But today Mr. Sánchez, like many of the 33 miners who survived 69 days nearly a half-mile underground, is jobless and at wits’ end. Twice a month, he boards a bus to Santiago, Chile’s capital, traveling 11 hours each way for a short visit with a psychiatrist. He is one of nine miners receiving sick-leave pay for prolonged post-traumatic stress; a handful of others say they are seeing private therapists.
“Most of us are in the same place with emotional and psychological problems,” said Mr. Sánchez, 20. “It was the fear that we would never again see our families, that we were going to die. We just can’t shake those memories.”
One year after their globally televised rescue, after the worldwide spotlight faded and the trips and offers have dwindled, the miners say that most of them are unemployed and that many are poorer than before.
Only a handful of them have steady jobs, they say. Just four have returned to mining. Two others, Víctor Zamora and Darío Segovia, are trying to make ends meet by selling fruits and vegetables, one from a stall, the other out of his truck.
“They made us feel like heroes,” said Edison Peña, another miner, who is now in a psychiatric clinic. “In the end, we are selling peanuts. It’s ironic, isn’t it?”
Some miners have been paid to do interviews or give motivational speeches. But those opportunities proved fleeting for most. Now many are counting on a Hollywood movie about them — which still does not have a script — to be their economic savior.
Mr. Peña, the miner who became famous for his love of Elvis Presley and running, is coping with trauma caused not only by his time below but also by the aftermath of the rescue, when the demands of instant celebrity proved overwhelming, his doctor said, leading him to abuse drugs and alcohol.
Three miners, including Mr. Sánchez and Mr. Segovia, recently resumed psychiatric treatment after the nightmares and sleeplessness returned. Doctors said that they expected more of them to have a relapse, and that many now get by on a steady regimen of sedatives and antidepressants.
“This is very similar to how Vietnam veterans suffered,” said Rodrigo Gillibrand, the psychiatrist treating the nine men on sick leave covered by labor insurance, though the mine has been closed down. “They have post-traumatic symptoms that could be chronic.”
In the wake of the rescue, the miners benefited from an outpouring of sympathy and support. A Chilean mining magnate, Leonardo Farkas, gave the miners more than $15,000 each so they could rest and recuperate. He also gave free homes to two who were marrying, and he said he helped one miner find psychiatric care after the miner found his fiancée with another man.
Mr. Sánchez, like many of the 16 miners interviewed, said he wanted to return to the mines. But Dr. Gillibrand has recommended that none of them work underground again.
José Ojeda tried to go back in February. After descending more than 1,000 feet in a drilling truck, the water was cut off. An assistant went to turn it back on, leaving Mr. Ojeda alone. He suffered a panic attack.
“I started to sweat a lot, a cold sweat,” he said. “I don’t even remember how they took me out; I blacked out.”
Potential employers in Copiapó have declined to hire the miners for fear that they were psychologically scarred by their experience, several miners said.
Some people wonder whether the miners are trying. Mr. Farkas said no miner took him up on his job offer. But their requests for money keep rolling in.
He said he “felt taken advantage of” by Claudio Yáñez, a miner for whom he bought a house worth $63,500, at least twice as much as he would usually pay for a worker’s house. Mr. Farkas said that he wanted to give him a less expensive house, as he had done for his own employees, but that Mr. Yáñez used a television crew to press him to buy the costly one.
“I did plenty for the miners; now they have to do it on their own,” Mr. Farkas said.
Mr. Yáñez, 35, denied taking advantage of Mr. Farkas, who he said gave him the house “from his heart.”
Aaron Nelsen contributed reporting from Copiapó and Santiago, Chile.
