Chapter 6. Change and Continuity in Acupan-Balatoc
"My parents migrated here when they were in their late teens because my father was recruited as a miner. I was born and grew up in Acupan. Each one knew everyone in this barangay. When the company shut down, thousands of people left. We were among those who stayed because this is our home. How could we leave? The company reopened sometime in 2000, and people started coming back. But it has never been the same because throngs of strangers also entered. We have all sorts of people here now. The newcomers do not treat this place as their own. They leave, new others come in, so we see more new faces. They come here only to make money from mining, with no interest in making Acupan or Balatoc or Virac peaceful and orderly. This not surprising because they are not of this place. They never knew this place. It is not their home. It never was."*
~ Mario Balitang (pseudonym)
A local official of Barangay Virac
*From Author’s interview, 20 February 2017. Camangga-an, Virac, Itogon
"My parents migrated here when they were in their late teens because my father was recruited as a miner. I was born and grew up in Acupan. Each one knew everyone in this barangay. When the company shut down, thousands of people left. We were among those who stayed because this is our home. How could we leave? The company reopened sometime in 2000, and people started coming back. But it has never been the same because throngs of strangers also entered. We have all sorts of people here now. The newcomers do not treat this place as their own. They leave, new others come in, so we see more new faces. They come here only to make money from mining, with no interest in making Acupan or Balatoc or Virac peaceful and orderly. This not surprising because they are not of this place. They never knew this place. It is not their home. It never was."*
~ Mario Balitang (pseudonym)
A local official of Barangay Virac
*From Author’s interview, 20 February 2017. Camangga-an, Virac, Itogon
Abstract
Acupan-Balatoc was a minesite camp that evolved with the Acupan mine which Benguet Corporation (BC) operated since 1927. Acupan-Balatoc was a melting pot of almost five thousand people consisting of mine workers and their families. Ethnolinguistic affiliation was initially a defining criterion for social interactions. Decades of living together in a bounded spatial area gradually blurred ethno-linguistic divisions towards self-ascribing shared appellations such as Taga-Acupan (‘of / from Acupan’) and Taga-Balatoc (‘of/ from Balatoc’). With the decline of metal prices in the 1980s, the Acupan mine had the first of a series of manpower reduction followed by more rounds of retrenchment until operations ceased in 1992. This resulted to the departure of more than half of the population leaving the municipal government the burden of economic and social dislocation. After almost a decade, BC reopened the Acupan mine, but with a much smaller scale of operation, and thus began the re-population and resumption of work and life in the locality. The changes and continuity in Acupan-Balatoc demonstrate that even with the economic and political leverage of BC to steer the course of events according to its corporate objectives, the people in Acupan are not bereft of options.
Acupan-Balatoc was a minesite camp that evolved with the Acupan mine which Benguet Corporation (BC) operated since 1927. Acupan-Balatoc was a melting pot of almost five thousand people consisting of mine workers and their families. Ethnolinguistic affiliation was initially a defining criterion for social interactions. Decades of living together in a bounded spatial area gradually blurred ethno-linguistic divisions towards self-ascribing shared appellations such as Taga-Acupan (‘of / from Acupan’) and Taga-Balatoc (‘of/ from Balatoc’). With the decline of metal prices in the 1980s, the Acupan mine had the first of a series of manpower reduction followed by more rounds of retrenchment until operations ceased in 1992. This resulted to the departure of more than half of the population leaving the municipal government the burden of economic and social dislocation. After almost a decade, BC reopened the Acupan mine, but with a much smaller scale of operation, and thus began the re-population and resumption of work and life in the locality. The changes and continuity in Acupan-Balatoc demonstrate that even with the economic and political leverage of BC to steer the course of events according to its corporate objectives, the people in Acupan are not bereft of options.