Mankayan ancestral domain and corporate mining

Mining and IP rights

Michael G. Umaming

On July 1, 2023, during the kick-off activity of the 2023 Cordillera Month commemorating establishment of the Cordillera Administrative Region and renewing the call for the establishment of a Cordillera Autonomous Region, Lilia Bugtong, a Kankana-ey elder from the ancestral domain of Mankayan in Mankayan, Benguet, had a poignant message.
“Mannamnama kami ay nan Regional Autonomy et solbarena din problema mi isna Mankayan
(We expect that Regional Autonomy will resolve our problem here in Mankayan),” she said.
    Bugtong, who heads the Mankayan Indigenous Peoples’ Organization (MADIPO), continued: Din problema mi isna et conflict di daga between Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company (LCMCo) ya nan te-eng ay man-ili isna (Our problem here is a conflict of land between LCMCo and the natives of this ancestral domain).
    She said that LCMCo is claiming several settled communities as part of its patented mining areas causing insecurity among the native Kankana-eys whose ancestors were proven to had been in Mankayan since time immemorial or before the coming of Spain.
    LCMCo, founded by American mining prospectors in 1936, had once been a leading producer of copper and gold not just in the country but in the Far East (which includes Southeast Asia).
    Today, the company which remains in operation is showing company decline revealed among others by its largely contractual employees, unmaintained community infrastructures within its
perimeter, and other unaddressed issues with its host AD.
    The once proud mining company has, in fact, become a reason to say NO to Corporate Mining.
    The sinking in Barangay Poblacion, and the huge landslide in Barangay Colalo which the company deny to be related to its operation did not seem to convince people within and outside of the area.
    Other issues that lingers were the illegal dumping of hazardous waste in Barangay Sapid which came outside of Mankayan and the now tailings dam in the tri-boundary of barangays Paco, Cabiten and Colalo which gives the communities spill-scare.
    One resident commented: Embag no way spill yan bayadan da dakami. Tan id Philex kano uray namulta din kompanya yan magay biningay di ili issan multa (Good, if in case of a spill, the community will be compensated for damages. In the case of the Philex mine tailings spill in 2012, while Philex mining company was made to pay heavily, affected communities have not
received a share from the penalty).
    The labor contractualization that is happening in Lepanto also appear to be a big let-down for other areas to open-up to mining. Take these words from a community elder in Tadian, Mountain Province when asked about the intent of a mining company to do exploration in its AD:
    Ay ta abo-abotan da han ili tako? Ala-en da han balitok hadat taynan et mabati tako ay umili ta dedemangen tako han binakas da? Maid ka-a-a-pal hin minas - ed Lepanto et anggay contractual et nan ka-aduwan ay empleyado (So that mining will destroy our community? It gets the gold and leaves us to deal with a damaged land? Nothing is enviable from mining – in Lepanto, we know that most workers are contractuals).
    Other corporate miners are interested to enter Mankayan.
    In a mining tenement map prepared by mining engineer Jimmy Lawana, IPMR of Barangay Tabio and former president of MADIPO, there are twelve mining tenement applications that covers approximately 10,442.7045 hectares, or 74 percent of the AD’s land area of 13,653.17 hectares .
    Of the thirteen, four applications belong to Lepanto; one is a joint operation of Lepanto and Far South-East Gold Resources, Incorporated (FSGRI); and three are private mining claims (Jaime Panganiban, June Prill Brett, Heirs of Brett) with operating agreement with Lepanto.
    The other four are applications by FSGRI; Itogon-Suyoc Resources, Incorporated (ISRI)-APEX; Crescent Mining and Development Corporation (CMDC) and BEZANT and Cordillera Exploration Company, Incorporated (CEXCI).
    CEXCI’s application had been rejected by the Kankana-ey of Mankayan through the Free, Prior, Informed Consent (FPIC) which was concluded in 2021.
    Most of the grievances raised during the FPIC process were grievances with Lepanto making one elder say: New players must not be made to pay the sins of those that came before them.
    The rejection had been appealed by the company to MADIPO but it remains undecided by the AD through the IPO. There were however indications that the IPs of Mankayan will most-likely retain its rejection.
    CMDC, on the other hand, had been embroiled in a controversy also related to FPIC with the Mining Geoscience Bureau (MGB) issuing an MPSA renewal even without the FPIC process. CMDC’s MPS No. 057-96-CAR expired in 2021.
    Today, CMDC agreed to undergo the FPIC process, though it already got its permit from MGB which the company used to do exploration in Barangay Bulalacao in 2022 causing community members to barricade its site of exploration.
    CMDC’s exploration activity obviously created a conflict among community members with affected individual land claimants coming out with a resolution supporting the exploration.
    It is assumed that if Mankayan AD rejected CMDC, MGB will withdraw the permit issued to the company.
MPSA No. 001-1990-CAR of Lepanto and its subsidiary FSGRI expired in 2015 which entailed an FPIC process.
    Lepanto, however, asserted that the renewal need not undergo the FPIC process and that an arbitration to be facilitated by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) is enough.
    The issue reached the Supreme Court, which in December 2022, came up with a decision that Lepanto must undergo the FPIC process.
    FPIC is the way by which the community’s consent is solicited by any company who wants to extract resources from an ancestral domain. It is one of the provision of Republic Act 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) which was signed into law in October 1997.
    Mankayan IPs’ decision Mankayan lived with corporate mining for almost a century.    
    While its people have real grievances against it, there are AD claimants employed by the company or have benefitted from it.

    But Mankayan is also a farming town. Most of its populace are into vegetable farming and looks at mining as a threat to water that sustains their farms.
    In a 2021 data provided by the agriculture office of Benguet, the town is the second-most producer of vegetables in Benguet (the Cordillera’s number one producer of vegetables) producing 7,671.76 metric tons next only to its neighboring town Buguias, which produced 10,280.39 metric tons.
    Another sector whose voices are still unheard are the private miners. Many of them think in terms of “itulok tako di exploration ta ammowen tako no wada di karga na. No umey is production satako pay adi ipalubos ta datako di mangminas (Let us allow exploration so we will know if there is gold inside. Then when they do FPIC for production, we should say NO so that we will be the one to mine the gold). This of course can be problematic knowing big companies are more scheming and can get the side of the government including agencies supposedly for the IPs.
    So should the whole of Mankayan be under corporate mining? Or just part of it through proper zoning? Or shall it totally close itself to corporate mining?
    The decision belongs to the native Kankana-ey of Mankayan, hopefully free and informed. And with consideration of their collective interest including their children and their children’s children.