President Sebastian Pinera of Chile
The Chilean President is off on a pre-scheduled European tour, with the U.K. the first stop. In his luggage he carries fragments of rock from the refuge deep in the mountain where the miners awaited their miraculous rescue, which he plans to give to the Queen and the Prime Minister. To survive underground, for the first seventeen days undiscovered, is a miracle of survival and self preservation which will go down in history. To be Chilean today is to be among the proudest upon the earth. To have been engaged in the astonishing rescue, not only Chileans here, will be a life defining moment for all, and rightly so.
The way Chile mobilised itself for a project which many, perhaps most, experts round the world thought hopeless, is a sharp example of how the simpler lifestyle and government structure of less developed countries can respond to a crisis. The President is anxious to visit Churchill’s War Rooms apparently, having been inspired by those famous speeches of 1940, not to give up in the battle to rescue the entombed miners. Britain in 1940 was also a much simpler, more practical, state structure, capable of total mobilisation of all the people in a fashion Nazi Germany, with all its vast parades and myriad uniforms, could never match. We might want to reflect on this today.
Meanwhile Chile can bask in its deserved glory. It is a long way from the times of the Disappeared. There is, however, an outstanding question. If cracking was heard from the rock formation in the mine, why were the men sent down on their shift? Maybe there is a case for the Health and Safety Executive after all.