BOOK REVIEW: El Tecolote rating on “Deep Down Dark”: 4 out of 5
By Atticus Morris
With his recently published book, “Deep Down Dark” (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014), author and journalist Héctor Tobar has given the world a complete accounting of the harrowing experience of 33 Chilean men who in 2010 became trapped more than 2,000 feet underground for 69 days after a catastrophic mining accident, and, in the process, has given the story of these men its due.
The 300-page text can be roughly divided into several sections—the background or context; the accident itself; the time in between the accident and when rescuers first make contact with the miners; the process of the actual rescue effort; and finally the aftermath.
Tobar begins by taking us to the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile, one of the driest places on earth, and home of the story’s location: the San José Mine. We learn of the day-to-day life of a miner—the dangers of the job, and how alluring the lucrative 12-hour shifts can be. The men at the San José Mine, we learn, come from as near as the town of Copiapó at the edge of the desert, and as far away as Southern Chile.
The accident occurs on Aug. 5, 2010, when a skyscraper-sized piece of extremely hard diorite rock breaks free, cutting off the exit to the mine like a “guillotine.” Forced to work together, the trapped men manage to survive for 17 days on oil-tainted water from their mining equipment and a daily allotment of 100 calories of cookies and canned tuna fish.
Over the two and a half weeks, the men begin to starve to death. One man studiously keeps a journal of each days’ occurrences. Some of the men become despondent, laying around in wait for death. Others lash out defiantly at their circumstance and still others fall back on their faith.
One of the older miners, a deeply religious man, adopts the role of pastor leading an ad hoc daily prayer session that even the non-religious eventually take part in. There is a touching description of how this daily event turns to ritual and eventually “self-criticism sessions where the men apologize to each other for their transgressions.”
Tobar really brings the lives of these men into focus both as miners and as individuals. Their personalities emerge through his description of each individual’s actions, interspersed with details of his background.
Before the prologue, he also includes a page containing headshots of all 33 men and their names; it’s a nice touch. By allowing the reader to put a face to each name, it further brings to life these men.
Almost all of the miners are family men, and so Tobar also adds an account of the families’ ordeal, to his description of what is happening on the surface.
The families flock to the entrance of the mine setting up a makeshift town called Campo Esperanza, which becomes a focus point for various charities and supporters. All of Chile and much of the world rallies around the Los 33. The Chilean government, which usually avoids involvement in such accidents, takes charge of the effort—setting up three different drilling plans (A, B and C) in hopes that one will make it to the trapped men.
On day 18, contact is finally made via a borehole 4.5–inches in diameter. The nearly starved men begin to receive food, clean water and clothing from the surface, but are informed that it will likely be several months before they can escape.
When the Plan B drill does finally reach its goal on Oct. 19 creating a passage that a man can fit through, the painstaking process of extracting 33 men from the earth begins.
The live rescue of the miners made it to U.S. network news television, a feat few Latin America stories actually achieve, that speaks to the remarkable nature of this tale.
At first the men receive much adulation and treated like heroes the press, but they are left with the task of healing the trauma and finding personal meaning in the experience.
Tobar’s systematic approach to storytelling and his simple, unadorned prose highlight his background as a journalist. They also make him ideally suited for telling the real story of Los 33.
— Héctor Tobar is the author of four books, and has written for The New Yorker and the LA Weekly. He worked at the Los Angeles Times for two decades under many positions, and served as the Managing Editor of El Tecolote in 1987.