PHILIPPINES: Local Miners ‘Sold Out’ to Foreigners, Say Activists

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

DIWALWAL, Philippines, Feb 24 1996 (IPS) - Makeshift houses with blue plastic sheet-covered roofs, brown gashes in the deep green forests of the surrounding hillsides and a constant low rumbling sound, set this sprawling settlement in the southern island of Mindanao apart from most others in the Philippines.

Diwalwal hosts the greatest number of small gold mines in the Philippines, but it may be the last of an era. Foreign multinationals — mostly from Australia — have snapped up licenses to explore almost a fifth of this country’s land area, according to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

“The government has sold our country out to foreigners for thirty pieces of gold,” says Judy Pasimio, an activist with the Manila-based Legal Resources Centre, who says that small miners will be wiped out by the foreign invasion.

For example, in southern Mindanao the Western Mining Corporation of Australia has begun exploring a 100,000 hectare concession. In northern Mindanao, Climax Mining, also of Australia, has applied for a concession.

In Luzon — the biggest island of the Philippines — Newcrest Mining, also from Australia, has asked for permission to mine in the Cordillera Mountains while Astron, another Australian firm, has announced an agreement to re-open the Carmen mine on the island of Cebu.

Mining has taken place in the Philippines for centuries. In fact this was one of the reasons Spain conquered the islands in the 16th century. Spanish conquerors reported seeing indigenous mountain people of the Cordillera chiseling away at little “pocket” mines.

The “pocket” miners have been lauded by anthropologists for the equitable manner in which they share their wealth, while environmentalists have praised them for the minimal impact of their activities.

Evelyn Caballero, an anthropologist, says that the Kankana-ey peoples of the Cordilleras believe the gold is owned by Kabunian (their god) and anitos (ancestral spirits).

Community elders, women and young people can request gold ore or concentrate through a ‘social process’ called “sagaok” and “makilinang” which ensures that everybody has a chance to benefit from the mining.

Less well known is the gold-panning of the B’laan people of southern Mindanao, who turn to this activity only in times of drought. When the rivers turn into muddy streams which cannot water their fields the B’laan sift the alluvial soil for gold instead.

“There will always be gold. We will never run out of gold but you have to mine it the right way,” Caballero quotes the local people as saying.

But as far as the multi-national companies are concerned, the most effective, if not “right way” of extracting the yellow metal, includes the use of large earth movers and a variety of toxic chemicals.

Church workers say the indigenous people are already being coaxed or threatened to make them turn their lands over to the new arrivals.

In some areas — like Agusan del Sur and Surigao del Sur where Climax wants to explore — indigenous Manobo communities have been subjected to army strafing, according to a recent church-organised human rights investigation.

Not that this is the first time that indigenous and rural areas have been affected by a gold rush in this country, although previous efforts were made by Filipinos.

Diwalwal, for example, is not a traditional mining area but grew out of a gold rush that began in the early 1980s to this land that was once occupied by the Mandaya indigenous peoples.

Today, in Nhang — the heart of this mining boomtown — hundreds of motor mills crush gold-bearing rock while karaoke machines blast out love songs.

Yet the 50,000 population of Diwalwal seems to be almost entirely composed of poor Filipino men and young boys wearing mining helmets and carrying either spades or heaving sacks of ore.

A constant stream of miners trudge up the steep paths against a constant torrent of waste-laced water that pours down from the mills. Many of these miners have come from other boom towns that have now faded like Kematu which lies to the south of Diwalwal.

There the 5,000 member community of indigenous T’boli people was devastated in a matter of six months as 35,000 miners flocked to the town to dig more than 100 tunnels in 1989.

The Kankana-ey “pocket” miners have also suffered at the hands of outside enterprise. In the early 1980s the giant bulldozers of the Benguet Corporation, a Filipino company, tore into their mountains to create the Grand Antamok open-pit mine.

The mine’s demand for water has strained local water supplies so heavily that people often have to go three days without the supplies of the precious liquid.

Today rice farmers whose fields are watered by the rivers that accept waste from the mine say that yields have plummeted while further downstream fish workers in the Lingayen Gulf report a major drop in fish catch.

Environmentalists say this is the result of the waste generated by big mining operations — which ranges from toxic chemicals like cyanide and mercury to the vast quantities of fine rock-waste that is discarded after the gold has been extracted.

Chemicals are not the only menace that mining brings to these areas. Diwalwal is considered very violent — army officers report three stabbing incidents a day here and in the past shoot-outs were very common as miners turned to the sword or gun to settle their differences.

“Life is cheap here. I used to get 300 pesos (11.50 dollars) a day as a security guard,” says Fedie Mangaron, who quit his previous job to set up the Gold Spider disco and brothel.

“For an electrician the pay is even worse,” says Bonifacio Lamsim, who is nursing a beer at the Gold Spider bar. “I make 150 pesos (5.75 dollars) a day.”

And the risks are high. Lamsim has been unemployed for the last three months because he caught hepatitis — one of a variety of diseases that seem to run rife in this town, where toxic substances like mercury and cyanide have become part of the local water supply.

“I got weak lungs too but at least I am alive. Many of my friends have been killed in the tunnel collapses or from inhaling the poisonous air deep underground,” he adds.

“I’m still here because I know where the ore is good. All I need is a million pesos to open a tunnel. Maybe I should ask the Australians for some money,” he muses.