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PRICE - Luis Jayro Hernandez shares first and last names with his cousin, Luis Alonso Hernandez, who is among the six miners trapped in the Crandall Canyon mine.
They also share a vocation - both young men arrived in Utah's coal country from Mexico. They came to earn a livelihood in the good-paying jobs in the mines.
Luis Jayro Hernandez said Tuesday that his cousin's family - wife, mother, brother and sister - are keeping to themselves and are not ready to talk to strangers about Luis Alonso.
"They're suffering, and it's very hard for them," he said in Spanish.
Alonso's two brothers, Ernesto and Carlos, who live in Mexico, could be coming north soon to join the vigil. Their father succumbed to cancer a few years ago.
Jayro, 27, and Alonso, 23, grew up together in Culiacan, a city in the western Mexico state of Sinaloa. Now in Utah, the cousins get together about twice a month with their uncle, also a miner, for barbecues.
The Hernandez men began coming from Culiacan to mine in Utah more than 15 years ago. Jayro said he first came to the area to visit his uncle in 1994 for a few months. He returned in 1999 and worked in the mine for two years. He moved his wife and young daughter here in early 2005, so he could mine and finish paying off his house in Mexico.
Alonso is the father of a 1-year-oldĀ daughter. He moved his family here last year, and started working at the Crandall Canyon mine four months ago. "It's still hard to take a word out of him," said his cousin, describing Alonso as a serious and quiet guy who, unlike many young men from Mexico, doesn't devote a lot of time to following soccer or other sports.
Jayro said he, his cousin and uncle and other Mexican families are lured here because of the high wages miners earn. In Mexico, he made $100 a week versus the $1,000 a week he earns as a miner. Still, he plans to return with his family to Mexico in December.
Two of the men trapped in the Crandall Canyon mine have relatives in Mexico, and their families have requested help in obtaining humanitarian visas to quickly bring loved ones to Utah. On Tuesday, Manuel Morodo, an assistant to Salt Lake Mexican Consul Salvador Jimenez, said some family members were on the way. Sen. Orrin Hatch's office confirmed that four people are coming to Utah from Mexico, but it is not known if they are the Hernandez relatives.
Over the course of last eight days, as rescuers frantically probed the mine for his cousin, Luis Jayro Hernandez divided his time between the briefings where families are updated on the search, and showing up at his job at another mine. As for his cousin's immediate family, they remain focused on one thing: "They're just thinking about what they can do to make sure [Alonso] is found alive."
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* JUDY FAHYS contributed to this story.