“The World Needs Copper” is the title I decided on for the last exhibit that one finds at the Carmen Copper Heritage Center, which was inaugurated yesterday by the top management of Carmen Copper Corp. (CCC). For what would life be like without copper? Electricity alone would not be distributed if not for the role played by copper wires.
A subsidiary of the Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. (ACMDC), CCC took over from the mother company to rehabilitate and reopen the mine in 2006 after a 12-year hiatus.
To cap its 12th year thence, the company decided last year to build a heritage center, one that would trace the long history of Atlas Mining, starting at its inception in 1953, and the subsequent role Carmen Copper plays today.
It is without doubt the only copper mining heritage center not just in the country but in Southeast Asia as well. And I am pretty sure the effort poured on it by so many men and women, not just of Carmen Copper but also of the current majority owners, the SM Investments Corp., paid off when ACMDC Vice Chair and SMIC Chair Frederick Dybuncio expressed both surprise and delight at what he had seen.
What should one expect at the center? I know I will be tooting my own horn here, as it were, but I hope the readers will oblige me.
For some five weekends or so already, I have been spending time at the mine site in Don Andres Soriano (formerly Lutopan) to help oversee the design I prepared last year for the heritage center. Four galleries make it up: an Institutional History Gallery, an Art and Temporary Exhibitions Gallery, an Outdoor Gallery and a Copper Science Gallery, all spread in two buildings, one of which was a former bowling alley.
When I was shown this abandoned bowling alley last year, I immediately knew that its narrow elongated space would make an ideal replica of a tunnel entrance, that of the Sigpit Drain Tunnel of 1962, complete with a locomotive and a mine car. Some weeks later, someone informed me during a visit that one of the mine cars that I was eyeing for the gallery had in fact been used by Don Andres Soriano himself, the founder of Atlas, whenever he would visit the underground mine tunnels. It was as if everything was coming into place. All we needed was a statue of Don Andres sitting on the mine car, which one can see today and even pose with on the mine car itself.
Working with a horde of engineers, electricians, construction workers and the supervisor of the project, Sofia Picardal, who also happens to be the vice president of the Central Visayas Association of Museums (CVAM), we were aided by the gentle but firm prodding of Koleen Davila-Palaganas, of SMIC in Manila. At the same time architects Ritchie and Chai Roncesvalles were also busy working on a scaled and detailed 4×4 meter diorama of the entire Toledo Mine Complex, an important topographic presentation for young visitors because mining safety laws prohibit the entry of children below 13 years old into the mine operations areas.
And so, to give grade school visitors an idea of the scale of mining and the over 1,300 hectares that have been reforested on site by both Atlas and Carmen Copper, the diorama was conceived to be shown inside the science gallery while complementing the huge 100-tonner Haulpak and a giant sheave as well as other heavy equipment at the outdoor gallery. All these drive home the point that getting copper out of a rock is not that simple and is neither easy nor cheap. At the same time, the Institutional History Gallery traces the long journey of Atlas from its beginnings in the once-sleepy barrio of Lutopan in 1953.
Geologists of the company were at the same time tapped to gather all the rocks and minerals found on site for a tactile display cabinet, allowing visitors to touch and hold each specimen sample. The entire process of producing copper from ore to copper concentrate is also detailed, including containers of the concentrate and its magnetite and pyrite byproducts the visitors can also touch.
All these end with end-products of copper, from wires to mobile phones to brassware and bronzeware. In the very near future, a geologic timeline will be part of the exhibits of the science gallery, plus a diorama of an open pit and the underground tunnels.
The visit ends with a museum shop and an exit that also replicates another of the many tunnel entrances/exits, this time the Abaca Launder Tunnel.
Many thanks and congratulations to the men and women of Carmen Copper for this groundbreaking, earthshaking accomplishment!
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