What happens when the suffering becomes desperate

MOST economists and economic managers of nations like the Philippines correctly hold that mining is an essential part of their countries’ development. That’s because mining yields financial returns more quickly than other areas of industry and natural-resource exploitation.

But there is a lot of truth to the claim that in our country the profits in the billions annually yielded by mining ventures largely go to foreigners and rich Filipinos who control the mines and very little of the bonanza goes to the state, the local governments and hardly anything goes to the ordinary people of the mining towns and villages.