After nearly a decade of relentless militarization that repressed the Lumad people and drove them out of their communities, the Andap Valley Complex is now wide open to plunder and destruction by foreign and local mining companies.

House Speaker Martin Romualdez family’s Benguet Corporation is one of the latest companies to submit a mining application. The company intends to mine coal in San Miguel, Marihatag and Tago, covering 12 “coal blocks” in the area. In the Philippines, a “coal block” is equivalent to approximately 1,000 hectares.

The Benguet Corp. is owned by the Romualdez family (42.77%), RYM Business Management Corporation (16%) which is also owned by the Romualdez, and smaller shareholders such as Luis Virata, Pamela Gendrano and Rothschild Investment LLC. The company has been controlled by the family since the time of the Marcos Sr’s presidency. It is among the many companies that the Philippine government tried to take back after the dictatorship’s fall.

As early as 2015, the Benguet Corporation was named as one of the companies with interests in the Andap Valley, and thus one of the beneficiaries, if not the instigator, of the brutal militarization in the area. Another is Abacus Coal Exploration and Development Corp, which has partnered with Oriental Vision Mining Philippines (ORVI) Corp of the Zamora family. The ORVI and Abacus application covers a 5,000 hectares of forested land. Other companies include Great Wall Mining and Power Corp, a Chinese company; ASK Mining and Exploration Corp which was awarded a permit for exploration in 2009; and CoalBlack Mining Corp.

The Andap Valley Complex is said to contain one of the largest coal reserves in the world. It covers the neighboring towns of San Miguel, San Agustin, Marihatag, Cagwait, Tago and Lianga.

For a long time, mining operations in the complex were prevented by the refusal of the Lumads to give their Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC). So from 2015, San Miguel, San Agustin, Marihatag, Cagwait, Tago and Lianga were subjected to brutal military rule to suppress the resistance of the Manobo and Mamanwa, and force them to give up their right to their ancestral lands.

The military’s crimes include the massacres in Lianga in 2015 and 2021. The victims of the first massacre were Emerito Samarca, executive director of the Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (Alcadev); Dionel Campos, head of the local Mapasu farmers’ organization; and its member Datu Juvello Sinzo. The massacre forced 3,000 Lumads to evacuate. Two Lumad farmers and a 12-year-old student were the victims of the second massacre.

Several more mass evacuations occurred in the following years due to relentless killings and militarization. The Duterte regime ordered the military to target Lumad schools run by local communities. Later, these schools were forced to close in Andap Valley. They remained closed to this day.

Mining will not only destroy Andap Valley mountains, rivers and land, the coal mined here will also have a deadly effect. Coal is considered the dirtiest source of energy and a major contributor to global warming.