INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S WATCH

Letter from an Aeta: 
Pro-Mining Policy Spells More Trouble for Indigenous Peoples 

“Going for the total liberalization of the mining industry will shave off our mountains from the trees that hold the land; poison the rivers, seas, farmlands and abort the yields of our land; worst, it will dig and shatter the very foundations of our mountains down to the core.”  

By Nelson Mallari 
Central Luzon Aeta Association (CLAA)-
Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan 
ng Pilipinas (KAMP), Florida, Pampanga  
Posted by Bulatlat 

I am an Aeta from Pampanga, and I would like to express my sentiments against Environment Secretary Mike Defensor’s very staunch persuasion of the mining industry magnates, key government officials, and indigenous peoples leaders to hasten the revival of mining.   

This is deeply troubling since moves that run along Secretary Defensor’s line seem to be speeding up some controversial mining projects. Dialogues between Aeta community leaders, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), LGUs are currently being held for the reactivation of Dizon Mines in a 49,000-hectare Aeta ancestral land covering the provinces of  Pampanga and Zambales. These provinces, along with Tarlac, are now being cordoned by military battalions.  Tampakan Mineral Resources, formerly Western Mining Corporations has also stepped up its operations in Caraga, Southern Mindanao.  The Bureau of Mines as well did not deny that more applications for mining have already been approved.      

More troubling is the fact that three-fourths of the country’s mineral-rich lands is up for grabs by foreign mining corporations through the Financial Technical Assistance Agreements (FTAAs) under the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, some provisions of which have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Although this move by the SC has technically prohibited 100 percent foreign capital investment, mining operations in the country, still mostly foreign owned, have not waned.  Although this has forced foreign companies to solicit local partners or “dummies,” we are convinced that the profits reaped from the industry remain concentrated in the hands of the very few ruling elite and the bulk of the mined gold and minerals is taken out of the country by foreign investors.    

The overwhelming pressure from the local and foreign mining industry abetted by the pressure from government officials who are stalwart advocates of liberal economic policy like Defensor and President Macapagal Arroyo, continue to pose fears among us that the Supreme Court decision might eventually be reversed, with all due respect to the astute and righteous act of the Supreme Court.     

On the pretext of saving the country from absolute economic breakdown, the administration and her cabinet are hell-bent on pushing for the absolute implementation of the scheme of liberalization, privatization and deregulation under the mother policy of globalization through which capitalist industries get the profit they need to offset their own crisis. Through the Philippine mining industry’s revitalization, capitalist countries’ crisis would indeed be solved while our own crisis worsens to an incurable stage.   

The mining issue is vital to the indigenous peoples, for it is pivotal in the survival and continuity of our tribes and clans, as we directly bear the brunt of the woes that come with mining - militarization, forcible displacement which eventually leads to dispossession of our ancestral lands, and catastrophic environmental damage.       

Going for the total liberalization of the mining industry will shave off our mountains from the trees that hold the land; poison the rivers, seas, farmlands and abort the yields of our land; worst, it will dig and shatter the very foundations of our mountains down to the core.   

Large-scale, open pit mining is as destructive to the indigenous peoples whose lives are intricately woven to these nature systems.  The experiences of the Aeta,  Igorot , Mangyan, Lumad and other indigenous peoples with mining has wielded and sharpened our opposition  against the current  mining policy of the government which favors foreign interest over  the people, which is bereft of justice and democracy in dealing with the peoples’ rights as well as with the   management of environmental and mineral resources.   

With mining as the government’s solution to the economic crisis, it is playing hang-man with the limb and life of every Filipino, national patrimony and sovereignty on the tightening rope. Posted by Bulatlat   

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