In 1906, mineworkers in northern Mexico walked off the job at the Cananea Copper Company to protest their labor conditions. William Cornell Greene of Chappaqua, New York, the mine’s new owner and one of the richest men in the world, didn’t like it. He wasted no time sending down the Arizona Rangers, who brutally suppressed the strike, murdering twenty-three workers in the process.

Four years later, with the Mexican Revolution spreading like wildfire across the countryside, people often repeated the story of the miners’ resistance and martyrdom as inspiration for their struggle.

In 2006, sixty-five workers were trapped underground following an explosion at the Pasta de Conchos mine owned by Grupo México (GM), the third largest copper conglomerate in the world. The rescue attempts were arguably insufficient and inarguably unsuccessful, and a whole nation followed in real time as the miners slowly died.