Links with the extensive international network of the Catholic Church ensured the protest was publicized on radio and in newspapers the world over. In early 1983 the Inter-American Development Bank quietly decided to cancel one dam and postpone the other until 1990. The parishioners saw clearly the connection between their own well-being and the health of their environment. It is a link that was also clear to the Bontoc and Kalinga people of the Philippines when their government threatened their homes with a huge dam project in the Chico River valley. Their statement of resistance has the ring of ecological outrage.
Water eats up land.
Slides will occur, caused by the dammed-up waters. There will necessarily be heavy silting and the water level will rise The President says the dams are for the development of the whole country. Others will be developed, but we, we are expected to go up to the mountains and eat grass. For these inhabitants of the Chico River Valley it took more than public protest to save their homeland. Some of them had to pay with their lives.