NOTÍCIAS DA GUERRA POPULAR: [** MAOIST_REVOLUTION **] Recent disaster affirms lessons -- CPDF

Recent disaster affirms lessons from historic struggles against
the Chico River Dam Project and the Cellophil Resources Corporation

Simon �Ka Filiw� Naogsan
Spokesperson, Cordillera People�s Democratic Front
October 25, 2009

The recent disastrous flooding and numerous landslides in Northern Luzon that inflicted heavy losses in lives and property highlight the often overlooked cost of developmental aggression. In more ways than one do the common people pay for huge projects that generate super-profits for foreign big business interests and their local lackeys.

The tragic flooding caused in part by the bungled release of a torrent of water from the San Roque Dam would have been repeated several times over in areas of Kalinga and Cagayan that are downstream of the Chico River if the construction of the four big dams comprising the Chico River Dam Project (CRDP) pushed through. The numerous massive landslides in Benguet, Mountain Province, and Baguio City which was caused in part by deforestation would have been repeated in many areas of Abra if the Cellophil Resources Corporation (CRC) was allowed to continue its large-scale logging operation.

The CRDP and the CRC were thwarted by a massive and militant people�s movement that unified tribes of Bontocs, Kalingas, and Tingguians. At the core of this historic people�s struggle was the armed mass movement in the hinterlands led by the New People�s Army. Alongside the armed struggle were multi-sectoral mass mobilizations in Cordillera town centers, Baguio City and Metro Manila, and even abroad. Scores of mass activists and tribal elders such as Macliing Dulag and Ama �Ka Charlie� Lumbaya lost their lives. Villages were raided, strafed, and bombed by the military. Respected tribal elders were tortured, imprisoned, stripped naked in public, and subjected to other brutal and humiliating acts. In the end, the victorious struggle against the CRDP and the CRC prevented the dislocation of more than 100,000 national minorities and protected vast tracts of their ancestral domain.

To this day, large-scale mining, logging, energy, and other industrial projects pose a threat to the lives, ancestral domains, and properties of Philippine national minorities. These projects are mostly ecologically unsound and contribute to the destruction of the country�s natural wealth and environment. As if this was not enough, corruption plagues the delivery of social services to the hinterland areas. The overpriced and substandard SONA road projects in the Cordillera were unable to withstand normal use, let alone the fury of Typhoon Pepeng.

We say, �Not one hectare more!� The armed revolutionary movement in the Cordillera under the banner of the CPDF will continue to defend the ancestral lands, lives, and socio-political rights of the national minorities in the Cordillera. We continue to be inspired by the examples set by Macliing Dulag, Ama Lumbaya, Daniel Ngayaan, Ama Mangatam, Manzano Domin-eng and many others including martyrs of the New People�s Army who gallantly laid down their lives to defend the Cordillera. We empathize with other national minorities who are victims of national oppression, who lose lives and land to the insensitive and profit-driven developmental aggression perpetrated by the local ruling classes and their foreign imperialist masters. We call on other national minorities to join with the rest of the Filipino people in the national democratic revolution that will break the shackles of oppression, establish a socialist state and gain for all of us genuine development and progress.#