San Miguel, Surigao del Sur

In 1981, Edilberto "Berto" Morales, a farmer employed as a bulldozer operator in an irrigation project accidentally unearthed a hoard of authentic gold artifacts and jewelries weighing up to 30 kg in Barangay Magroyong which includes masks, figurines, bowls, daggers, trinkets, belts, and all sorts of body ornaments. Through a support of several historical accounts, archaeologists and historians believed that the gold items were associated between 10th to 13th century used by pre-colonial Filipinos, years before Spaniards came to the country. Some of the golden artifacts, jewelries and ornaments, dubbed as the "Surigao Treasure", were then sold to and currently exhibited at the Ayala Museum in the city of Makati, Philippines and some pieces at the Central Bank of the Philippines. Morales' discoveries were then considered one of the first proofs that gold was an important link between the early people of pre-colonial Philippines and the neighboring Southeast Asian countries.^[6][7][8][9]

Poverty incidence of San Miguel

Source: Philippine Statistics Authority^{[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]}