Many Mexicans work Utah's mines

HUNTINGTON, Utah — The Utah mining accident has illustrated the way increasing numbers of Hispanic immigrants are working the mines in this heavily white state.

Three of the six men trapped in Monday's cave-in are from Mexico, according to the Mexican Consulate.

"People come here because they know that there's enough work to go around," said Salvador Lazalde, a local Hispanic leader whose cousins work in a nearby open-pit copper mine and who worries that one of the trapped miners is from his hometown, a village in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. "If the pay is good, people say the risk is worth it."

Exactly how many Hispanics are working the mines in Utah is not clear. But as the global coal market has heated up, some mining companies across the West have filled a rash of new jobs in recent years with immigrants from Mexico.

Immigrants often are more willing to settle for low wages and accept the dangers involved in digging coal hundreds of feet beneath the surface.

The mining company has withheld the names of the six miners, but The Associated Press has confirmed five: Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Manuel Sanchez.

The Mexican Consulate in Salt Lake City had no information on the Mexican miners' hometowns. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said he was told by the consulate that the Mexican miners are legal immigrants.

Sanchez's sister said Wednesday that relatives had not been given enough information about the rescue efforts, and that three Spanish-speaking families were not provided an interpreter in the first three days of the crisis.

"We've provided translators for the Hispanic families and crisis counselors," said Bob Murray, chairman of Murray Energy, part owner of the mine. "We've kept them sequestered and I feel we've administered to their needs very much."

The influx of Hispanics is part of a dynamic that has been going on in Utah since pioneer days.

Chinese, Greek and Mexican miners first flocked to Utah and other Western states in the 1880s, lured by work in the coalfields. They settled in mining centers such as Emery County, a region of towering red and brown rock formations that is now home to many of the workers in the collapsed mine.

A new wave of immigrants, many of them believed to be illegal, came to Utah when the coal industry started booming again.

"A lot of these coal miners are trained and knowledgeable miners," said Ricardo Silva, a community activist who volunteers with the Utah Coalition for La Raza and Jobs with Justice. "They need a job and they'll do anything for it, including working in these really dangerous conditions."

The number of Hispanics in Utah grew from about 200,000 in 2000 to about 230,000 in 2005, constituting 11 percent of the state's population, according to Census figures.