KALINGA, Philippines — On the mountainsides flanking the mighty Chico River in the northern Philippines’ Kalinga province, residents of once tight-knit villages have drifted apart in recent years. Hearty greetings between neighbors tending to farmlands have been replaced with avoidant looks or glowering stares. “We don’t talk much like before,” says Gohn Dangoy, a 59-year-old farmer of the Naneng tribe in Kalinga’s Tabuk city. “If we do, we argue. Families and friends alike are at odds.” He says the “deep division” started because of the proposed dam on the Chico River. West of Tabuk, locals in the municipality of Balbalan live in fear of the military operations that began around the same time the hydropower projects rolled into town. The Chico River, the most extensive river system in the Cordilleras, runs through Mountain Province, Kalinga and Cagayan. Image by Michael Beltran. They remember the first of the bombings happening in March 2023, as they were sound asleep on the night following their annual Manchachatong festival. Eufemia Bog-as, 30, recalls jumping from her bed at around 2 a.m. “It was like an earthquake. I heard a big boom six times. I went outside and the sky was covered with smoke,” she tells Mongabay. The government and military said they were targeting armed rebels, who were supposedly stirring up opposition against the dams. “They told us, it’s because we’re against development,” Bog-as says. Kalinga is one of six provinces in the northern and mountainous Cordillera region, populated by the Indigenous Igorot people.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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