Lucas de la Cal reports that as one approaches the far side of the impressive mountain of coal waste from Yerada, in the northeast of Morocco, near the border with Algeria, the motto of the kingdom that is drawn under the hill is getting bigger and bigger. A veteran miner who has heated the Arab baths of the country for two decades points to the cemetery as the starting point of this underground journey, of poverty and abandonment. "There are hundreds of tombs of miners and people who have died from silicosis, breathing for years the particles of coal that are in the air," says this man, whose name is Abdel. He speaks a little Spanish because the first time he heard mention of the "curse of coal" he was working in a Leon mine. "When I arrived in northern Spain, I was barely 20 years old and my classmates repeatedly told me that a miner never knows if he is going home. I answered that in the city of Morocco where I was born, in Yerada, I had been collecting coal since I was a child and that I had already buried nine cousins ​​who had died trapped in the mines, "recalls Abdel.
This is the story of those who live and die in the great abandoned mine. A coal basin that was officially closed 20 years ago because it stopped being profitable for the companies , but in which during this time more than 2,000 residents of Yerada have continued clandestinely exploiting the hundreds of open holes as their only resource to be able to eat all the days. A part of that coal ends up, among other places, in the Arab baths ( hammam ) of the north of Morocco. "There are also many children working, children aged 14 and 15, children of the men who emigrated when the mine closed and who now have no choice but to enter the mine's holes in the ground illegally to support their families," explains another miner named Mourad.
The residents of Yerada are aware that the coal that once gave them a future today has become their greatest misfortune . "We call them the death mines because more than 9,000 people have been killed there since a Belgian company discovered coal deposits in 1927," says Ahmed, who had to amputate two fingers of his hand a couple of times ago. years, after one of the machines that climbs with a pulley the sacks of coal fell on him when he was working inside a mine opening. « Almost every week there is an accident. And in the last three years, seven kids have died there inside . The last ones were two brothers in December. There is no security ».
The Moroccan government, through the local governor, has promised an "emergency plan" in the region and meet the demands, incorporating a project to control mining exploitation permits, security and the closure of clandestine mine openings. As well as including a work program in the thermal power station of the city and in other industrial zones of the country . Also in the south of Spain, especially for women, who can enter into the fruit collection campaigns. The Moroccan Minister of Agriculture, Aziz Akhannouch, met on Thursday with several local representatives to listen to their demands and to study how agriculture in the area can be enhanced.
The Executive of Rabat wants to stop the protests as soon as possible. It will not be easy because, as the photographer who accompanies us and who knows perfectly the reality of the kingdom, the people of Yerada had not realized how poor they are ... until now.
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