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Cordillera mining state amid corporate greed

Located in Northern Luzon, Philippines, the Cordillera region is known for its rich natural resources in terms of minerals, forest, water, and agriculture. Rich soils and water sources have enabled its people to sustain agriculture on mountainside rice terraces and life for several generations in the provinces of Abra, Benguet, Ifugao. Apayao, Kalinga, and Mt. Province.

Particular to mineral resources, 25% of gold ore and 39% of copper ore of the total confirmed mineral reserves in the Philippines are found in the Cordillera, where 25% is of gold ore and 39% is copper ore. In 2004, the Cordillera produced the bulk of the country’s total gold production through the Victoria Gold Project and Teresa Gold Project of Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company (Lepanto); the Contract Mining Project of Benguet Corporation (BC); and small-scale mining from various parts of the region.

Endowed with rich natural resources and known for its diverse culture of indigenous peoples, the Cordillera has been historically treated by the State and foreign capitalists as a resource-base for extraction and plunder of the ancestral lands and resources of the region. State laws and policies have been crafted and imposed under the framework of the Regalian Doctrine and driven by imperialist globalization.

It took the Supreme Court (SC) 10 years to declare the Mining Act’s constitutionality as it was opposed from the start by indigenous communities, and indigenous peoples’ rights advocates.

Mining policy of the GMA regime

As a reliable puppet and driving force of imperialist impositions, the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) regime embarked on a policy to revitalize the Philippine mining industry in the context of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995. The policy means fully liberalizing the local mining industry and resources for the takeover of global mining giants. Hell-bent on executing this policy thrust, GMA issued on January 2004 Executive Order 270: the National Policy Agenda to Revitalize the Philippine Mining Industry. On December of the same year, the Supreme Court declared the Mining Act as constitutional despite its own January 2004 decision and arguments to the contrary. This ended the biggest legal obstacle on the constitutionality question of the mining law which created uncertainty and unfavorable investment climate on the part of mining transnational companies (TNCs) to push through their plans. With its aggressive mining agenda, we believe the regime to be behind the SC decision declaring the Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA), which allows 100% foreign ownership on mining investment in the country, constitutional. While the nation feels betrayed, GMA and Malacañang, the Chamber of Mines, bureaucrat capitalists, and mining TNCs rejoiced over this ruling.

From the E.O. 270, the Minerals Action Plan (MAP) was formulated. MAP concretely sets the detailed steps and targets to address issues for the plan to revitalize the Philippine mining industry. It ensures the unhampered entry of foreign mining companies through government agencies themselves at the expense of sacrificing the rights of indigenous peoples who are most affected by mining applications and operations. Even legal requirements on environmental protection and processes are violated and powers of local government units are clipped. Obviously, laws not in unison with the Mining Act are being manipulated, harmonized or weakened to strengthen the implementation of the latter.

The GMA regime’s use of force to suppress the people’s protests on development aggression has given mining TNCs assured profit. Indigenous communities are continually militarized by the State armed forces, police, including paramilitary groups, resulting to ethnocide and massive human rights violations.

The administration likewise employs the argument of a national fiscal crisis to globalize the mining industry. This policy will not raise us to the better. This policy framework will further plunge the people into greater misery and the country into greater financial and economic crisis. The domestic economy’s all-out dependence to foreign capital is precisely the flawed policy framework that historically trapped the country into the chronic economic crisis that we are in. Such policy is reflective of a social system that favors the few ruling elite and foreign capitalists, on one hand; and contrary to the interest and welfare of the overwhelming majority of the people, on the other hand.

The revitalization of the Philippine mining industry only means further control and intensified plunder of the country’s wealth by global mining giants for their profit and greed. To indigenous peoples, it is another scheme added to the armory of state laws and policies perpetrating national oppression and systematic violation of their collective rights.

Next week: Mining applications in the Cordillera

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