Lumads Can't Take It No More:
My Reflections on GMA's Total War Policy
By Maricel Paz Hilario, Kaiba News and Features

Page 1

They Killed My Best Friend
The first boy to speak never finished sharing his story. As he tried to piece the fragments of what happened during the attack, he began to break into sobs. Then the sobs became hysterical as he wailed, "Gipatay nila ang akong best friend! Gipatay nila ang akong bestfriend...kamong mga Muslim, bantay lang gyud mo pag-balik sa klase, kay manimalos gyud ko (They killed my best friend. My Muslim classmates, watch out. When classes resume, I would make you pay for it.).

I stopped taping, set the camera aside and hugged the boy. I could not find the right words to say. And yet, my mind and my heart was screaming, "Look Erap, at what you have done! Violence only begets violence: that is all there is to it, that is all it ever does."

When they saw me silently weeping with him, one of the women said, "Hala ka, naunsa. Ma'am, sorry, Ma'am. He has not grieved over the death of his best friend yet. He has not even visited the wake yet and he would be buried tomorrow. We would not allow him to attend the funeral because we never know what would happen. Kuyaw pa gyud kaayo, na ambot na lang unsaon!"

Knowing that my companion came from Manila, a number of women requested her to send public announcements through the radio to their sons and daughters. They wanted to let them know that they are still alive and okay. If possible, could they send home some money? They are running out of food and a number need to repair a portion of their houses' roofs and walls because the bullet holes were too big. On our way to our host's house, I walked with a middle aged-mother carrying her three-year-old son. Sensing it was almost dark, the boy embraced his mother and whispered, "Mama, I do not want nightfall to come. I could not sleep."

The following morning, while we were waiting for a bus to Bukidnon, I overheard five high school junior and senior students. Their ages must have been from 15 to 17. They were discussing which type of gun was lighter and easier to fire. They were also arguing who gets to hold the gun should another attack comes. The young five young men are being trained as Civilian Volunteer Officers or CVO. I shuddered from what I have heard and tried to look outside the waiting shed. In a bench across, I saw two young girls playing with armalite capsules.

I realized the contrasts of my life from theirs. Having studied at the Philippine High School for the Arts in Makiling, I have never experienced holding even a wooden makeshift rifle because we were exempt from taking the Citizen's Army Training required for all high schools in the country. Even if I did not come from a rich family, I began to agree with what my host said on my first night, I did live a comfortable life.

When I embarked on fieldwork in Bukidnon after a successful thesis proposal defense in October last year, the greeting the literacy teachers working in the area gave me was: "Eizel, why did you come? We are just waiting for the Management Group's instruction to pull out because of the planned military clearing in the area." I quipped, "Great! Why did you tell me this only now, after I have sent the habal-habal (motorcycle bike) away? You planned that, didn't you, because you need a stand-up comedienne to walk home with! You might get frustrated, I really could not promise I could make you laugh throughout the 64-kilometer stretch to highway." Then one of the mothers who met me said, "Good for you, you have a home to go back to. For us here, we have nowhere to go." Threats of armed conflict erupted because of the reported abduction and killing of a lumad leader in one of the five sitios where I was supposed to do research. He was suspected to be a member of the NPA. Witnesses say six government soldiers and CVO members took him from a house of a relative he was visiting. He was last seen inside the military detachment in a nearby barangay. No body was ever found and no systematic investigation of the disappearance was ever conducted. A multi-sectoral fact-finding mission composed of lumad leaders, church representatives, and human rights groups initially started an investigation but failed, reportedly because the military and the Barangay Council did not cooperate.

Meanwhile, fears of retaliation from the missing person's family and his rumored organizational affiliation suffused the area. The military deemed the clearing necessary to clear it from "dili isig pareha nato (not one of us)."

The impending military action necessitated me to ask the leaders of the community whether I should pay a courtesy call and inform the military of my presence. I feared any suspicion on my identity could unnecessary endanger them. On the other hand, I was apprehensive of this recourse because I might be suspected of being an informant or deep penetration agent, if indeed there were NPAs in the area. I abhor violence and I do not want to be associated with either side. I was partly relieved when the leaders said there was no need to do that. However, they said, I had to limit my research site to areas where they are completely sure I could be safe.

In desperation to push through my fieldwork, I made conscious and creative efforts to represent myself as a least likely object of speculation by the military, I bought myself a red pair of hiking shoes to go with my teal green mountaineering backpack. My six-year old brown pair already seemed to have hundreds of kilometers worthy for a seasoned field combatant marked on it. I comforted myself with the idea that a walking Christmas tree could hardly pass the description of a new recruit. I felt I just saved myself from being summoned for questioning and interrogation.

Caught in a Crossfire
For almost six months, we lived with the reality of the military clearings and operations in the area and its contiguous sites as well as the possibility of NPA retaliation if indeed the rumor about the missing person was true. The literacy teachers, the health worker and the training coordinator and I all feared for our and the community's lives. We felt so powerless with the idea of being caught in a crossfire.

I had mixed feelings of seeing the datu who took me in having a pangapog night after night. He told me he has been asking the Muolin-olin (Guidance Spirits) to guide all concerned parties toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict as well as remind all indigenous communities around the area of the peace pact they have previously worked so hard on. The area where we lived in was a sacred ground and it deserves due respect. While it comforted me that our prayers would keep us safe, it also made me ask, is the situation really grave? Is there something that the community knows that they did not want to tell me and the Project Staff? Has the peace pact been broken because of the incident? I have never seen datus pray as hard.

At some point, I also suspected if everything was just hype created by the military so that they could earn their promotions. This perception emerged when several of the parents on their way to a meeting with the NGO staff and their children were summoned by military officials to their detachment. They were asked to pose for solo pictures wearing fatigues and holding armalite rifles. We were appalled over the incident. We feared it might be used as a support document to go with a list of rebel returnees. It did not comfort us when the men tried to assuage our fears by telling us that this was not the first time they were asked to pose for pictures. Maybe, they said, the pictures would only be used to get benefits for CAFGU members who had no records.

There was also a time when we heard that the unit sent on operation was cornered by the "enemies" in one area. This was reportedly the latest radio message conveyed to the detachment. When I heard that, I decided to go home and collect myself for a while. All the men who belonged to that unit were indigenous peoples who were recruited to join the CAFGU. They were specifically handpicked for the operation because it was a very difficult assignment that required knowledge of the terrain and jungle survival by heart. I could not imagine dealing with the loss and the pain of the families of these men. For the past months, I have intimately participated in their lives-talking with their mothers, their wives, and their children about their everyday life, what they thought of "development", what were their dreams as well as concepts of good life and well-being while we worked together in their farms or in their hablanan (weaving looms). All the narratives they shared with me were intricately woven with the lives of these men who were out there, fighting for their lives.

When I came back three weeks later, I was so relieved to see one of the men who was sent to the operation. They are alive! He told me nothing difficult really happened to them, except when their food supply did not come for nearly ten days. They were surprised to hear about the news that reached us and said they were all exaggerated and blown out of proportion.

At the tulugan, I asked the datu and his nephew about what they thought of and felt about the inconsistencies of the reports that reached us. The younger man told me that it was now apparent to them that they were just being used by the government forces as pawns in their war. He also said he would rather have his cousins and in-laws stay in the community because aside from the unnecessary fear it imposed, their involvement with the CAFGU had burdened their wives and their children with more farm work and domestic responsibilities. More importantly, having CAFGUs in their area have somehow put their community at risk.

The dangers of intensifying militarization and the dangers it posed to my life became so real when I went to Davao to attend an anthropological conference. At the first day of the conference, news about the killing of Beng Hernandez, an Ateneo co-ed who was doing research on human rights violations in Arakan Valley in Cotabato was the banner story of every local newspaper. At lunchtime, my cousin who was a military officer called me up and reminded me to be very careful and sensitive to all the movements taking place in my research area. He warned me that I could easily be suspected as an NPA organizer because I am a UP student. He was dead serious when he advised me that I should keep myself from looking and sounding too cocky, smart, and intelligent typical of a UP student.

Reality of War
Over bottles of beer that night, one Jesuit scholastic and I discussed the news and reflected on the dangers the we face when we choose to leave the comforts of home and take a "different" kind of job. He was on his way to do mission also in an area caught in armed conflict situation. When he asked me for "survival tips," I told him, "You know, aside from praying, when you think you can no longer bear it, just think of something funny so you could laugh about after the ordeal. Somehow, it would give you something to look forward to being alive the next day. It could also help pull you through when sleep would not come." Our laughter was louder than the waves of the Samal Gulf when I shared with him my stupid preoccupation with dying on the CR in midst of war. On the other hand, deafening silence permeated when I dropped my punch line: "Well, for us, middle-class outsiders, we could really afford to make a joke out of it, because we have wider choices. But for the people we committed our lives to work with and speak for, sometimes, they do not have a choice but to deal with and cope with the reality of war and violence in their everyday lives."

On June this year, I received a text message from the coordinator of the Project that co-hosted my fieldwork. She informed me that all the teachers working in the area are either now teaching in barangay schools, or working to be accepted in one. I could understand. I still remember my last conversation with one of them last April. She told me, "You know, Eiz, I really love teaching, and I really love this place, and I really love this community. However, I am not that strong to deal with the constant fear of an armed conflict. And I could not sleep well at night thinking about my parents who are deeply and constantly worried about me."

Now, from four qualified teachers, only one was left to teach different levels of functional literacy classes to about 100 children and adults in the area. He is only assisted by five high school graduates who were required by the Project to render community service in exchange for their scholarship.

As I sit down and read the Inquirer in between transcribing my field work tapes and starting a few chapters of my thesis, I could not help but stop to write this piece. Having shared all these stories, I hope that the President would reconsider her position, sit down, initiate a dialogue, and work with various groups and sectors in search for alternative non-violent approaches to achieve a just, humane and peaceful society. There are many groups, individuals, and indigenous community leaders in Mindanao who have sincerely and earnestly dedicated their lives working for peace and active non-violence. She should humbly learn from them, rather than blindly follow the advice of her American friends. --Kaiba News and Features

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Maricel is a Mindanawon and a graduate student in anthropology at UP Diliman. Even though she is disgruntled with GMA and find most of our government officials and politicians hopeless, she has no intentions of leaving the Philippines to migrate to another country. Her fieldwork experiences may have brought to her sight the harsh lives of people caught in war, but they also enabled her to meet the beautiful faces of people who are working for peace. After writing her thesis, she plans to go back to Mindanao and be among these beautiful faces. She fervently hopes she would not be hunted as a communist or mistaken for a terrorist for choosing this career path because she really wants to die peacefully.

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