defeatism. She remembers: "The authorities up there tried to kick us out. They told us that the children would get sick, that they should be at school... That we had no business up at the mine... That we were getting in the way." By now, most of the Gmez family had turned up -- as had many of the other relatives, camped out beside the mine, setting up what would later be known all over the world as Camp Hope. Lilly's voice turns scornful at the patronising tone taken towards them by the very male world of mining. It is an environment where men know best, and women aren't allowed to enter a mine for fear of bringing bad luck. Looking at the images of those first days, it is astonishing to see these desperate women exploit the power of the media, first on local TV. "We called on the president of Chile not to allow our men to be abandoned," remembers Lilly. "We appealed to him as a father, as a family man, saying how he should put himself in our shoes." The women's raw emotion found an audience. They were lucky. The government had been heavily criticised for its handling of an earthquake and tsunami six months previously. The new business-driven president, Sebastin Piera, was also perceived as aloof and indifferent to the common worker. Faced with these appeals, the mining minister, Laurence Golborne, was dispatched to the scene. Recalls Elvira "Katty" Valdivia, wife of one of the