this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on December 3, 2009.
I never knew my grandfathers.
Ireneo Norte Roque was shot dead on Feb. 10, 1968, days before he was to take his oath for his second term as mayor of Siay, Zamboanga Del Sur. The glare of the mid-afternoon sun cast in harsh relief his bullet-riddled body as it lay sprawled in the middle of the town plaza, his eyes wide open in surprise and, it seemed, belated comprehension. A rival from a prominent political family, whose reign was uncontested until my grandfather abandoned his camp, was charged with ordering the assassination. Mere hours after the investigation began, masked gunmen in an unmarked vehicle opened fire at the Roques’ ancestral home. The shower of bullets and the spray of glass shards from broken windows forced the family to cower in the basement and, thereafter, leave town to seek refuge among relatives and abandon their pursuit of justice. My grandmother forbade my mother from attending her own father’s funeral to secure her safety.
On Nov. 25, 1966, Jovencio Clavano Gairanod, who once held office in Plaridel, Misamis Occidental, and was involved in a bitter court case against a cousin, was stabbed to death in the middle of a cockfight. Many years later, a suspect in the murder sought forgiveness from the family and admitted that the killing was the handiwork of my lolo’s cousin. Neither the mastermind nor the killer was ever tried in court.
I never knew my grandfathers, just as I will never know the 57 victims of the Maguindanao massacre and all the other victims of political violence in this country.
The Maguindanao massacre happened because we let it happen. It captured unprecedented attention not because it was the first extensively documented case of political violence in the country but because it was the worst. Many other bodies have been mutilated beyond recognition, defiled, riddled with bullets and hacked to pieces in the power-hungry’s desperate quest to retain power. Bubby Dacer, Rene Penas and Ricardo Ramos are among the easiest names to recognize from a long list of journalists slain in the line of duty, labor leaders gunned down in protests against abusive caciques and oppositionists targeted by established political families. Almost every day, members of warring political clans in Mindanao are kidnapped or killed because of long-running feuds—and their relatives retaliate against the families they suspect of committing those crimes by taking a child for child, a wife for wife. Student activists are abducted from their campuses and disappear without a trace.
When atrocities such as these happen, we gape in mute horror at the pictures published in newspapers, express disappointment at the inability of authorities to apprehend the culprits (most probably because those responsible are in their ranks) and then move on to discuss less unpleasant things. For as long as these things happen in locales far from us and to people we don’t know, they aren’t really part of our reality. Soon we give in to our tendency to shun the unknowable and obscure what is disturbing.
Our interest in the Maguindanao massacre, however, doesn’t seem fated to be short-lived. Still it is disconcerting to realize that it took 57 bloodied, dead and heavily disfigured bodies dumped into a mass grave to draw a reaction as strong as this from us. How many more photographed corpses will it take for us to decide that we should not treat events like these as if they were just another story? How many more journalists need to be shot before we realize that our indifference to previous acts of violence has led criminals to do whatever they want because they know that their money and influence can get them off the hook?
To forget the 57 people who died in Ampatuan is to kill them a second time. There can be violence in silence and passivity. To remain silent in the face of wanton brutality is to trivialize violence. To feign concern and then do nothing is to empower more warlords to control wider parts of our country. To not help pressure the government to bring to justice the perpetrators of this mass murder is to encourage lawlessness.
Let us look at images of their mangled bodies without turning away and allow them to sear our minds. We cannot let them fade into history as nameless, faceless martyrs of politics. We have to know them and see the opportunities they will miss and the dashed hopes of those they left behind. We have to remember their faces and constantly revisit the brutality that has been done to them. For as Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Let our votes speak of our indignation towards a government that has allowed, if not enabled, this horror to mar our consciousness. Let us compel our leaders to redefine our politics. Let us choose leaders who will not allow a similar injustice to happen in our cities and towns. Let us choose leaders who will empower citizens and work for the common good, not their personal interests.
Let us reconstruct our concept of the Filipino nation to be more inclusive of Mindanao. Despite the fact that political violence is a recurring theme in Mindanao’s history, it has been easy for many to dismiss the plight of those caught in the crossfire because the region I hail from possesses a distinct geo-cultural identity. Let us make an effort to really understand the problems of those who live in the south and rewrite our history to affirm their contribution to the development of the Filipino identity. Then we can begin to see that our concerns are equally relevant. Then we can see that the country loses when our region loses.
Mindanao is not the Land of The Other. We fought against the Spaniards in 1599 when they sought to expand their conquest from their fort in La Caldera. We fought alongside other patriotic Filipinos in August 1896 when the Katipunan revolt began. We ask that you fight with us, and for us, today.
Let us take part in efforts to bring light to the Maguindanao massacre and the issue of political violence in the country. We do not have to go to all mass mobilizations and camp outside Congress for days or always carry placards during silent protests and prayer rallies. We can write articles exploring the issue from different perspectives to emphasize that we are all affected by the Maguindanao massacre and the massacres that came before it and the feeble response of government to such atrocities. We can talk to community leaders and urge them to pressure those in power to pursue investigations relentlessly until all those responsible are behind bars and stripped of their privileged positions. We can find creative and persuasive ways to sustain interest in the struggle for justice. We must not be impotent bystanders in our nation’s struggle for true democracy.
We have the privilege and the power to write our history. It must not be written in blood.
