Anthony “Jake” Atienza, MA Sociology, also received a grant from the Corky Trinidad Endowment Scholarship in 2022 to research mining in Cebu. He investigated residents’ responses to the intrusive effect of mining in their lives as part of his masteral thesis at UH. Jake collected court documents involving a conflict arising from damage and loss of lives caused by a landslide to residents’ property. He lectured about his research to American teachers participating in the Fulbright seminar (Project Magsayod) at the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, on July 14, 2022.
Jake writes a brief report of his findings below.
In his report, Jake says
“At the center of my research is a deadly landslide in Naga City on September 20, 2018, which claimed the lives of over 70 people and displaced more than 8,000. Following this incident, residents filed a lawsuit against mining companies and municipal and provincial government stakeholders. Despite making claims around their experiences of death, bodily injury, dispossession, and damage to their homes, the court dismissed the case on the grounds that it was not a class action suit and the plaintiffs’ failure to cite a cause of action. Moving away from quarries as sites of violence, I applied an epistemological lens to frame the rule of law as a site of mining violence.”
For his report click Summary.