The father of the Chilean writer Baldomero Lillo was a foreman in a coal mine, and he later wrote with great realism about the sadness of the coal mines and the problem of child miners in our days. Here is, in part, one of his touching narratives.
“Pablo instinctively got hold of his father’s legs. His ears were buzzing, and the floor of the lift that fell under his feet caused him to panic. He felt he was falling into that black hole he had seen when entering the cage, and his big eyes were looking with terror at the walls of the well into which they were sinking with frightening speed.
After about a minute the speed suddenly slowed down, his feet rested firmly on the floor, and the heavy iron cage came to rest at the entrance of the gallery with the noisy creaking of chains and hinges.
The man took the child by the hand, and together they entered the black tunnel. They were the first to arrive, and the mine was practically deserted. The gallery was high enough to allow for a man to walk with a bent, and it was crossed by heavy wooden beams overhead. The side walls were invisible in the deep darkness that filled the spaces.
After a while they stood before a kind of cave excavated in the sheer rock. From the rough ceiling hung a tin lamp whose yellowish reflection made the space look like a crypt in mourning under dark shadows. At the end, a small man, advanced in years, was sitting before a table and was writing something on a huge register. His black suit framed his pale face full of wrinkles. On hearing steps he lifted his head and fixed his stare on the old miner who approached him shyly and said in a submissive voice:
- Sir, I’ve brought the boy.
The foreman’s keen eyes took in the lad’s feeble body at a glance. His thin arms and legs, his childlike innocence was reflected in his two widely open eyes, at once charming and fearful, and that struck him favourably, so that his heart, hardened by the daily sight of human misery, felt a tender impulse at the sight of that small child pulled away from his toys and his games, and condemned, as so many unhappy children, to languish and waste away in the dark galleries of the coal mine. The hard lines on his face softened, and he addressed with feigned annoyance the standing miner who was uneasily waiting for the end of that pause:
- Man! This lad is still too weak for this work. Is he your son?
- Yes, sir.
- Then you should show pity on his tender age, and before burying him here for life you should send him to school for at least some time.
- Sir – stumbled the miner with a painful accent of sorrow and of request in his voice – we are six people at home and only one to work. Pablo is already eight and he has to earn his bread as a miner’s son. His trade will be the trade of his father and his grandfather who never saw any school other than the mine.
His deep, shaking voice suddenly stopped with a heavy cough, but his moist eyes pleaded with such earnestness that the foreman, yielding to his mute entreaty, took a whistle to his lips and sent a shrill sound that echoed all along the empty gallery. The sound of hasty steps came through the opening, and a dark silhouette stood framed at the entrance.
- Juan – said the little man addressing the newcomer – take this boy to hatch number twelve. He’ll take the place of Jose’s son, the wheelbarrow boy, who died yesterday when the ceiling gave way.
Then turning harshly towards the miner, who was beginning to stumble out his thanks, he told him in a severe voice:
- I’ve seen that this last week you haven’t completed the five boxes which is the daily minimum for every worker. Don’t forget that if this happens again, it will be necessary to lay you off so that someone stronger than you can take your place.
And he dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
The three people walked out in silence, and their footsteps died gradually away in the long gallery.”
[I find the second part of the story too hard to transcribe it in detail. The father has to tie his son, who is struggling to get free and run away, to a heavy nail on the wall “from which bits of string hung, showing that it was not the first time the nail had been put to that use”. Let images such as these shake us and motivate us to seek an end to the suffering of children all over the world.]
(Cuentos breves 2, Maximiliano Tomás, Norma, Buenos Aires 2006, p. 65)
