Best Documentary
The Children of the Coal Mines
200 metres underground, in unhealthy shafts, they dig… they are 9 or 10 years old and they work in the mines of Boyaca, the biggest coal deposit in Colombia. It was in 1993 that a report documented the lives of Jairo, Oscar, Jaime… the mole children. 17 years later, Edouard Bergeon found them and showed them the images they had never seen. “I’m here underground like a mole. Imagine what I’m going to end up like. I started working when I was 10. I’m 32 and I’m still down the mine. I do it for my kids, to give them food and allow them to study.” His children, his wife, his mother discover for the first time the images of Oscar aged 10 pushing his coal barrow. Jaider also has a family, which he only sees at weekends. During the week he digs coal a six-hour drive from his home. Things haven’t changed much since his childhood. At 13, Jaider was already denouncing his working conditions, “I risk my life every day and I’m scared. I know people who never came out.” The image that stays in the memory is of Jairo’s face as he comes out of the mine, panting, with a sack of coal on his back. Today Jairo has been spared the silicosis that is killing his father. He left the mine to join the army. “If I weren’t in the army, I’d still be down the mine. And tomorrow I’d be in the same condition as my father.” Jaider wanted to show his colleagues the documentary filmed 17 years ago, in which he was one of the principal characters. “Seeing such a small child with a sack of coal on his back. Out of breath… It’s very hard. When I started I was 9… before Jaider. Now you can’t make children work. The slavery of that time is over.” And yet… when Oscar takes reporters 170 metres underground… deep in the bowels of the earth, five mole children of today, five little black faces like his, stare at Jaider, the mole child of 1993. -
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Published Apr 5, 2019
