexico's vice president for international affairs. "It's something you cannot control. Coal mines are dangerous everywhere in the world."

The company has said recovery work will continue, no matter what the cost.

A week after the accident, when the chance of finding survivors seemed almost nil, Grupo Mexico officials held a series of small meetings with the widows and offered the $75,000 cash payments. During her meeting, Elvira ran from the room.

Since then, she has received her husband's triple salary, a little more than $200 a week. But the extra money, she argues, "was a strategy to get us away from the company."

These are photos family members left at a memorial site; six months after the explosion, just one body has been recovered. Click photo for larger image.

Many widows initially agreed, yet they found $75,000 difficult to turn down. Some soon adapted to a different standard of living, with new clothes, makeup and jewelry. A few bought pickup trucks.

And their numbers at the mine started to fall.

For several months, company officials gave reports twice a day at a tent near the mine. Now they deliver a daily written report to the home of each widow, and an engineer is available every morning for individual discussions with family members.

Officials are encouraging family members to start thinking about applying for their government pensions. Once that happens, the company will stop paying the triple salaries, and the widows will see a sharp reduction in their income.

According to local news reports, few relatives have picked up death certificates for the miners, the first step in applying for a government pension.

In June, Elvira and Mr. Rosales traveled to Mexico City to file a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission. The independent body had started an investigation of the accident several months before, after receiving an anonymous call about problems with federal government inspections at Pasta de Conchos.

The commission released a final, nonbinding report July 17. It equated the government's actions with a violation of the constitutional rights of the 65 deceased miners, and it said a failure to recover the bodies would amount to a violation of the widows' religious rights.

Mexico's labor secretary didn't accept the substance of the report, but he did agree to implement its recommendations, including a significant expansion of the number of workplace inspectors and an effort to eliminate inspection backlogs.

In Mexico's coal-mining country, life continues. Mr. Rosales recently finished months of psychiatric treatment to help him deal with depression and anger. His doctor says he is well enough to return to work at the mine, but he won't go back. His wife is trying to find him a job at the avocado-packaging plant where she works.

Elvira hasn't thought about a future beyond the recovery of her husband's body. She'll wait for months or years, whatever it takes. Her family's new home, a squat, one-story structure, is surrounded by barbed wire. Its interior walls are bare except for a small cross.

Elvira's two oldest children envision a different future, possibly with scholarship money from Grupo Mexico. Christian, 11, wants to be a chemist. His older sister, Tania, 13, who received nearly perfect grades in her classes this year, hopes for a career as an astronomer. Estefania, 4, is too young for those dreams.

Oscar Cerda says a prayer with his granddaughter Vanessa Cerda, 2, at the makeshift memorial to the victims of the Pasta de Conchos explosion in the Coahuila state of Mexico. Mr. Cerda's son, Oscar, was among the dead. He said his son was very close to Vanessa, his niece.