Deep within the mines: The Mt. Diwalwal story

( Conclusion )

After the war, waves of different ethnic inhabitants from all corners of Mindanao (based on their point of survival and new source of profit during post-war Philippines) were strategically directed to Mt. Diwalwal in the Monkayo region, to dig the first tunnels. Who ordered the first diggings wasn’t really clear because based on all government papers, such projects were supposedly for agricultural development. It was not clear — until now — since such exploitation of the mountain and the participation of indigenous people sidetracked the legal operations for Mindanao’s development.

The major ethnic tribes, which were part of Mt. Diwalwal’s first diggings, were the T’bolis from the upper Koronadal stretch and Suralla Valley, the Tasadays who after the war made their way to northern Davao, and two of four disparate Manobo groups from the Upper Ulip area, near the main area of Mt. Diwalwal.

When Filipinos became aware about the fiasco surrounding the legitimate logging operations, mining prospectors in Mt. Diwalwal were busy exploring other sites in the south. One of these sites was the Kemato Mountain where 35,000 Tasadays, T’bolis and Manobos were forced to dig 350 tunnels. Most of them were tunnel laborers from Diwalwal.

Because of these excavations, no more than 800 T’bolis live there due to tunnel accidents, diseases caused by polluted waterways and mercury contamination. But the most alarming of all, with the T’bolis and Tasadays in Kemato and the Manobos in Diwalwal, assassinations were rampant among the different mining firms who ruled the operations. This could be considered as having contributed to the peculiar participation of the Moro National Liberation Front, the New People’s Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in resolutely implementing the mining firms’ need for security.

Militarization

At that time, the companies’ struggle for natural resources and gold was intense enough to make militarization inevitable. With Pananim’s partnership with the Armed Forces and the Civilian Home Defense Force, guards were maintained to protect simply the interests of the profit-makers. Because of this, the AFP, MNLF, NPA, MILF and the Kontra Moro Brigade were all in the same business — turning industrial logging and mining into a definite war zone.

When President Ferdinand Marcos’ Pananim Project was operational, everything about Mt. Diwalwal was discreet. But the influx of independent gold-trackers, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the first arms smugglers of the MNLF — through the Davao-Mangsi route — and the perverse AFP conglomeration with mining firms, were inevitable.

Mining prospectors were gorging on legalities to explore and exploit the area, using an immense labor force composed of ethnic people. Marginal buy-and-sell activities and transport services were provided by fusion-groups formed by a band of Integrated National Police (INP) members and MNLF rebels. Specialized armed groups composed of "reaffirmist" NPAs provided close-in security to the owners and executives of high-level mining firms and other mining-related companies. By 1998, Mt. Diwalwal was home to more or less 650 businesses engaged in retail/wholesale gold trading, eatery and entertainment — and even prostitution and arms rental.

The earliest recorded instance when indigenous people in Mt. Diwalwal handled guns was when the Pananim Project linked up with the Civilian Home Defense Force and maintained armed guards in and out of the Tasaday and T’boli reserves. The first group had 400 indigenous armed Tasaday men and more or less 300 armed T’boli partisans. During that time, 80 of the armed indigenous men operated in Mt. Diwalwal; almost all of them later died either due to mercury contamination or in clashes with other armed factions in the mining area.

The violence among the different groups in Mt. Diwalwal is as immense as the gold and silver deposits there. Based on Central Bank records, between 1966 and 1986, 70 percent of the gold it bought — amounting to nearly P25 billion — could have come from Mt. Diwalwal. In 1988, the mineral production in Mt. Diwalwal on a daily basis was estimated at 500 tons, with 20 grams of gold extracted from every ton of ore. This record wasn’t really revealed clearly to the public, until May 30, 1989, when Mt. Diwalwal made it to the headlines when thousands died after the Balite area — where mining operations are heavily concentrated — collapsed from heavy rain. Most of the victims were old-timers from Diwalwal’s first excavations and Kemato diggers.

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(Malcampo and Caparas are from Manila and Monkayo, Compostela Valley, respectively. Sakai works for the National Commission on Indigenous People, and Galang for the National Historical Institute. Que is a member of the Ateneo Peace Debriefing Team in Zamboanga City.)