How Baguio was born from soot and glitter
By Vincent Cabreza
Northern Luzon Bureau
First Posted 20:57:00 05/04/2008
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines--It is time to get the facts straight about the country's mining industry from the proposed Baguio Historical and Mining Museum.
Conservationists and mining industry experts have pooled their resources to develop a museum for the summer capital's centennial celebrations in 2009, which describes how this mountain resort city was born from the soot and glitter of Benguet's mine tunnels.
Philippine Ambassador to Germany Delia Albert led an inaugural presentation of the museum to residents and reporters here on Friday, alongside industry stalwarts like Artemio Disini, chair of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, and civic leader Maria Isabel Ongpin, whose late husband, Jaime V. Ongpin, had helped usher a golden age of mining in 1980.
Jaime Ongpin was the first Filipino president of Benguet Corp., the pioneer Philippine mine that was incorporated by American mine prospectors at the start of the 20th century.
Leonora San Agustin, curator of the Baguio-Mountain Provinces Museum, said the city, which Chicago architect Daniel Burnham had designed as the seat of the American colonial government during summer, would have remained a hick town without the mines.
Four dots
Albert, a native of Baguio City and who served as foreign secretary from 2003 to 2004, said the Baguio seal still bears four gold dots that cut diagonally across a field of green.
The dots represent the four mining communities that sprouted around Baguio during the period.
Albert refers to an account written by former University of the Philippines president Salvador P. Lopez in his 1992 book, "Isles of Gold: A History of Mining in the Philippines," which describes the industry's genesis as the story of how Baguio transformed from a vast wilderness with patches of human settlements into a bustling metropolis.
The city's economy relied on American mine prospectors because Benguet actually had the largest gold concentration and the district had become the most important gold producer in the Philippines by the late 1920s, Lopez wrote.
Albert first announced the plans for the mining and historical museum in 2006, and had managed to draw donor interests from Spain, Germany and even officials of Chicago.
Interactive museum
A foundation that Albert, Ongpin and Disini run would operate the interactive mining museum at the old Dominican Hill monastery, where the abandoned Diplomat Hotel still stands.
Museum curator Marian Pastor Roces said the walls of the old hotel would be cleaned up and refurbished to house what is perhaps the very first Philippine Center of Minerals; a Center for Jewelry Design that tracks down the parallel growth of art and metals unearthed by the industry; and a memorabilia room that showcases even the average Baguio tourist's photographs of old Baguio and the mines.
But Disini, who led the Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co. and the Manila Mining Corp., said the museum was not put up to change everyone's minds about mining.
It lays down the foundation of Philippine mining, but the museum also reveals the unflattering details about mining's story to allow people to interpret the story for themselves, he said.
"We stick to the facts. If they say some of the problems you see around Kennon Road are caused by mines, then we will state it there," Disini said.
"We're here to present facts how Baguio grew," Albert said.
Ongpin said the museum does not stop evolving.
She has opened the doors for heirs of the pioneering American prospectors to tell their stories. Heirs of John Gaffney, for example, who still live in the city, could give a good account of how Lepanto developed.
Ibalois, who set up their own museum at an elementary school near the Loakan Airport, could also share their insights. The defunct Demolition Mine used to operate there.
Herminio Bautista, president of the University of Baguio, said keeping these memories alive has become a challenge with heritage sites slowly giving way to buildings and roads.
Chi Balmaceda Gutierrez, one of the publishers of the Baguio Yearbook, said the landmark Mines View Park has been delisted from the list of popular Baguio destinations.
The park is actually a cliff that towers over mine sites of neighboring Itogon, Benguet, but houses have since replaced these old tunnels which began shutting down when the world metals trade lost its momentum after the 1980s.
More good than harm
Mine stakeholders, however, still believe the museum would do them more good than harm.
Horacio Ramos, director of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, said the story of Philippine mining reached its peak several times due to two super cycles of development.
Ramos said the first cycle began with a gold rush that was triggered by the United States industrialization in the 1900s.
Lopez wrote about the increase of the price of gold from $20.67 to $35 an ounce between 1909 and 1930, which had precipitated a frenetic rush to the mountains of the Baguio district.
A second wave of gold prospecting in the 1930s helped birth most mines that still operate today.
Ramos said the massive world reconstruction after World War II represented the second super cycle of Philippine mining, because world metal prices soared, causing demand for Philippine gold to climb.
Mining is entering a new super cycle this century, Ramos said, because metal prices are again rising due to high demand from an industrializing China and India.
|
