Sub Terra: Mining Scenes

Sub Terra. Cuadros Mineros is the first work by the Chilean short-story writer Baldomero Lillo (1867-1923), published on July 12, 1904. In its first edition it was composed of eight stories, almost all of them set in the coal mines of Lota in the Province of Concepci n. In the second edition, from 1917, other five stories were added, some of them with a different theme.
The book describes from various angles and characters the way coal miners lived and died, particularly those in the Lota mines in southern Chile, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who worked from dawn to dusk in miserable conditions.
It is basically a description of life in the mine, and the life of its workers; it is also a critique of the exploiting power, which reduced the human condition of the miners to simple beasts. Lillo was considered the master of the genre of social realism in his country.
The first edition consisted of eight stories:

• The Invalids
• Gate Number 12
• Firedamp
• Payday
• The Devil's Pit
• The Well
• Juan Fari a
• Big Game Hunting

Later, in the second edition, Lillo modified the text of several of the original stories and added:

• The Search
• The Drill
• It was Him Alone...
• The Attached Hand
• Ca uela and Petaca