The first guy who got out was kind of camera shy the whole time, so the second guy, Mario Sepulveda, made up for it. The English-speaking media doesn’t seem to be reporting his remarks, so here’s what the Chilean papers say:
He said, “I was with God and with the Devil. God fought for me and won, He kept me in His good hand; and at no moment did I fear that God was not going to get me out of this. I always knew that they were going to get me out. I always had faith in the professionals that there are in Chile, and in the Great Creator.”
He also asked, that “they please don’t treat us like artists or journalists but like mineworkers. I was born
to die harnessed to the yoke.”
Sepulveda brought rescuers rocks as presents (as was reported in the Anglosphere), and also said that the Chilean mining industry needed to make changes to prevent more incidents like this. However, he thanked the mine owner by name and also thanked other corporate people — “….extraordinary people, like those of Codelco, who worked to get us out of this.” He also thanked the doctors and psychologists “who brought us back to life. From 700 meters away, without seeing us face to face, they got us better.”
Finally, he said that he was “proud to have a government like the one we have today and of the people that are working in it,” and plugged the Chilean president.
