THE SILENT DEATH OF MINDANAO’S LUMADS
Jose Torres Jr.
Speech delivered during the awarding of the Tolerance Prize by the International Federation of Journalists in Manila on June 25, 2004.

I am a Subano, a lumad from Mindanao. My grandparents lived in the mountains. In exchange for several yards of cloth, my grandfather sent his son, Onti, who later became my father, to the lowlands to become a houseboy. My future father was only seven years old then. He married my mother, a farmer’s daughter, when he was 19. They became farmers and our journey from one place to another began.

When I was young, Idad, my grandmother, came down from the mountain. She was crying. She said soldiers entered her hut in the middle of the night and pointed guns at her and Indong, my grandfather. The soldiers said my grandparents supported the rebels. Papa Indong, a Subanen timuay (leader), died of fear. Mama Idad was never the same again. They were driven from their land. I lost my river, my mountain and my forest that my grandparents promised they would give to me when they join the Almighty.

For a long time, my father refused to accept that he is a Subano. He got himself baptized and acquired a Christian name that he bequeathed to us his children.

My father had reasons to be ashamed of being a Subano. Anyway, how many times have lowlanders called us baboy sulop (wild pigs), deserving only the wilds? How many times have they cursed our tribe, saying we’re dirty, uncultured and ignorant? Didn’t we hear them say “Para kang Subano (You’re like a Subano)” whenever one of their children messes in dirt? Didn’t they laugh as we danced in thanksgiving to our diwata (goddess) for keeping us safe and our harvest bountiful?

It seems to be a long, long time ago when I was a kid. I used to understand our language. I used to sing our tribal songs while my grandparents would laugh because I was out of beat. Now, I don’t know our language, I can’t sing our songs and can’t dance to the beat of our music. I have become a native without a tribe, a Subano without a river. Suba means river and the Subanen are the people of the river.

My grandparents said they used to roam the Zamboanga Peninsula freely. The land was theirs. They had a bountiful life. They lived in peace as land was held in common, the harvest shared to every member of the village. They lived in harmony with nature, as forests were allowed to grow; the water systems were never polluted because they drank from its springs and rivers; the birds and flowers were their brothers and sisters.

Then came the dumadaong (settlers). Our tribe was wary of them. But my forefathers had an open mind and welcomed the newcomers. First, they were respectful as they borrowed portions of our land to till. Generously my forefathers shared the land – land that is given to all by the diwata – hoping that the newcomers too will live a life of communal abundance.

But they did not share their harvest with their neighbors. They sold it. They did not allow others to use the land. They kept it as their own.

It was too late. Our grandparents thought we would never run out of land. They thought that land was limitless. They did not foresee that time would come when man will claim the land as his own, his private property. They did not know then that land could be sold and resold and in the process they would be left with nothing.

And they pushed the river people to the mountains, in the wilderness, among the baboy sulop. Those years were not too long ago.

OUR LAND

The Philippines is an archipelago and mountainous country approximately covering about 30 million hectares of land surrounded by the Pacific, China and Celebes Seas. It comprises 7,100 islands with major islands grouped into three geographical regions: Luzon in the north, Visayas in the central region, and Mindanao in the south.

The Philippines is home to around 140 ethnolinguistic groups that comprise more or less 10 to 12 percent of the total population of approximately 80 million Filipinos. Interchangeably, they are called “indigenous peoples” or “national minorities.” Unlike other indigenous peoples in other parts of the world who were marginalized by the ever-expanding settlements of white colonizers, the indigenous peoples in the Philippines suffered a different fate. When the colonizers converted communities in low-lying areas as subjects, the upland communities managed to resist and preserve their traditional socio-political and cultural structures.

Thus a social dichotomy was born among the indigenous population in the country. The Filipino majority pertains to those who relate and adopted the imported ways of the colonizers while the minorities retained some if not all of their pre-colonial lifeways.

In Mindanao, the indigenous peoples are called lumads. They are the biggest in number among indigenous peoples in the Philippines. They comprise about 18 ethnolinguistic groups whom anthropologists refer to as Subanen, Manobo, B’laan, T’boli, Mandaya, Mansaka, Tiruray, Higaonon, Bagobo, Bukidnon, Tagkaolo, Ubo, Klagan, Banwaon, Dibabawon, Talaandig, Mamanua and Manguangan.

When political governance was turned over by the colonizers to the natives, the social structures that relegate the indigenous peoples into a disadvantaged position did not change. The founding of a Filipino state only aggravated and institutionalized the oppression of the indigenous peoples.

Laws practically converted the indigenous peoples ancestral domain into corporate properties. Legal shields, like land lease and joint concessions, aided the wholesale expropriations of land by foreign and local businesses. From then on the indigenous inhabitants of these lands lived a destructive cycle of forced eviction, military harassments or forced assimilation to give way for the entry of prospective investments.

The shifts from one power bloc to another in the government did not bear the realization of the indigenous peoples’ aspirations. Instead, it intensified the plunder of resources and rapidly institutionalized the systems that enforced disfranchisement and marginalization.

Using the euphemism and rhetorics of globalization, the government tried to open the economy to the unrestrained intervention of foreign corporations.

Aside from mining operations, which continue despite the decision of the Supreme Court to thrash the Mining Act of 1995, “eco-tourism projects” found its way into indigenous villages. So that they can continue to stay in their lands, the government encourages indigenous peoples to build their communities as components of tourism projects. The National Integrated Protected Areas System Law, for instance, segregates indigenous communities as “tourist attractions” along with the wild flora and fauna. The project does not only smack of stupidity but is also an affront to the rich cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples.

These government projects and programs amount to no less than the landgrabbing of ancestral territories for business interests. Resistance by indigenous communities was met by militarization of the countryside, which has only aggravated the disfranchisement of tribes and peoples.

OUR PEOPLE

Way back then, the Subanens were the majority in the Zamboanga peninsula. Now, we are less than 300,000 individuals. Where have our people gone?

Children below ten years old die in hamlets designated by the military, people succumbed to measles and gastric infections in evacuation centers, children and adults die during military operations, in massacres, in summary executions.

Lives are lost. There seems to be no end to the rain of bullets. Bullets rain on our land. Bullets kill. The rains bring flood. Blood floods on our fields. Tears of those whose loved ones are killed by armed men flow with the rain. We lost our homes to war that we don’t have a stake on.

But death and displacement do not end there. The Subanen, and the other lumads of Mindanao, are silently being killed by government-sponsored development projects and mining operations. Some say there’s an ethnocide going on in Mindanao. Is it real?

The Ata-Manobos of Talaingod, Davao del Norte, struggled against the expansion of the Industrial Forest Management Agreement project on their land by the influential C. Alcantara and Sons, Inc. The Ata-Manobos’ opposition to the project resulted in the deployment of the Army, who harassed and even sexually molested their women.

The Banwaons of Mahagsay, Agusan del Sur were displaced by counter-insurgency operations. They blamed logging interests and the Industrial Forest Management Agreement lease acquired by the Woodland Domain Industries from the government.

Thousands of B’laan people were evicted from their ancestral lands because the Western Mining Corporation, an Australian mining firm acquired a license to explore and exploit gold and other mineral deposits in a 10,000 hectare concession in shared boundaries of South Cotabato, Saranggani and Davao del Sur Provinces.

The Subanen people in the village of Malubo, Zamboanga del Sur, are threatened by the P3.4-billion multi-purpose dam project that would inundate homes and farms and dislocate 2,000 settlers and lumads. In Siocon, Zamboanga del Norte, the Subanens are being threatened and displaced by the mining operation of TVI Resource Development Philippines.

The Mandaya tribe suffered no less. Land grabbing by the Chinese and Spanish businessmen in the past drove them to the hills, making ranch farms out of ancestral domain. Ignorance of land laws due to lack of education was used as weapon against them.

The lumads of Mindanao are being silently killed by the onslaught of mining and logging explorations, from displacement and dispossession of their homeland, which ironically are being dubbed as development by the government and the business sector.

There are government institutions created to help the lumads but they have not done enough. Some of those appointed to these posts even became instruments in the exploitation of our ancestral domains.

Our ancestors taught us that our land is our identity and our history. They said it is our heritage. Our life. Our survival as a people. They taught us to defend it. So many of my brothers and sisters, those who were left in my homeland chose to fight. But they fight not for land’s sake, they are fighting against this society’s extermination of the lumads as distinct peoples.

Likid Magdagasang, chief of the Mandayas of the Davao provinces envies the Philippine eagle. On the verge of extinction, the bird was given a beautiful home, protection and bountiful attention by the government, even declaring thousands of hectares of forest reservations for the cause, while the lumads were driven out from their ancestral domain.

“We too are endangered. We are also on the verge of extinction. Even eagles have the right to forest reservation, should we have less?” Magdagasang said.

OUR STRUGGLE

Our struggle for land is a struggle for self-determination. As we pursue for control, management, development and enjoyment of the fruits of our land, with an inseparable right, we also pursue self-determination, self-governance, management of our own economic activities, protection of our environment, inter-personal relations, and the entirety of our culture as extensions of our ancestral domain.

The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act, which was enacted on October 29, 1997, with all its shortcomings, tried to provide a venue for working out the kind of peace, justice and development we have dreamt of for so long. But it seems that the government is using dilatory tactics not to implement the law.

The lumads need to survive. Our physical existence and identity are linked to our land. To survive, we have to have our land back and defend what is left of it. Only in the restoration of respect for the lumads’ rights to ancestral domain and self-determination, will we be able to accept the true meaning of socio-political, economic, cultural and spiritual freedom that the government continues to claim we already have.

Years and years and we have kept our silence – a semblance of what the government and the majority call peace. Now as the lumads are left with no place to go – for even the baboy sulop scampered when bombs fell and the development machines started to roar in the mountains where the dumadaong drove us before – our options are getting limited. Death in hunger or death in bullets. Some say they want to fight back. Let us help them expand their options.


Jose Torres Jr., is a Subano journalist based in Manila. He started as a writer of the alternative news service Philippine News and Features, which gave him the opportunity to bring to light for the first time in the early 1990s the bandit Abu Sayyaf Group. He later worked as sub-editor for Saudi Gazette, the national paper of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He came home in 1997 and worked as investigative reporter of the defunct Isyu newsmagazine. He later joined The Manila Times, The Philippine Post and The Sunday Paper while doing a radio show on Radio Mindanao Network. His articles appear on i, a magazine published by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism Newsbreak and MindaNews. He also writes for the Union of Catholic Asian News, a news service run by the Catholic Church. Joe was a fellow at the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993. He is senior editor of abs-cbnNEWS.com and his first book, Into the Mountain: Hostaged by the Abu Sayyaf, won the National Book Award for Journalism in 2002. His article on Filipino Muslim converts titled “Troubled Return of the Faithful” is a finalist in the 2004 Tolerance Prize.