Mining museum for Baguio centennial

Mining museum to rise for Baguio centennial
By Vincent Cabreza
Philippine Daily Inquirer May 09, 2006
http://news.inq7.net/archive_article/index.php?ver=0&index=1&story_id=75183

BAGUIO CITY--Philippine Ambassador to Germany Delia Albert is linking Baguio’s centennial celebration in 2009 to the mining industry by constructing a museum that would call attention to the country’s oldest mines that surround the city.

Citing the writings of the late diplomat and educator Salvador P. Lopez, Baguio-born Albert said American-led mining operations helped nurture what was once the “vast wilderness” of Benguet province into a “bustling metropolis.”

She announced the formation of the Baguio Historical and Mining Museum Foundation to alumni of the Baguio City National High School during their homecoming on Saturday at the Baguio Country Club.

The museum will rise here in two years, in time for Baguio’s celebration as a chartered city, Albert said. “I just received [the clearance from] the Securities and Exchange Commission last week.”

The museum will house relics showing the growth of old American mines on the city outskirts and focusing on the history of firms like Benguet Corp., the oldest recorded Philippine mining firm, as well as obscure and defunct operations like Demonstration Mine, which ceased when Japanese forces invaded the city in 1942.

Diplomatic frontier
A former Philippine foreign secretary and Malacañang’s envoy for mining, Albert noted that diplomacy had become mining’s new frontier because of the need to disclose to the global industry the Supreme Court decision that declared constitutional the 1995 Philippine Mining Act.

Mining has remained the single biggest industry which the government expects would turn the tide for many poverty-stricken regions like the Cordillera, she said.

Albert said it took her seven years as ambassador to Australia to win a trade deal allowing Canberra to buy Philippine mangoes.

There will be cynics, Albert acknowledged, saying that much of the anti-mining sentiments plaguing the industry today came from the old mining towns in Benguet.

Baguio seal
The city’s original seal bears out its connection to mining, she said. “The first Baguio seal is crossed diagonally by four golden dots that stand for the mineral wealth of Baguio’s four major mining communities.”
“Who in Baguio [does] not remember Antamok (where the oldest Philippine mining firm Benguet Corp. used to operate in Itogon town) or Lepanto (Consolidated Mining Corp. which operates in Mankayan town)?” she said.

She asked the BCNHS alumni to provide data and resources to “flesh out Baguio’s connection to the gold that has drawn Europeans to the city since the 1890s.”

Mining flourished under the American colonial government in the 1920s which designed and chartered Baguio as its only hill station in Asia, Albert said.

Ibaloi accounts
Even historical accounts from the indigenous Ibaloi community confirm mining’s role in expanding Baguio.

Eufronio Pungayao, a linguist and an Ibaloi historian, said the city’s economy started with Chinese trading houses that supplied food to American miners and their workers.

“In fact, the [city] population grew due to the attraction of mining,” said Joseph Jude Carantes, an Ibaloi clan leader and advocate for ancestral land rights.

Albert said national officials, like Senator Juan Flavier, were products of Baguio’s old mining culture. Flavier grew up in Itogon.

But some Baguio residents want “the whole truth about mining” to come out in Albert’s museum.

Centennial activities
Loreto Ann Tamayo, an environmentalist, said the facility should provide details on how old-school mining ended up despoiling Benguet lands.
Albert’s initiative is one of many independent projects geared toward highlighting Baguio’s 100 years of existence.

Mayor Braulio Yaranon has formed a core group of old-timers who will prepare for the centennial celebration.

Many of them, like Joseph Alabanza, former presidential adviser on urban reform, and Virginia de Guia, a former Baguio mayor, have been pushing for the restoration and preservation of the city’s remaining open lands as part of the centennial advocacy.

Alabanza, also a city architect, has been at the forefront of an architectural preservation program here, while De Guia is spearheading a crusade to stop the construction of a flyover in the city.