SAN JOSE MINE, Chile — Former rugby players from Uruguay who survived more than two months of isolation in the snow-covered Andes met Saturday with some of the relatives of 33 trapped miners and urged them to stay strong.
“They will be out soon,” said Jose Luis Inciarte, one of the four plane crash survivors visiting the San Jose copper and gold mine in northern Chile. “The whole world is with them.”
The men communicated with miners by video, urging to appreciate the relative good fortune that nobody died in the partial tunnel collapse at the mine Aug. 5. They also said that they were moved by the miners’ fortitude.
Fellow survivor Gustavo Zerbino, who waved a Uruguayan flag, said that to the extent possible, the miners should “enjoy themselves.”
“Nobody died,” he said.
After speaking with the miners, the men presented a Uruguayan flag, which they said they would leave at the camp as a symbol of Latin American solidarity.
“Viva, Chile!” they yelled.
Inciarte and Zerbino were among 16 Uruguayans who survived a plane crash in the snow-covered Andean peaks in 1972. They waited 72 days to be rescued, and some were forced to eat the flesh of friends killed in the crash to stay alive. Their story inspired the book and movie “Alive.”
Just a handful of miners’ relatives received the Uruguayans; many have started to come and go as rescuers pursue what could be a months-long process of digging a tunnel big enough to extract the miners.
