San Esteban Mining Company

Compañía Minera
San Esteban Primera

Type	Private
Industry	Metal & Gold Copper
Genre	Mining
Founded	1957
Founder	Jorge Kemeny Letay
Headquarters	Santiago, Chile
Number of locations	Copiapó
Revenue	estimated US$20 million
Total assets	Frozen by Court Order as of 2010
Website	Unknown

Compañía Minera San Esteban Primera (San Esteban Primera Mining Company) is a Chilean mining company, dedicated to the production of copper and gold concentrates. San Esteban's headquarters are located in Providencia, Santiago Metropolitan Region.

San Esteban also owns the San José Mine in Copiapó, Chile, where 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days after a mining accident on August 5, 2010.

Chile has a long tradition in mining, which developed during the 20th century and made the country the world's top producer of copper. Since 2000, an average of 34 people have died every year in mining accidents in Chile, with a high of 43 in 2008, according to a review of data collected by the state regulatory agency Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería de Chile (abbreviated Sernageomin).

The Compañía Minera San Esteban Primera (CMSE) is notorious in the mineral-rich region and, according to an official with the Chilean Safety Association, eight workers have died inside the company's mines in the 12 years to 2010. Between 2004 and 2010, the company received 42 fines for breaching safety regulations. The San Jose Mine was shut down in 2007 when relatives of a miner who had died in an accident sued company executives, but was reopened in 2008 despite failing to comply with all regulations. The matter is still under investigation according to mining committee Senator Baldo Prokurica. Due to budget constraints, there were only three inspectors for the Atacama Region's 884 mines.

CMSE had ignored warnings and worker-initiated lawsuits concerning unsafe working conditions in its mines. CMSE's management operates "without listening to the voice of the workers when they say that there is danger or risk," said Javier Castillo, secretary of the trade union that represents miners and a former miner at the San José mine. "Nobody listens to us. Then they say we're right. If they would have believed the workers, we would not be lamenting this now," said Gerardo Núñez, head of the union at a nearby Candelaria Norte mine.