The Price People Pay

The incessant and unforgiving rain that lasted days has created havoc. Zambales gives us our doorway.

Today, the province is again making news for all the wrong reasons. Torrential rain has swollen rivers, flooded communities and disrupted lives. But to understand what is happening now, we have to look backward.

Because the province of Zambales has a long memory.

In 1991, Mt. Pinatubo erupted with extraordinary force. Ash darkened the skies. Lahar poured down the mountainsides and into the river systems of Zambales, Tarlac and Pampanga. The landscape was transformed, and people paid an enormous price.

But nature has an unusual way of turning destruction into something else.

The lahar that buried farms, homes and communities also became a resource. Sand, gravel and volcanic deposits could be extracted and used for construction. What had once been a symbol of devastation acquired economic value.

And whenever something becomes valuable, someone eventually wants to control it.

The post-Pinatubo years brought remarkable recovery.

The former Subic Naval Base found a new life. So did Clark Air Base. What had once been American military installations became economic zones, attracting industries, businesses, tourism and investment. Communities that had lived through eruption, ash and lahar watched roads, buildings and commercial centers rise from a landscape that had once seemed devastated beyond repair.

It was an extraordinary demonstration of human resilience. The Philippines did not simply recover from Pinatubo. It reinvented portions of the landscape. But not everyone shared equally in that reinvention.

Indigenous communities, including the Aeta whose ancestral lands were profoundly affected by the eruption and subsequent development, were displaced from places they had called home. For them, recovery was not simply a story of new roads, jobs and investment. It could also mean losing access to ancestral land and adapting to a landscape being transformed around them.

Progress has its price. Hills were leveled for development. Rivers and mountains became sources of construction material. The same landscape reshaped by nature was increasingly reshaped by human hands. And politics was never far away.

During the Arroyo administration, Michael Defensor, who had served as Environment Secretary, became associated with mining ventures involving Chinese investors in Zambales. In 2008, a $150-million mineral exploration agreement involving NiHAO Mineral Resources, Geograce Resources and Chinese companies was signed, with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo present at the signing in China.

The arrangement is documented. Whether it represented anything improper is another question. That distinction matters.

Years later, allegations emerged that soil from Zambales was being transported to China for reclamation projects in the West Philippine Sea. The allegations generated considerable political controversy and reached the Senate.

But the Senate investigation did not substantiate that particular claim through available Philippine port and Coast Guard records.

So we should not turn an allegation into a fact simply because the story is politically attractive. Yet the larger question survives:

Who gets to decide what happens to a province’s natural resources? And who benefits?

Travel southward into Central Luzon and the story takes another turn.

Pampanga and Tarlac were among the provinces profoundly affected by Pinatubo. Decades later, portions of that same scarred landscape became the setting for New Clark City.

The 2019 Southeast Asian Games brought international attention to the development. The Athletics Stadium rose in Capas, Tarlac, in a landscape still marked by the mountain’s history. Its design drew inspiration from Pinatubo’s caldera.

There is something almost poetic about that. A mountain that once represented destruction became an architectural inspiration for a showcase of Philippine progress.

The land that had once been buried was being rebuilt. But development does not occur on a blank canvas.

It occurs on land with rivers, watersheds, communities and history. And the people living there have something to say about it. They always have.

The problem is that having a voice is not the same as having power. A former governor can speak. Residents can testify. Communities can object. Citizens can vote.

But when political, economic and institutional interests converge, ordinary voices can become remarkably quiet.

And then, just over a week ago, the past became painfully present. A boat carrying Aeta residents on Lake Mapanuepe capsized in rough conditions. Lives were lost. Lake Mapanuepe itself belongs to the Pinatubo story—a body of water created as the eruption and its aftermath transformed the landscape.

There is something profoundly sobering about that circle of history. A mountain once displaced people through eruption and lahar. Development later transformed the landscape around them. And now, decades later, some of the same people continue to live with the consequences of a geography they did not create.

The landscape changed. The people adapted. But the price was never distributed equally. And so the political cast changes.

Administrations have come and go. Alliances shift. Yesterday’s allies become today’s opponents. Yesterday’s government insiders become today’s businessmen, critics, donors or defendants.

The names change. The networks endure.

Today, another political drama is unfolding in the impeachment proceedings involving Vice President Sara Duterte. Old alliances have fractured. New ones have formed. Political loyalties have been rearranged once again.

And ordinary Filipinos are left asking familiar questions: Who knew? Who benefited? Who looked away? Who spoke? And who was heard?

Perhaps that is why the flooding in Zambales and Pampanga feels like more than a weather story. Water has no political party. It doesn’t recognize political dynasties.

It doesn’t care who once occupied Malacañang, who chaired a committee, who signed a contract, or who stood beside a president at a ceremonial signing.

Water follows gravity. And when the rain comes hard enough, it finds every weakness in the landscape. Perhaps people do too. They remember the hills that disappeared. The rivers that changed. The promises that were made. The questions that were never completely answered. And the price they were asked to pay.

We investigate. We litigate. We impeach. We elect.

Then another administration arrives, carrying another set of names and another set of alliances. And the questions remain.

Perhaps Dylan was onto something after all. Some answers really do keep blowing in the wind.

But the people remain beneath it— waiting, watching, listening, and paying the price.