Do the right thing because it is right
Immanuel Kant
February 19th, 2006, in Coahuila Mexico, Pasta de Conchos Unit, was the victim of a terrible explosion caused by the accumulation of methane gas. This led to the death of 65 miners and 11 resulted in serious injuries. This tragedy could have been prevented if authorities had done their job properly, but we will get into that later in this text.
First of all, since 2000 there were previous reports that indicated security failures, four years later an inspection report stated 43 direct violations of security and hygiene regulations and 48 extremely urgent measure orders, nevertheless, authorities ignored these reports, of course, the nonattendance of such matters led to the horrific explosion that caused so much pain to the miners and their families two years after the last inspection report.
After the disaster, the rescue missions were assigned to Grupo México, which announced that only body recovery operations would be made because they assured that there were no chances of any survivors due to the high temperatures from the explosion, however, on April 4th, 2007 after only rescuing two bodies, identified as Felipe de Jesus Torres Reyna and Manuel Peña Saucedo, Grupo México made the unexpected decision to suspend the rescue missions, arguing that the rescuers could be in danger, also the company arguments stated that most of the mine would be flooded and that there could be the presence of biological contamination.
This case was submitted to the Human Rights National Commission, which published the recommendation 26/2006 that determined that personnel from the Secretaria del Trabajo y Prevision Social allowed the company to keep working even when general conditions were not adequate for a safe environment of labor, the commission also accredited the violation on human rights like the right to life, the right to physical integrity, and the right to equal protection of the law.
The families of the dead and injured miners were the ones who kept the fight for years in their search for justice, the protests manifested that the true reason for Grupo Mexico to stop rescue missions was that, in the process of the body recovery missions, enough evidence would demonstrate that the miners were working under terrible circumstances that would definitely bring consequences to the company.
It has been almost 20 years since the incident and, in October 2020 Mexican president Andres Manuel López Obrador signed an act of commitment for the complete rescue of the buried bodies that were left behind all these years ago, this operation will finish in August 2024.
Unfortunately, this is far from over, because the mining company will not even participate in the costs of this expensive operation, therefore the affected families demand the right to truth and justice and eventually, the company and the Government should answer and compensate for the damages caused by the tragedy of Pasta de Conchos.
Cases like these should make us think about the importance of fighting for our rights and searching for justice in order to prevent big companies from perpetuating human rights violations against workers. We should demand security guarantees and proper regulations for the operations of these companies, especially in lines of work where the employees can be exposed to some kind of danger if those in charge ignore the basic necessities of a safe work environment.
Imagem Ilustrativa do Post: Dark Focus // Foto de: Charlie Wales // Sem alterações
Disponível em: https://www.flickr.com/photos/charlie-wales/26459116910
Licença de uso: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/2.0/
