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A Silent Fury

The El Bordo Mine Fire

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On March 10, 1920, in Pachuca, Mexico, the Compañía de Santa Gertrudis - the largest employer in the region, and a subsidiary of the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company - may have committed murder.

The alert was first raised at six in the morning: A fire was tearing through the El Bordo mine. After a brief evacuation, the mouths of the shafts were sealed. Company representatives hastened to assert that “no more than 10” men remained inside the mineshafts, and that all 10 were most certainly dead. Yet when the mine was opened six days later, the death toll was not 10 but 87. And there were seven survivors.

A century later, acclaimed novelist Yuri Herrera has reconstructed a workers’ tragedy at once globally resonant and deeply personal: Pachuca is his hometown. His work is an act of restitution for the victims and their families, bringing his full force of evocation to bear on the injustices that suffocated this horrific event into silence.

©2018 Yuri Herrera. English-language translation © 2020 by Lisa Dillman (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing Americas Environment Labour & Industrial Relations Mexico Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Politics & Government Science Natural Disaster Latin American
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Fantastic book. Can be approached from so many angles. Structural racism, the journalism cooperation with private sector, the tragedies and victims that the capital would like to silence but is unable to “bury”. I really enjoyed it and the translation is great.

Opening a time capsule on workers rights and struggle vs capitalism from 100 years ago

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It's a passionate, well-written, meticulously researched report on an atrocity that should be remembered.

The callous actions and deceit that flowed from the moment disaster struck, leading to so many more dying, and the way blame was shifted onto the dead themselves, happily corroborated and elaborated on by a willing press that ultimately lead to plaudits and renown for the guilty and no ceremony or human regard for their charred victims' remains, discarded without a thought, just like their lives, should stay with us.

This is capitalism and the authority of the state. Think how much else that is kept from you and you refuse to see.

I am very glad this tale is being told and hope those exploited in life and death are granted some peace. A peace we should never allow those whose hands our necks rest in.

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