WHEN EDISON Peña was pulled from a Chilean mine a year ago today, psychologists thought that of the 33 men rescued he was one of the best prepared to deal with the trauma of having spent a record 70 days trapped underground.
He had run for kilometres through the stricken mine’s tunnels to stay fit and had tried to raise his colleagues’ spirits with impressions of his idol Elvis.
Like all the men rescued, he became an instant celebrity when he emerged from a narrow rescue shaft into the glare of the world’s waiting media. Later he ran the New York marathon and appeared on the David Letterman Show.
Last week though he was back in a Chilean clinic battling drug and alcohol problems. He has lost all the money that was showered on him in the months following his rescue.
“I clown around to disguise reality, but I’m feeling terrible on the inside,” he told Chile’s El Mercurio newspaper in an interview from the clinic.
Peña’s case is the most dramatic of the 33 men. However, according to psychologists who are still trying to treat them all, they are still suffering from the psychological effects of being trapped for 17 days with no contact with the surface and then having to wait another 53 days before a complex and risky rescue operation brought them to safety.
“All are still trying to normalise their lives psychologically but they are still battling health problems as a result of the trauma they suffered,” says Manuel Pino Toro, Chilean author of the book Buried Alive, who has followed the men’s attempts to rebuild their lives in the year since their rescue.
“They do not sleep well. They have permanent nightmares and panic attacks. They are still receiving help but not all are making progress. Some quit psychological counselling too soon and so lost financial aid from the state, which is making worse other problems.”
Despite originally agreeing a pact to keep some of what happened underground between themselves, the men have since talked more openly about their ordeal. On Sunday night, a documentary on Chile’s national broadcaster recounted how they had even discussed cannibalism during the 17 long days before rescuers finally established contact.
“It was kind of who died first, that’s where we were. He who died first, the rest will go there, like the little animals,” remembered Samuel Avalos, the 22nd man to be rescued.
The miners’ readjustment has been made more difficult by the initial global fascination with their story. At first they were showered with offers of money during a fierce and at times ethically dubious bidding war between media organisations desperate to get their stories. While in hospital in the days after their rescue, journalists were smuggling in contracts for exclusive interviews worth more than €7,500.
The scramble to sign the men and their families up to exclusive media deals even led to one Chilean station smuggling a contract down in the capsule which ferried food to the men in the refuge where they had taken shelter from the mine’s collapse.
But now that interest in their story has dwindled, the lucrative interviews are fewer and farther between and paid-for visits to Disneyland, the Greek islands and Old Trafford seem as increasingly distant memory.
Many are struggling to readjust to normal life, especially as none wanted to go back down under ground.
“Many of them today feel betrayed by the media,” says Pino Toro. “They thought the media would support them forever but as is natural after a time the world lost interest in their story.”
There is also resentment against Chile’s government. Initial calls to give all the men a life pension did not materialise. The 14 eldest men in the group started to receive a monthly pension of €400 in August, but many others are struggling to make ends meet.
Several are unemployed while Dario Segovia, the 20th man to be rescued, now sells fruits on the streets of Copiapó, the oasis town in the Atacama desert nearest to the site of the disaster.
Although media interest has trailed off in recent months, Hollywood is still planning a film on the men’s ordeal based on the diary kept by Víctor Segovia, one of the men who says he is managing slowly to get his life back to normal.
Another to turn the experience to his advantage is Mario Sepúlveda. He became an instant hero in Chile when as the second man rescued he punched the air and led rescuers in a chant of triumph. Psychologists though had in fact identified him as one of the more psychologically fragile of the 33 men.
However, determined to take his second chance at life, he has reconciled with his previously estranged wife and today he travels the world giving lucrative motivational speeches. Even so, he remains haunted by his experience, telling a a newspaper on a recent tour of the US: “I would give everything I have if it would be possible to make it so that the ordeal never happened.”