Reports from Correspondents: People's struggles against Lepanto Mines
The Lepanto Consolidated Mining Corporation (Lepanto Mines) in Mankayan, Benguet has been massively extracting natural resources and superprofits. In turn, the people of Mankayan and surrounding areas, most of whom are Kankanaey Igorots, suffer from the destruction of their ancestral lands, their lives and livelihood. Following is the story of the various struggles of the people of Mankayan and other surrounding communities against the gigantic and powerful Lepanto Mines.
For three months in 1999, the Barangay Bulalacao Movement for the Protection of Land, Life and Natural Resources or BBM rallied and set up barricades in Barangay Bulalacao, Mankayan to prevent Lepanto Mines from going through with its drilling operations in Sitio Tabbac, Bulalacao. The drilling was to have been conducted by Lepanto Mines' subsidiary, the Diamond Drilling Corporation of the Philippines. The residents launched this action to prevent the renewed loss of irrigation water. In the 1960s, farms in Caew, Colocol and Manaba were deprived of irrigation after Lepanto Mines drilled a total of 123 holes near their source of water. In 1995, angry villagers blasted Lepanto Mines' drilling equipment in the barangay.
Because Lepanto Mines allegedly suffered losses due to the barricade, the company filed charges of violation of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 against the mass leaders of Tabbac and Bulalacao Central. Undaunted, the residents of Tabbac launched various mass actions. Villagers from Bulalacao Central also stood by their neighbors in the court battle. In December 1999, the court decided that Lepanto Mines should no longer continue its drilling operations and that the barricades should also be lifted. Despite this, the people maintained their vigilance against any attempt by the company to push through with its drilling. They filed petitions with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and dialogued with local officials to draft resolutions on the issue. Barangay officials also sent a resolution to Lepanto Mines and DENR, stating that they had never agreed to Lepanto's mining in the area, contrary to the company and DENR's claims.
In August 1999, residents of Barangay Poblacion formed the Mankayan Sinking Victims Association or MSVA. They filed petitions against Lepanto Mines, DENR and other government offices, complaining that the land beside the 60-meter stretch of Aurora St. in front of the entrance to Lepanto Mines, on which rows of houses stood, had sunk by more than three meters. The land on which the Mankayan Central School stood had also sunk, and at Sitio Panad, the land on which the Mankayan National High School stood bore fissures. All this had rendered the schools too risky for use. According to former workers, the sinking and fissures were due to a maze of criss-crossing tunnels built by Lepanto Mines beneath the village. Lepanto had long abandoned the tunnels but failed to fill them up.
In 1999, the Colalo Victims Association was organized. This was after a school, five houses, farms and part of the Mankayan-Cervantes national road were destroyed due to the sinking of 14 hectares of land near the catchment basin of Lepanto Mines' Tailings Dam 5-A in July 1999. The dam itself bore fissures. A villager was buried alive and his body was never found. The same dam also obstructs the flow of several natural springs at the foot of the mountain, transforming Colalo into a virtual swamp. Scores of houses here and in adjacent Barangay Cabiten, as well as large farms near the dam, are in danger of caving in, more so because the company continues to raise the height of the dam using soil dug up from Colalo and Cabiten. Even though two years have passed since the first landslide in Colalo, the land continues to quiver, especially in Sitio Let-angan. The CVA has protested by sending out petitions and has demanded indemnification from the local government and Lepanto Mines. Although Lepanto Mines refused to claim responsibility over the incident, it was compelled to extend "assistance" to the people for "humanitarian reasons". When Lepanto Mines again attempted to dig up more soil to fill up the dam, the CVA set up barricades along the company bulldozer's path and allowed it to leave only after company officials and representatives promised never to do any digging again.
In February 2001, the CVA was transformed into the Colalo Residents Organization (CRO) to accommodate other residents aside from the victims of sinking and to expand the organization's program. With the BBM and Mankayan Leaders' Forum or MLF, the CRO sponsored the celebration of the historic Cordillera Day 2001 in Colalo. During the celebration, the people of Mankayan shared their experiences with other peoples of the Cordillera and with visitors and supporters from other parts of the country and the world. They learned from one another's experiences and drew more support for their struggle.
Residents of Cervantes, Quirino and other nearby towns in Ilocos Sur, through which the Mankayan River flows, as well as people of nearby towns in Abra where the Mankayan and Abra Rivers converge have now joined cause with the people of Mankayan. Farms beside these rivers and intersecting springs used to be bountiful but have gradually dried up. The soil had been poisoned after rivers laden with tailings thrown in by Lepanto Mines for decades overflowed towards the farms. Farms which had become unproductive were eventually abandoned by the peasants.
The farmers in these areas filed a case against Lepanto Mines as far back as the early 1980's but have not received a single centavo from the company. In 1999, the peasants convinced the Sangguniang Bayan (SB) of Cervantes, Ilocos Sur, to pass a resolution calling for an investigation of the Lepanto Mines dam and the suspension of its further elevation. The SB also endorsed the petition of the residents of Mankayan, Cervantes and other surrounding communities to oblige the company to prevent the dam from collapsing.
In Early 2000, many mass leaders of Mankayan had begun analyzing the situation and concluded that it would be insufficient for the people's struggles to remain spontaneous, decentralized and confined to the level of the community. Thus, during the anniversary of the Colalo landslide in July 2000, the people of Mankayan convened a broad-based assembly to tackle the matter. The assembly summed up the people's experiences and drew lessons. They unanimously decided to organize a municipal association to launch bigger struggles. The Mankayan Leaders' Forum was established. Since then, the MLF has been continuously launching municipal-wide activities that confront and dissect the various tactics resorted to by Lepanto Mines in various barangays, in order to come up with counter-tactics. It has propagated issues on mining through the media and various fora and sponsored dialogues between farmers and mine workers to promote understanding and cooperation between the two sectors instead of having them contradict one another as Lepanto Mines wishes. The organization of workers' unions has begun inside the company and in some of its subsidiaries.
Lepanto mines stubbornly refuses to admit responsibility for the destruction of Mankayan. Instead, it pins the blame on the "unstable character of the municipality's soil". Once and only once did the company admit its crime, but not without branding the residents of the sunken Sitio Pinagayan in Barangay Sapid as "squatters". It even bragged before the media that it had extended financial assistance towards the victims, despite the fact that it was merely compelled to do so after being pressured by the people's protest actions.
Lepanto Mines employs AFP and PNP elements to defend its operations and infrastructure in Mankayan. The Nayak Twine Decline entrance is guarded by a squad from the PNP Special Mobile Force. Meanwhile, the dam in Cabiten is secured by the military and CAFGU who harass the residents of the area. Lepanto Mines also conspires with local politicians and government agencies to ensure its continuous operation in the face of the people's intensifying and escalating protests.
Simultaneous with this, Lepanto Mines launches campaigns of deception through the use of "development projects" and makes it appear that the company is pro-environment and has fine relations with the residents of communities where it operates.
But not a single scheme by Lepanto Mines has succeeded in averting the people's struggles.
Just last May, the MLF was able to pressure the Sangguniang Bayan to back off from passing Resolution 243, which allows the further expansion of the Victoria Gold Project in Mankayan. This was attained by continuously filing petitions and demanding a dialogue with local and national officials.
The struggle of the people of Mankayan and surrounding communities still has a long way to go. There are many struggles to be confronted and won. But with their numerous gains and small victories, the people have high hopes that in the end, they will defeat the giant that has been devastating their ancestral lands, their lives and livelihood.
The Lepanto Consolidated Mining Corporation
The Lepanto Consolidated Mining Corporation (LCMC or Lepanto Mines) in Mankayan, Benguet is one of the largest imperialist companies in the country. It was established in 1936 from 150 consolidated mining claims in Mankayan by investors from the US led by big mining prospector Victor Lednicky. In 1980, it took possession of a huge reservoir containing 650 million tons of copper porphyry, a type of ore composed of 65% copper and 1.33 grams of gold per ton. Aside from its 949-hectare concession in Mankayan, it has a pending application to operate on another 2,652 hectares.
Since it was founded, the company has extracted 743,000 tons of copper, 92 tons of gold and 390 tons of silver. In 1995, it discovered a very rich reservoir of gold in the Victoria ore body in Mankayan and initiated the Victoria Gold Project. After six decades of concentrating on copper mining, Lepanto Mines has become the biggest gold miner in the country. Because of this, the company is sure of reaping superprofits for another 25 years.
Lepanto Mines currently employs 2,374 workers. Instead of promoting its workers to become regular employees, Lepanto hires workers from an employment agency. Four agencies have been supplying Lepanto Mines with contractual workers.
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