Here in the Cordillera mountains
You hear the sound of branches breaking
The slow heat from feet of men and women
Moving through the forest like slow embers
Their footsteps a constant beat heard
Even in the warmest nights…
The struggling masses
Turning the wheel
Making things move forward
The workers who are the backbone
The flesh that makes this country move.
While others profit from your sweat
And tell you have to live on sweat alone
You rise to resist
Like rising every morning
To face the sun
But again they force you down
Down to the darkness of the mines
But each step down
You think of your families
And your burdens become rocks you carry
But even in the heat of the mines
You remember your wives
And the fires burning in your homes.
In the darkness you struggle
But you hear the songs of your comrades
You hear the songs of other miners
And then the songs of the women
The militant women of Lepanto.
It becomes a chorus carried through history
You are the brothers and sisters
That have toiled this earth
And broken out in song
In the mines where gold and copper
Make businessmen and corporations greedy
The earth remains alive through your struggle
Through your hearts.
Even underground your heart beats
Your heart beats as it always has
The blood of your brothers and sisters on this earth
Have become fertilizer to the land
And the earth remembers each name
Remembers the one that came before
Remembers the one that came after
It remembers your strengths
Your fists in the air
Your voice,
voices
shouting
Agbiag dagiti militante a mangmangged!
(Long live the militant workers!)