No More Workers’ Mourning — Let Us Fight for the Miners of Chile
On July 31, capitalism once again buried miners alive in Chile, just days before the fifth anniversary of the murder of Eleazar Benjamín Blandón, a Nicaraguan refugee in Spain who was sent to harvest watermelons under extreme temperatures—and as if that were not enough, the employer dumped his body at a hospital and continued his routine of whipping his workers in the fields. The two cases differ in many details, clearly, but no matter how much one tries to distinguish them, the similarities are greater. Capitalism exploits human beings to death.
No deep analysis is needed to reach this conclusion. The conditions in which our comrades work in the mining sector in Chile are as miserable as only this sector can guarantee—so extreme that workers were eating while hammering the earth, just to meet the company’s productivity goals. Inside the mine, there are supposed shelters and safe zones, but of course they are kept locked. A worker had already been electrocuted in 2023, confirming this situation, also at the “El Teniente” mine. This time, despite the warnings of fellow workers experienced in recognizing abnormal movements and sounds inside the tunnel—who feared continuing the search for ore—the company’s order was to extract copper quickly, which resulted in the death of six sons of the working class. And of course, these were subcontracted workers (almost four times the number of direct employees). The company does not hire them directly. These inhuman conditions align perfectly with bourgeois thinking—workers are just numbers; under capitalism, our lives do not matter.
Unfortunately, the union leaders—there are many across the mines—limit themselves to expressing that they feel discriminated against compared to directly hired workers, instead of unifying all their demands to prevent further deaths. The solution is not privatization either, as some lament—claiming that in private companies there is “more control.” In Peru one can clearly see the “benefits” of corporate subcontracted mining: pollution and murdered workers in disputes over concessions. Expropriation without compensation and under workers’ control will not come from Boric’s business-friendly government, and condolences are not enough. We must fight together to defend dignified labor, and place mining extraction at the service of the working class as compensation for so many years of deaths in the name of copper. No more bourgeois directors for Codelco—let the workers’ base take control. We must reopen the path of the international socialist revolution, betrayed by reformism and opportunism, in order to achieve these demands. The struggle is in the streets—no more deaths of the working class.
