Rafael Tianero, Manobo Advocate

After quoting him generously in previous posts, I guess I owe Fr. Rafael Tianero a blog entry dedicated solely to him. He is one of the notable advocates of the Dulangan Manobo, which I have featured and will feature in this blog.

Tianero is a priest of the Oblates Mary Immaculate, which has a main office in Cotabato City. As a seminarian, he studied philosophy at Notre Dame University. Right after his ordination, in 1989, Tianero was assigned to work with the Dulangan Manobo. His experience with them led him to earn a master’s degree in anthropology at Ateneo de Manila University. His thesis was later published by Notre Dame University Press with the title Violence and Christianization in Manoboland.

Karl Gaspar, another notable advocate of indigenous peoples, has this to say about Tianero and his book: “Because of the ethnographic study conducted by Fr. Raffy . . . the Dulangan Manobo are no longer an invisible indigenous people . . . The Dulangan Manobo considered him not just a friend but a kinsman. It is from this privileged position as an insider that Fr. Raffy constructs the texts that reach out to us, so that we too could share his passion to be in solidarity with them.”

February Updates

I’m having trouble with the comments feature of this blog. I activated it a few weeks ago, but the widget remains hidden. I’ll try to fix it when I find the time. Don’t hold your breath, however. For suggestions and queries, you may always e-mail me at rj2ortega@gmail.com.

Finally, I’m done writing the content of the Manobo Overview page. All the pages of this blog are now complete. For the information on Manobo location, population, and the like, I am greatly indebted to three sources: Violence and Christianization in Manoboland, a book by Fr. Rafael Tianero, OMI; Journey from the Margins, the Doctor of Ministry dissertation of Fr. Francis Efren Zabala, OMI; and Defending the Land, a study by the Tri-People Consortium for Peace, Progress and Development in Mindanao (Tricom).

While my posts are written in Kulaman Plateau, they are uploaded online in Isulan, the capital town of Sultan Kudarat, or in Koronadal City, South Cotabato. Kulaman has no internet connection of any kind anywhere, so at least once a month I “go down” the plateau to update this blog and attend to other matters. It’s a good thing that Blogger has a prescheduling option. I’m able to have a new post come out each week.

The citation format I used for the Bibliography page is based on The Chicago Manual of Style. I chose Chicago because I’m comfortable with it; it’s our bible when I was still working as a copy editor for a self-publishing company. Note, however, that most research journals and academic books use other styles and the publication details are ordered differently.

Killing for Honor

To round off our discussion on violence in Manobo culture, I’ll say a few things here about the most recent violent incident involving Manobo men.

More than a year ago, a Visayan family of five was murdered in the village of Midtungok. Here’s the report from Mindanews.

The village where the massacre happened is quite far from where I stay, at least an hour away by motorcycle. My village, however, is swarming with the relatives of the victims, about a quarter to half of the population. Jolly Fegurac’s parents and brothers live here. I am, therefore, privy to some information that didn’t make it to the papers.

Some people here say that Josephine Fegurac was a little too sharp-tongued, and she might have let out stinging remarks against her Manobo enemies in front of them. The killing, therefore, might have been more for honor than due to material interest. It is said that the Feguracs obtained a lease on a land owned by a Manobo, but the two parties did not agree later on whether the trees could be cut as part of the contract. The Feguracs insisted they had the right to the trees and bought two chainsaws. Right on that night, before the machines could be used the next day, the Feguracs’ home was raided.

So far, one suspect, an official of the village, has surrendered to the authorities. That’s the only development on the case. Take note that the suspect surrendered and was not apprehended. I could go on and on about the ineptitude of the local police and the slothfulness of the local government officials, but let me stop myself. I’m here to discuss the causes of violence in Manobo culture.

Fr. Rafael Tianero, in his book Violence and Christianization in Manoboland, cites a similar but less grisly case. Sometime in 1998, a merchant Visayan couple from Kulaman village went to the hamlet of Tinandok to collect some debts. When one Manobo could not pay, the Visayan woman berated him in front of his wife and children. The Manobo man bore the humiliation is silence, and the merchant couple went off to sell their wares to other houses. The couple was not able to go back home to Kulaman. The next day, their motorcycle and their bodies were found lying beside the road. They had been hacked to death, their money and wares left untouched.

I’ll leave it to you to think further why such things happen between Manobo and Christians.

I’ll Kill Them Because I Hate You

Last week, I wrote about an unusual act of violence among the Dulangan Manobo—killing a non-relative to mourn the death of a loved one. Again, let me point out that such a murder rarely happens now, if at all. I find the Manobo a generally peaceful people, and what drive them to kill are often the same reasons non-Manobo have.

I promised, however, to discuss another unjustified extreme act of violence committed by a Manobo. As usual, my account is taken from Fr. Rafael Tianero’s Violence and Christianization in Manoboland. The murder occurred in 1988. A certain Giyok became furious with Ison, his younger brother. Instead of harming the latter, Giyok vented his anger on other people. With some fellow Manobo, he went amok in a neighboring village whose settlers were mostly Ilocano. The group killed one person and wounded five others.

This kind of killing is a case of “I’ll kill them because I hate you.” In contrast, killing a non-relative when grieving the loss of a relative is a case of “I’ll kill them because I love you.” Neither case makes sense. Both are unfair to the victims. Hearing such stories makes you wish not be on the path of a gloomy-looking Manobo.

Thankfully, the violent Manobo, called binusaya, is more an exception than a rule. The people in Kulaman Plateau are in greater danger of being stabbed by a “Christian” than by a binusaya.

Killing for Grief

It’s the red month, and this blog is going to go along with what’s in. The red here, however, is not the romantic kind. It’s the bloody kind. In a series of posts, I’ll talk about violence among the Dulangan Manobo.

In Violence and Christianization in Manoboland, Fr. Rafael Tianero, OMI, discusses several causes of violence in Manobo culture. Among them are affront to masculinity, non-payment of debts, and rivalry for leadership. Such situations, of course, occur not just among the Manobo but also to other tribes, indigenous and otherwise. So what I find interesting, and a bit revolting, are the two instances that are unique to the Manobo, or at least not common among the “Christian” tribes here in Mindanao. According to the book, some Manobo also kill—a non-relative and not the offending party!—when they are grieving over the death of a loved one and when they cannot express their anger to a close kin.

Killing a non-kin while mourning is called les sefeling, which means “to let the victim accompany the buried dead.” Tianero describes this kind of killing as a “custom” among the Dulangan Manobo, though as far as I know, as someone who grew up in Kulaman Plateau, this is not a prevalent practice. Tianero himself cites only one informant who claims to have performed such an act, a man named Flak.

Flak said that when he was still married, his grandfather died. He loved the old man so much and the death caused him great pain. The Manobo often call having such a feeling egkadaet fedu, or losing one’s heart. So for Flak’s heart to return, he went out of the house and killed someone.

Flak’s mourning, however, wasn’t over yet. The Dulangan Manobo do not usually bury their dead after several days of wake, as Visayan settlers do. The Manobo, specifically those who have not been converted to Christianity, keep the coffin inside the house for three to five years before burying the dead. When Flak’s grandfather was interred, the young man set out again to kill someone.

The violent man claims to have killed more than twenty people, but not all of the murder happened while he was mourning. Flak had also been involved in at least one fangayaw, or raid against an enemy group.

More bloodcurdling discussion next week. I will cite another case wherein a Manobo killed a non-relative due to his repressed anger toward a relative. I will also write about some murders involving Manobo suspects and Visayan victims.

Manobo Monsters 101

As with most Philippine tribes, the Dulangan Manobos have their own set of mythical creatures, most of which are spirits believed to cause harm to human beings. Manobos use the term busaw in referring to all kinds of evil spirits, but some of these spirits have specific names. Here are the weirdest according to Fr. Rafael Tianero in his book Violence and Christianization in Manoboland:

• Meta-es Fakol. This shape-shifting spirit normally appears as a rat and attacks at nighttime. It kills chicken but doesn’t eat them. It also sodomizes the spirit of human beings who move their bowels at night, causing them to have hemorrhoids later on.


• Lemodok. This apelike spirit has a short neck and a short torso but as tall as a tree. That is because it has very long legs. The legs come in handy for the spirit’s favorite activity: urinating on people. The victim’s body becomes unbearably itchy, and sores break out in his skin. He may eventually die.


• Siling. This spirit likes to fish, swimming upstream against the current. When it gets bored in the company of fish, it looks for a human being and tickles him to death.


• Fegelilong. This spirit can mimic a woman’s appearance. When two lovers agree to meet in a place and the woman doesn’t come on time, the spirit will assume the likeness of the woman and show itself to the man. The man will die as soon as he sees his fake sweetheart.

More spirits are described in Fr. Tianero’s book, which is unfortunately not available online. For more details, see bibliography.