Chile's miners welcomed to poor neighborhoods, joblessness, media swarm

COPIAPO, Chile (AP) — Carlos Bugueno is out of the collapsed mine but still lives in close quarters, sharing his small wood-and-tin house with 16 relatives. His family welcomed him home by lining the street with white plastic bags filled with air — they had no money for balloons.

Despite donations and the promise of book and movie deals, most of the 33 Chilean miners trapped more than two months have returned to lives of struggle in improvised homes, often in gang-ridden neighborhoods lacking basic services. Some worry it won't get better.

“Three months from now, what will I be doing? Selling candy on the beach? Wondering what the government has done for us? Nothing,” said Edison Pena. “I'm very afraid and I would like for things to change.”

All but one of the miners have been released from the hospital since their rescue Wednesday from the San Jose gold and copper mine, where they had been trapped nearly a half-mile underground since the Aug. 5 collapse. Most returned to the mine Sunday for a Mass at the makeshift camp where their relatives had waited for them.

“It's nice to be here where our families were,” said Luis Urzua, the shift foreman who has been praised for leading the trapped miners through the 69-day ordeal, especially in the first 17 days when they had no contact with the outside world and just a 48-hour emergency food supply.

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