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.

Town Fiesta

February is the foundation anniversary and coffee festival of Kulaman Plateau (official name: Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino). I’m not so enthusiastic about it. I prefer not to write about it. But if I didn’t, it would be a disservice to the readers of this blog. After all, the fiesta is supposed to be the biggest celebration of any Philippine town.

I went to the fiesta two years ago, and it was disappointing, to say the least. But before I get grouchy and discourage you from reading on, let me focus first on the positive side. For me the best thing about the celebration was the motocross competition, mainly because it has a special category for skylabs.

A skylab is a motorcycle slightly modified to carry up to five passengers. In Cebuano-speaking areas of Mindanao, it is called habal-habal. (Kulaman is predominantly Ilonggo.)  The motorcycle is usually a Honda TMX. To transform it into a skylab, the shock absorber is lengthened by several inches. A seat made of grills is then placed on top of the tank, where a passenger can sit “girly style” in front of the driver. Lastly, the rear-end of the vehicle, where the luggage can be tied on, is replaced with a cushioned seat to accommodate at least one more butt.

A skylab. We used to have one in late nineties. It was bought in Koronadal and then remodeled in T'boli , South Cotabato

The skylab racing makes the motocross competition in Kulaman distinct from the ones in urban areas. The racetrack is at the back playground of Kulaman Central Elementary School.

I went to the fiesta for one day only, though the celebration lasted for almost a week. I got impatient of waiting for the activities to start. That morning, the program scheduled at eight, in the municipal gymnasium, did not begin until ten-thirty. I don’t know if the activities on the other days also started as late as that. The day I was there, the delay was caused by the guest of honor, who still came from some very important meeting hundreds of miles away. The afternoon program started at three and the evening program at nine. Kulaman was giving “Filipino time” a whole new meaning.

The name of the celebration is “Solok Festival,” after the weaved bamboo basket used by the Dulangan Manobo in their everyday chores. Do not expect, however, a tribal street dancing competition as in city or provincial fiestas. Kulaman is too poor for that.

The evening I visited Kulaman, I went to the perya (fair) near the gym and the municipal hall. I was amused and appalled by what I saw, not because there were no rides but because practically all the games in the twenty or so stalls involved betting. The place was a paradise for gamblers. In Koronadal, where I went to college, numbers games were prohibited in the perya. People with gambling contraptions were ordered to pack up. It’s the exact opposite in Kulaman.

I was disappointed with the town festival, but I had some fun. The experience wasn’t really horrific enough to not give it another try. We’ll see. 

Burial Jars in Inquirer

My efforts for this blog have paid off! An article of mine about the limestone burial jars was published in the op-ed section of a national newspaper. “Where They Should Be” appeared in the Youngblood section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on December 30, 2012. What an exhilarating way to end the year. Here are the first few paragraphs:

Upon seeing the burial jars, I had to take a deep breath. I had to keep the tears from flowing.

I was in the University of San Carlos (USC) Museum in Cebu City, and the burial jars I had come to see were taken half a century ago from Kulaman Plateau, my hometown in Mindanao.

For several weeks before the visit, I spent hours almost every day doing research online on the archaeological artifacts. By scouring websites and poring over downloadable academic papers, I felt that I had been a witness to the journey of the burial jars—how they were discovered in the caves and rock shelters in our town and ended up in museums in the Visayas, Luzon, and even as far away as the United States.

Seeing the jars for the first time, running my fingers along their vertical ridges, staring straight at the hollow eyes of their anthropomorphic covers, I felt reunited with long-lost loved ones. I had reached a major point in my search for identity. I had found a missing part of me.

The body of the article contains mostly facts about the burial jars—their features, where they are discovered, the explorations conducted by some institutions, where the jars are now. The information isn’t much different from what you can read in The Burial Jars page of this blog. The Youngblood article ends this way:

It is sad that the jars were taken away from their original sites, even if the institutions involved have done so much in preserving them and informing the public of their significance. It is despicable that some of the jars are blatantly put on sale online as though they were limited-edition action figures or used laptops. Nobody should put a price tag on archaeological artifacts; they are invaluable treasures of a tribe, a locality and even a nation.

If I had the money, I would buy all the burial jars now on display in California and take them back to my hometown. Unfortunately, all I can afford to do is see the ones that are in museums in the country. I’ve ticked off one destination in my list, and there are a few more to go.

Whichever museum I will visit, however, I have a feeling the experience will be the same: Upon seeing the jars, I will have to take a deep breath. I will have to keep the tears from flowing. No, I won’t let myself cry. I’ll cry only, in joy, when the limestone burial jars are back in Kulaman Plateau, where they came from, where they should be.

You can read the complete article at inquirer.net. Perhaps for the sake of consistency, the editor used “Kulaman Plateau” all throughout the article. Note, however, that in some parts, I originally used “Kulaman” only and I was referring to the barangay. The village of Kulaman is the seat of government of the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, while Kulaman Plateau covers an area that includes some parts of Kalamansig and Lebak towns.

Snapshots of my article. Yay! I’m sharing the page with a former chief justice of the Philippines and the present prime minister of Japan.

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.