Will history again repeat itself?

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

AT THE height of the abaca trade in the late 1800s until around the turn of the 20th century – which is about 100 years ago – Albay was the richest province in the entire Philippines, Ateneo professor Danny Gerona, Bicol's foremost historian, said in a recent lecture.

But as Norman Owen's seminal work on the subject showed, it was by and large prosperity without progress as the industry built around that key commodity enriched the traders but not the local communities that hosted the vast abaca plantations feeding it.

By the 1920s, when the Americans started promoting the establishment of abaca plantations outside Bicol and in Latin America for security reasons (abaca being a Philippine monopoly at the time), Albay's fall from its preeminent position as an economic powerhouse began. When synthetic fibers supplanted abaca-made cordage by the mid-50's, the industry's almost total collapse became inevitable.

Today, with the comeback of large-scale mining as a priority investment area in the country, Albay gets another stab at economic prosperity. This was evident from last Saturday's visit to Rapu-Rapu, the new mining capital of the province.

The port of Legazpi is now more vibrant: a cargo ship is anchored, waiting to be filled up by the precious metals mined and processed in Rapu-Rapu; a seafront property development is in full swing, said to be a hotel being put up by a local investor; the port area is now well lighted, attracting evening promenaders, and clearly looks better, helped by a high wall that fenced off adjacent informal settlements. A fastcraft now services the route daily, cutting the usual 2-3 hour boatride from Legazpi to the main island to around 1 hour 45 minutes.

On our way back to Legazpi, Emma Bolaños, the town councilor who chairs the education committee of the sangguniang bayan, wondered why majority of Rapu-Rapu's 30,000 inhabitants remain poor notwithstanding its rich mineral resources.

For instance, the town has the second highest malnutrition rate in the province, better only than that of Oas. In recent national achievement tests administered by the DepEd, its school children scored less than 30%, lower than the provincial average of about 50%.

During our workshop, the participants affirmed one of their modest dreams: to ensure that at least 10% of the population will graduate from college. Fixing the physical plant of the town's community college is probably a good place to start, to ensure access to higher education for most residents whose only other alternative are the Legazpi universities and colleges.

But a lot more needs to be done with basic education, from elementary up to high school. Statistics show that only around 7 out every 10 get to enter Grade 1. And mirroring the national situation, only around 5 of them eventually graduate from elementary.

So for most of that Saturday, our Naga-based team from the Synergeia Southern Luzon helped about 150 stakeholders, a good number coming from schools comprising Rapu-Rapu's two school districts, plan together in addressing these concerns in an education summit. In all, they identified nine strategies to make it happen.

These, however, are no quick-fix magic-wand solutions. Of greater urgency is ensuring that ongoing mining activities in the island will redound to the benefit of Rapu-Rapu residents, especially now that the national and provincial governments have welcomed Lafayette's investment with open arms, notwithstanding its documented lapses that led to mine tailing spills in October 2005.

This will require civil society organizations closely watching over government's resolve to ensure that 'responsible mining' indeed takes place, guided by the International Council on Mining and Metals' (ICMM) 10 principles of sustainable development. For instance, the call for revenue transparency – a clear accounting of government revenues from natural resources, especially how they are spent to benefit local communities – is most timely, especially now that Lafayette has paid P180 million in direct and indirect taxes for the first half of the year.

Otherwise, we will see history simply repeating itself in the province of Albay.