How It Ended
Posted at 14:00 by Rolly Jude Ortega
Labels: Dumaguete, Jovy Almero
I’ve been walking around Dumaguete City the whole morning. I had budbod and sikwati in the public market, sat on a bench in Rizal Boulevard, and of course visited the Silliman University Anthropological Museum, which houses on its second floor some burial jars from Kulaman Plateau.
I wish to visit the Writers Village in Valencia, where Jovy, our co-fellows, and I spent three weeks in May 2014 for the 53rd Silliman University National Writers Workshop. But transportation is difficult. Besides, I need to have some rest. The trip from Sultan Kudarat was tiring physically, and revisiting what happened to Jovy in Kulaman Plateau is tiring emotionally. Here are the rest of his blog posts:
May 14, 2015, Wednesday
A Witness to Violence
Posted at 10:38 by Jovy Almero
Labels: Kulaman Plateau, massacre
I was thinking that two things could happen last Monday night. First, we would spend the whole night worrying about the murderers but they would not come. Instead, it’s the police officers from the town who would come and take away the fugitive—without any fuss. Second, the murderers would come, they and the soldiers would exchange fires, and everyone, or at least many, in the camp would die.
None of that happened. What happened instead was that before the authorities came, the Manobo man fled, or he tried to. A soldier ran after him and shot him in the leg. He had to be rushed to the town for medical treatment. Everything was a blur to me now. I just found myself offering my company to two of the soldiers and Maya. The Manobo man kept on thrashing about, trying to run away, so he had to be tied up between the soldier driving the motorcycle and me, who was seated at the back. Maya rode another motorcycle with the other soldier.
On our way, the Manobo kept on struggling and cursing in his native tongue. I held him and told him in Tagalog that we would not let him be harmed further, that he had to cooperate, that everything would be all right. I’m not sure if he understood me; some of the Manobo men I’ve met could fairly speak Tagalog for some reason. Or perhaps he just ran out of strength. In any case, he stopped resisting and constantly groaned in pain. Somewhere along the way, we met the police officers, who were thankfully in a four-by-four pickup truck. We moved the injured man to the vehicle and proceeded to town. Maya cradled him in her lap.
I’m in the municipal hall right now. Maya and I have been holed up in an office here since Tuesday morning, after the Manobo man underwent surgery in the local hospital. Fortunately, the government doctor, whose duty is just two days a week, was here when we brought the Manobo man, and the bullet did not come in contact with any bone, so the patient did not have to be brought to a bigger hospital in the plains for treatment.
For safety reasons, the rest of the exploration team has come here in the town proper and staying in the mayor’s residence. That’s why I get to blog right now. The others brought with them my stuff. I don’t know now what’s going to happen now to the project. I assume we won’t be going back to the excavation site anytime soon.
Policemen are interrogating the fugitive this morning. I don’t know what would come out of it. The Manobo man might not rat out his companions. Yesterday, Maya told me that he fled because he didn’t really want to surrender to the authorities. He approached Maya because he wanted her to help him get to the plains, to run away from the crime, not to do right by the victims or anything. He went with Maya to the camp because he wasn’t aware that there were soldiers with us.
The man is not remorseful of what he and his companions did to the Peliba family. He told Maya that the Pelibas, especially the wife, disrespected and even humiliated some Dulangan Manobo. Fely Peliba was a shrewd businesswoman. She had a lease on a wide track of land owned by a Dulangan Manobo and she was claiming that the huge trees on the land were part of the deal, that she could have the trees felled and turned to logs. The quarreling parties had referred the dispute to local authorities, but Fely Peliba would not listen to anyone and insisted on having things her way. Thus, the killing.
The Manobo man has confessed everything to Maya, but I’m not sure if he would do the same thing to the authorities or if the authorities would be able to wring out the truth from him.
May 15, 2015, Thursday
Honor and Killing
Posted at 4:12 by Jovy Almero
Labels: Kulaman Plateau, violence, Rolly’s blog
The Manobo man did not fess up to anything. It seems that he would be going to the provincial jail alone as soon as his gunshot wound heals.
Once again, I found myself searching Rolly’s blog for answers. Two of his posts narrate similar but less violent incidents. Once in the late 1990s, a Visayan peddler and his wife went around a Dulangan Manobo village to collect payments for the merchandise that was taken from them on credit the month before. When one Manobo man could not pay the couple, the Visayan woman berated the Manobo man in front of his wife and children. The man bore the humiliation in silence. The couple was not able to go home. They were found dead the next morning beside the road, their bodies slashed by a bolo, their money untouched.
Rolly, quoting a book, mentions in his blog two or three other incidents where a Dulangan Manobo kills a Visayan because the latter humiliated the former. The Peliba massacre seems to fit the mold. The more I think of the Pelibas, the clearer it comes to me what happened when the archaeologists and I dropped by their sari-sari store. Fely Peliba was nice to us—extra nice. Unlike most of the women in the village, her face was pink, probably because she was using an exfoliant. Her eyebrows were plucked and her nails were polished. She spoke to us in a heavily accented Tagalog.
While we were still approaching the store, however, we heard Fely Peliba scolding someone inside. In my ears she sounded really mad, and I made out a Visayan curse or two. She was still scowling when she turned to us, and then upon realizing that we were not her ordinary customers, upon seeing that we looked as though we were from the plains, a big smile formed in her lips, showing us a gold-capped front tooth. I realized that she had been scolding a young man. It must have been John Peter Peliba, the 20-year-old nephew of her husband who also became a victim of the massacre. The young man was squatting on the floor, scooping with his hand back to a sack the heap of rice that seemed to have fallen on the floor, while Fely Peliba took our orders.
Based on that short encounter, I’d say that Fely Peliba was capable of tongue-lashing someone. I would not be surprised if she indeed haughtily insisted to the original owners of the land that the trees belonged to her and she could do anything with them as she pleased, that she could chainsaw all the trees there if she wanted to.
Policemen invited me to the precinct this morning for some questioning. I told them everything my eyes saw while the Manobo man was in the camp, but I did not say anything about him that I learned from Maya. Whenever pushed for more details, I told the officers “I don’t know” or “I can’t remember.”
September 15, 2017, Thursday
Prints We Leave Behind
Posted at 9:00 by Rolly Jude Ortega
Labels: Dumaguete, Jovy Almero, burial jars
Until now, the trial for the murder case is still ongoing. Two more Manobo men have been apprehended and taken to the provincial jail. At least eight of the suspects are still at large. The blog posts by Jovy have been presented in court as evidence, but it couldn’t be determined as of yet if the account would have an impact on the trial.
The research led by Maya Difuntorum was halted for two months, but she formed a new team soon after. With tight security, they were able to finish the project seven weeks after it resumed. They were able to unearth 17 complete jars (meaning, with lids), 22 pieces of jars only, and 5 pieces of lids only, along with fragments of human bones, boar’s teeth, metal bracelets, and some pottery. Archaeologists around the country hailed the project as the most productive in many years.
Jovy was part of the new team. Of the original team, it was only Maya and he who decided to come back to Kulaman Plateau. Camille Rivera told me that Jovy was thinking of staying in Kulaman Plateau for good to help improve the welfare of the Dulangan Manobo.
Months after the archaeological excavation came to a close, while Jovy was involved in a coffee propagation project for the Dulangan Manobo, he contracted malaria and was not able to survive. He died a few days before Camille Rivera gave birth to their child, Magnolia.
When I went back to Kulaman Plateau to take Jovy’s body to Naga, I started to re-evaluate my priorities. I remembered that I had a self-imposed duty to serve my hometown. I had once dreamed of helping the Dulangan Manobo achieve their ancestral domain claim and preserve their culture. To regain my old self, and in honor of Jovy, I decided to come back home and stay there.
Slowly I’m seeing the fruits of my advocacy, especially on the limestone burial jars. Kulaman Plateau now has a modest-sized museum that houses the most recently excavated artifacts. Some institutions and private collectors who have the jars in their possession have also agreed to return all or part of their collection to Kulaman Plateau. That’s why I’m here today in Dumaguete. Silliman University is giving half of the Kulaman jars in its museum back to where they came from. After more than 40 years here in Negros, the burial jars are coming back to Mindanao.
Jovy and our co-fellows in the Silliman workshop called the burial jars “pots.” I did not take offense because I knew they were just teasing me. They knew that the pots are more than just that. Sometimes, when I meet my co-fellows, we tell one another that Jovy died digging for pots. Jovy wouldn’t take offense. He knows we’re just teasing him. He did dig for pots, and we know he did more than just that.
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