A presentation to the Inter-disciplinary Conference on Mining in the Asia-Pacific

26-28 November 2007, Quezon City, Philippines

By Vernie Yocogan-Diano

Chairperson, Innabuyog (alliance of indigenous women’s organizations in the Cordillera, Philippines)

Almost 66 % of the land area of the Cordillera is now covered with various mining applications, including the mining areas of 2 existing big mining companies, the Lepanto Consolidated Mining Corporation and the Philex Mining Corporation which had operated for decades already. Five of the 23 priority mining projects of the Macapagal-Arroyo government are found in our region—Batong-Buhay in Kalinga, the Far Southeast, Teresa Gold, Itogon-Suyoc Mines and Padcal Mines which are all located in Benguet and covered by expansion projects of the Lepanto Corporation and Philex Mining Corporation except that which is covered by the Itogon-Suyoc Mines whose subsidiary is Anvil Mines, an Australian mining company.

The Cordillera region accounts for only 6% of the country’s land area. Yet, it contains 25% of the country’s ore reserves that are primary gold-bearing and 39% of the country’s ore reserves that are primarily copper-bearing, notwithstanding that large corporate mining had been happening for more than a century already. Even the least mineral rich-province, Ifugao has at the moment 3 mining applications.

Among the foreign investors are Anglo-American (UK), Climax Arimco-Oceana Gold (Australia), Phelps Dodge (US), Olympus (Canada), Wolfland (Canada) and Anvil Mining (Australia).

The existence of mining companies in the region has not at all alleviated the poverty situation particularly the province of Benguet which hosted mining corporations for more than a century already. It remains to be one of poor provinces of the country. Agriculture, fisheries and forestry still come as the highest income source of local government units. A study of the University of the Philippines Baguio concludes that non-mining areas perform at least as good as mining areas and thus, communities or local government units that want their cities or municipalities to take off and take a higher path need not embrace large-scale mining (Arturo Boquiren).

Different levels of resistance are happening in areas where mining companies are more aggressive. Women who are part of the resistance would say, “we are fighting giants”.

In our participation to the mining resistance movement in the Cordillera, Innabuyog was able to gather these stories of indigenous women, some of which are indeed enraging yet at the end these are stories of hope, that give us more reason to resist the large mining industry at various scopes and levels.

In Benguet, women refer to the resistance of their foreparents during the Spanish colonization period that stopped several expeditions in search of gold. They believe that women in those times took part in rolling boulders to stop the Spaniards from moving in. “Our greatmothers could not just have sat down as women of succeeding generations have continued to defend our land from mining companies”. They could have helped in providing food and kept watch against the foreign invaders. Still in Benguet, in 1937, the Ibaloy and Kankanaey women joined community protests in the village of Gumatdang and demanded from the mining company compensation for their lost crops due to drying up of their lands and irrigation sources. From 1987 to the early years of the 1990s, that spirit of resistance was lived by indigenous women in Itogon who succeeded in stopping the expansion of the open pit mines of the Benguet Corporation, the biggest and oldest mining firm in the Cordillera at that time. Women led the human barricades, they served as negotiators and they organized the taking of turns of barricaders to ensure that economic production will still be attended. When their leaders were arrested, the women ran to the trucks where the government police dumped the arrested protesters and joined the mass arrest. Their slogan was “all for one, one for all”.

Mother Petra Macliing, a respected leader of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), and almost in her 80’s, always shares vividly in mining discussions the experience of women her village in Mainit, Bontoc, Mountain Province. They drove the mine prospectors of the Benguet Corporation in the early 70s. The local elite and officials were bribed to facilitate the mine opening. Enraged, the women went to the mine site, ordered the mine prospectors to move out their equipments and tents. The women got more infuriated when the mine representatives refused to obey . They undressed themselves as a statement to tell them—“shame on you, go back to where you came from”, and went after the mine workers who got scared and finally ran away. The women carried the equipments and brought them to the town center of Bontoc. Indeed it was a story of success as the mining company never came back.

Leonora Membrot, former chairperson of Innabuyog, always shares about how the protest against the Batong-buhay mines in Kalinga in the early 80s, started her activism. Women in the lowland areas of the province protested the operations of the mines because of the pollution it was causing the ricefields downstream. Women complained that their ricefields will soon be unfit for cultivation with the siltation and toxic contaminants. Rice producing peasants, majority are women, rose up to demand closure of the Batongbuhay mines. Women were in the frontline of the protests. Support was also generated from affected towns of the province of Isabela. The sustained protest actions and support led to the mine’s closure in 1985.

At a time that Leonora was requested to help in the campaign against the expansion of Lepanto Consolidated Mining Incorporated in Mankayan, Benguet, she always starts her piece with her Batong-buhay story. Her story also reached other areas where there are mining applications.

The story of Tina Moyaen of Conner, Apayao shows how more ferocious mining companies are, along with government officials and agencies who come as their mouthpiece and defenders. In 2005, Tina and her townmates learned about the mining application in their town that will eat up 81% of their fertile land. The applicant, the Cordillera Exploration is a subsidiary of British-owned Anglo-American Co. Another applicant is Copperfield Co. which is subsidiary to the merged Climax Mining and Oceana Gold. The applications are strongly endorsed by government agencies like the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) and the Mines and Geo-sciences Board (MGB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). As Tina puts it, the local officials committed the gravest treachery on the people by demonizing the mine protesters and by selling hard the company’s promises of educational scholarships, improvement of roads and employment. The resistance galvanized into the formation of the Save Apayao Peoples’ Organization (SAPO) that conducted series of study-discussions on mining. They did all forms of actions—community dialogues, distribution of information materials on mining and conducted a signature campaign where 20 of the town’s communities voted against and only one community voted for mining. The high profile campaign of their organizations created stronger reaction from pro-mine supporters. This was happening at the height of political killings in the country and 2 fresh incidents of killing just happened in Kalinga victimizing Marcus Bangit and Alyce Omengan-Claver of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance. Leaders received warnings of liquidation and Tina was informed that she was in the hit-list of the military. SAPO leaders were warned of being the next victim of political killing if they remain persistent in opposing the mining projects. The threats made Tina a prisoner of her own home for a month in August 2006, unable to step out from her house. Her son was forced to stop school because she cannot accompany him. For some time, they got so terrorized, they again recomposed and continued ever more resolved. Tina brought her experience to a group of Asian women leaders of mining struggles in a mining forum in Thailand that was facilitated by the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, and then in a mining tour in the UK through the assistance of PipLinks, where meeting with various groups including the heads of the Anglo-American, were done. In her bid for vice-mayoralty for Conner in the last May elections, her opponent, a staunch supporter of the mining projects, told voters in his campaign that “the number of votes for Tina will be the number of bodies that will float in the river”. Indeed, a shocking statement from one who still remains a public official. Presently, a batallion of Philippine Army(77th IB) is deployed in Conner.

Josie Guilao’s family and some relatives were displaced by mining in their community in Benguet. They migrated to Runruno, Nueva Viscaya (outside of the Cordillera region) and have developed their agricultural livelihood there. They now face another displacement from the enforced mining operations of the MTL et al Exploration (formerly FCPI/Greenwater and Metals Exploration Mineral Resources Corp or METEX). The women’s strong resistance is all about saving their agricultural livelihood which they developed for decades after they moved from their original province in Ifugao and Benguet from the 1960s up. Aside from MTL et al Exploration is the presence of Oceana Gold Philippines in the valley of Malabing and Kasibu, still of Nueva Viscaya. Oceana Gold Philippines is a subsidiary of the Australian-owned mining company, Oceana Gold. These mining companies are expected to displace the small-scale miners whose number has increased significantly from the mid-70s. An elder woman suffered from psychological trauma after her grandson, who is employed by the mining company, dispersed their barricade and forcibly carried her away. She became hysterical when she saw earthmoving equipments moving towards her house to dump mine waste in a canal close-by. Since then, she lost her voice and has become very depressed. Like Conner, various forms of actions took place from the most civil form to more confrontational ones leading to arrests, detentions and filing of charges in court of community protesters.

In the Asia-Pacific and national consultation with the Special Rapporteur of Violence Against Women, Dr. Yakin Erturk, last September in Manila, Innabuyog presented the violence against indigenous brought by mining along with militarization of areas covered by mining projects. Nida Cupatan Legaspi of Itogon, Benguet, strengthened earlier discussions on mining through her testimony—“Damage to traditional livelihood sources has been forcing local women to seek wage employment outside, inlcuding overseas. The children of some women who worked far away from home have become vulnerable to abuse by their fathers”. In her own village, one woman who worked in the Middle East nearly killed her husband a couple of years ago when she came home and discovered that, in her absence, he had repeatedly raped their daughter. A great number of women must seek odd jobs day to day, and accept even the smallest wages. Because of the uncertainty, they are always tense and heavily stressed, and quite a number of them have succumbed to mental illness. Children are forced out of school due to the economic inability of families in the mined-out areas. Women’s participation in community meetings has decreased significantly because they cannot afford to give up even a single day of work and wage. This has dire implications on decision-making in many villages in Itogon where women’s insights have always been important to deliberations on community issues, and in fact, women traditionally take on leaderhip roles.

A new experience that we are further advancing is building the solidarity between peasant communities and the workers, particularly in the struggle against the Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company. Women have been playing a key role to this effort, the indigenous peasant women in the communities and the wives of miners in the mine camps. The common call is to stop the expansion operations of Lepanto given the amount of destruction it causes to the livelihood, environment, health and unity of communities, and pursuing the economic demands and occupational safety of the workers. The biggest support group of the workers in their last two labor strikes were the peasant communities and of course, the miners’ wives association (Timpuyog dagiti Babbai iti Minas ti Lepanto-TBML).

Indigenous women in the Cordillera through Innabuyog weaves these stories and experiences of struggle against large corporate mining with struggles of other women at the national level and overseas. A national network of indigenous women, BAI works with other mining struggle groups in the country. At the Asia-Pacific level, we do so through the Women and Environment Task Force of the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and helping coordinate for the International Women and Mining for the Asia area. At the international level, our stories are shared with the International Women and Mining Network and with networks of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance. How to make these networks be of stronger support to local struggles and how local struggles are raised at a wider level is a continuing area of discussion and work.

As we share these stories, we are inspired of similar stories. As we share these stories, more actions are thought of and more prepare themselves to the battle against large corporate mining.

Indeed, it is fighting the giants. Collaboration of the national government and its agencies with the mining corporations have become ever more stark. Our local women leaders say, “government and mining companies are truly barbaric, greedy and violent. Not only that, they are traitors, who accuse our legitimate and just actions as acts of terrorism”.

This is struggle where women address national patrimony , sovereignty of peoples to control our land and natural resources, self-determination, life and livelihood for the present and the future, dignity as women and as a people, and global justice. The unfading words of Macliing Dulag, a martyr of the Cordillera peoples’ movement is made more alive at this time where mining corporations are dictating power--- “If we do not fight, we die anyway, if we fight, we die honorably”. There is no better action than UNITE and RESIST.

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