In Diwalwal, Davao del Norte, gold is more precious than human lives.

by Sheila S. Coronel

	OUT OF THE DEPTHS. Teen-age miner emerges from a mine shaft after long hours of work. [Photos by Sadhana Buxani]

THE MAIN street of Diwalwal, on the foggy slopes of Mt. Diwata in Davao del Norte, is a gushing stream of mine waste, discarded plastic and assorted filth. It stinks of piss and human excrement, because the street, which is nameless still, also serves as a sewer. On either side are fragile structures on wooden stilts — gold-buying stations, warehouses, ball mills, workers' bunkhouses. Standing alongside them, in the disarray that defines Diwalwal, are videoke joints, chapels of assorted faiths, stalls selling rubber boots and hard hats, billiard halls, butcher shops, and beerhouses.

This street is the vibrant, noisy and stinking heart of Diwalwal, a gold-rush community teeming with close to 60,000 people. As long as the mine tunnels and ore mills churn out gold, the street is alive, 24 hours a day, every day of the year except Good Friday. More than alive, the street is noisy, as if sound could overcome stench and squalor. Silence is unknown here, and long after visitors leave, their ears reverberate with the desperation of off-duty miners simultaneously belting out love songs from the two dozen or so videoke parlors that line the main road. Diwalwal assails the senses like no other place.

But Diwalwal is like no other place. It is a sordid slum sprawling on more than 700 hectares of a still-breathtakingly beautiful mountain. It has no sewer or drainage system, no running water, few toilets except for holes that drain into the river, and until recently, no school, no tax collection system and no public clinic. Yet Diwalwal has produced some 50 millionaires and boasts of cable television, laser-disc players and state-of-the art two-way radios. Its tunnels yield several million pesos worth of gold a day, an output that supports the fabulous lifestyles of tunnel owners who build their mansions and cruise in their Pajeros in Davao City, about four hours' drive away. Diwalwal gold props up the economies of the nearby towns of Tagum and Monkayo. And despite its squalor, it continues to lure thousands of migrants from all over the country every year with the promise of gold.

	Rickety houses sit precariously on Mt. Diwata's slopes.

Since the late 1970s, when the first Mandaya tribesmen trekked down to Monkayo with shimmering nuggets, assorted lowlanders have braved the forests of Mt. Diwata in search of gold. They bored holes in the hard rock of the mountain, chopped down trees for timber to prop up tunnels, and built makeshift settlements on the slopes. By the early 1980s, as stories of the gold find spread, thousands were walking eight hours up and down steep mountain paths to take part in the search. In the peak years of the gold rush, from 1987 to 1990, close to 100,000 migrants, among them soldiers, communist guerrillas and wanted criminals, came to Diwalwal in pursuit of golden dreams.

But only the fiercest and the toughest survived. Anarchy reigned. The first migrants built tunnels anywhere they wanted and dug out the ore as long as they had the men and the guns to protect them from rivals. The settlement bristled with Armalites, AK-47s and Uzis. Angelo "Gemini" Soto, a former student activist who is one of the biggest tunnel operators here, recalls how gunfights often broke out over bar girls or tunneling rights. "People would go into a bar and start shooting," he says. "It was usual to have ten dead in a day."

That is no longer so. In the last few years, tunnel operators organized themselves in associations that try to resolve mining disputes and to put some semblance of order to the chaos. Gun-toting was banned, although many still keep firearms hidden in case of firefights. And violence still abounds — it is not uncommon for off-duty mine workers to stab each other in the bars and videoke joints that are everywhere in Diwalwal. Three stabbing incidents a day is the norm, says the major who heads a Special Forces contingent here. Occasionally, tunnel disputes are still settled with gunfire. In 1994, a mine operator dynamited his rival's tunnel, killing several workers who were trapped inside.

Life is more precarious in Diwalwal than many other places. Until the 1990s, when mine operators began professionalizing their operations and reinforcing their tunnels, cave-ins were commonplace, killing scores of people each time. Hundreds were believed dead when several tunnels collapsed in 1989, and although cave-ins are now less frequent, they still kill and maim — with alarming regularity.