Down underground, looking like Velsaquez paintings of the workers of their time, the men have waited, no doubt with many stories to tell now. The first fellow’s been brought up. Now two, now three, now four, now five… May all others travel topside safely.
Florencio Avalos was the first of 33 trapped miners to reach surface after being trapped half-mile underground for 69 days.
His first name and surname could loosely be translated as ‘flowers floating downstream’… as in the old days, when in memory of a time passed, or in thanksgiving, the ancestors lit candles on little clay plates bedecked with flowers and petals and sent them out onto the open water to bob their ways downstream in the night.