People We Remember
Posted at 9:00 by Rolly Jude Ortega
Labels: Dumaguete, Jovy Almero, Kulaman Plateau, binusaya
As I’ve told you yesterday, I originally didn’t have an access to Jovy’s blog, but one of the people whom it was shared was Camille Rivera, my co-fellow with Jovy in the 2014 Silliman workshop and the mother of Jovy’s child. Camille felt that I had to read the blog, and indeed, reading what Jovy wrote made me re-evaluate the things that truly mattered to me.
I am sharing with you now Jovy’s partial account of his life in Kulaman Plateau with permission from Camille and Jovy’s family. The blog was short-lived. It only saw seven entries in the course of two weeks. But it was written at a crucial time and dealt with a sensitive matter.
Jovy wrote several unflattering statements about me in his blog. But that was just the way he was. In writing, his language was normally crass and he called people names. In face-to-face conversations, however, Jovy was rather laconic and admittedly shy. I knew he respected me—was even fond of me—because of his consistent use of “Dulangan Manobo” and “Kulaman Plateau.”
He knew that I was particular with those terms. I had told him before that there are several tribes in Mindanao named Manobo, the languages of whom are mutually unintelligible and the ways of life barely identical, so one must be more specific when referring to a particular group. Also, “Kulaman” was the old name of the central village and seat of government of the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, but I had told Jovy that I preferred to use “Kulaman Plateau” because it is the term used by archaeologists in their published academic papers in 1960s and 1970s.
May 11, 2015, Sunday
To Lose One’s Heart
Posted at 08:06 by Jovy Almero
Labels: Kulaman Plateau, binusaya, Rolly’s blog
I’ve been reading Rolly’s abandoned blog about his pot fetish—or, to afford the prick some respect, his fascination with the 1,500-year-old limestone burial jars that were discovered in 1960s in Kulaman Plateau and then taken to Cebu, Dumaguete, San Francisco, Belgium, and other parts of the world. I checked the blog for some information about the Dulangan Manobo, the natives in this plateau. I felt that if I knew them a little better, I would be able to put things in context. I would be able to weigh the threat of those Manobo murderers.
I’m not sure if I did the right thing. I came upon some posts in the blog about the headhunting tendencies of the Dulangan Manobo, and the information only scared the shit out of me instead of making me warm up with the natives. According to one post, there are some violent Dulangan Manobo who are called binusaya. These men kill people almost indiscriminately. The example that struck me the most is when a binusaya mourns for the death of a close family member. To release his grief, he goes out of the house and kills the first non-family member he sees. And the cranky men justify their actions rather poetically. They claim that death and other tragic events cause one to “lose one’s heart” and killing—only killing—could cause one to “gain one’s heart.”
If it’s any consolation, the massacre does not appear to be a random act of killing perpetrated by binusayas. Rolly stated in his blog that a binusaya normally acts alone and on a whim. He does not operate with a group and on purpose. It’s really possible that the murder, as rumor has it, was due to a disagreement between the victims and the killers on a piece of land. Though the Pelibas were not as rich as a logging concessionaire, the family is said to be involved in a micro-scale land grabbing. When Visayans migrated to Mindanao in the1950s and 1960s, indigenous tribes were tricked into selling their lands for ridiculously low prices. The problem persists until today.
I’m sorry. I have to cut short this post right now. There’s a commotion of some kind outside my tent. I’ve got to check it out.
May 12, 2015, Monday
The Fugitive and the Archaeologist
Posted at 01:15 by Jovy Almero
Labels: Kulaman Plateau, massacre
It’s the wee hours of the morning, and none of us here in the camp is asleep yet. The shouting voices I heard last night turned out to be that of an archaeologist and the soldiers. What happened hasn’t fully sunk in yet, and I don’t know where to start.
Anyway, here’s what happened, as told to me by Maya, the fifty-year-old lead archaeologist. Yesterday, at dusk, on her way out of the cave, she was approached by one of the Dulangan Manobo who attacked the Peliba residence. The man had no gun. He had nothing but the tattered clothes he was wearing. And he was scared for his life. He was running from both the authorities and his fellow murderers. He had a minor role in attack. He doesn’t know how to use a gun, so he was given charge of looting the store and carrying one of the chainsaws. The group brought their loot some place, and when he returned to his home to check on his family, he found policemen waiting for him. They interrogated him, and he claimed innocence. He lied through his teeth. His companions, however, became suspicious of him. When he sensed they were planning to dispatch him to keep their secret a secret, he fled. He didn’t surrender to the authorities. He was afraid that if he did it, he would be hurt, even killed. He thought instead of asking for help from the outsiders who were looking for burial jars. He had met them before, and he had found them trustworthy enough. Some of them could carry a conversation in the Manobo language. So he went to the project site.
When the soldiers learned of the identity of our guest, they wanted to maul him. It turned out that one of the soldiers is a cousin of Edgardo Peliba, the father of the family that was killed. Maya did not let the soldiers hurt the Manobo man. She told them that if they so much as laid a finger on the man, she would have them removed from service. She claimed she could do it in no time. I don’t know if she was telling the truth, but she uttered her words with so much conviction and at some points hysterics that the soldiers were reduced to swearing and pointing at the Manobo man.
The other archaeologists got worried because if the other murderers were after the Manobo man, they might be able to follow him to our camp. The murderers might kill the man and us. The archaeologists did not want the fugitive around, but Maya and the soldiers did not want him to go either. We could not come up with a solution. The soldiers suggested that two of them stay in the camp while the other two take the Manobo man to the police precinct or the municipal hall right that night. They had a motorcycle with them. But Maya objected. Without telling us, we knew that she did not trust the soldiers, that she was thinking that they would kill the man on their way to town. She consented on the condition that she goes with the soldiers. The other archaeologists thought the trip would be too dangerous for her, so they took back their original suggestion.
It seems that the only thing we can do is wait out the night, and that is what we are doing. The soldiers and Maya have radioed the mayor and the chief of police about our situation, and they said they would immediately send men to come here and take the Manobo man to the center of the town. The men are expected to be here an hour or so from now. For now, we are hoping that the murderers would not get here first.
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