A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire

On March 10, 1920, in Pachuca, Mexico, the Compañía de Santa Gertrudis--the largest employer in the region, and a subsidiary of the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company--may have committed murder.The alert was first raised at six in the morning: a fire was tearing through the El Bordo mine.After a brief evacuation, the mouths of the shafts were sealed.Company representatives hastened to assert that “no more than ten” men remained inside the mineshafts, and that all ten were most certainly dead.Yet when the mine was opened six days later, the death toll was not ten, but eighty-seven.And there were seven survivors.