Dear Editor,
I was invited to join the People’s Fact-Finding Mission in Mamasapano last Feb 8-11, 2015. I gave my confirmation right after I managed to reschedule another supposed trip. To get the chance to see the cornfields where 44 SAF officers have fallen is inviting enough, but I had another thing in mind: to listen to the stories of those who simply wanted to go through a normal day last January 25, but ended up having more than that.
From Cotabato City, we made our way to Mamasapano. We passed by a checkpoint, not far from the city proper. Soldiers strapped with machine guns managed to smile as we went by. Nearby were their armored personnel carriers and amphibians. We passed by 5 or 6 checkpoints. I lost count. It didn’t matter anyway; should there be another encounter in Mamasapano while we are there, I doubt if they’d come on time, and come to help.
The wide coconut plantations that I passed by in my visit to Maguindanao last 2010 for the first year anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre remained where I first saw them. Some areas it was obvious that the previous crops have been uprooted to pave way for oil-palm planting. Not much has changed since I last came; despite the fertile soils of Maguindanao, the people here remain one of the poorest in the entire country. And we all know what poverty means: vulnerability from onslaught of any tragedy be it of natural causes or human undertaking.
When we did our interviews with the residents in Tukanalipao, I was surprised with one man’s account. When he heard shots before the sun rose, he thought that it was the MILF, with their usual arms training. Only around 8 AM, when he saw people running and crawling as he made his way to fetch his cows, did he understand the situation. PNP-SAF and MILF troops were pulling the trigger for their lives since he woke up, and there he was, only wanting to collect his cows. It may have been panic, but he did not come back home to get food or clothes. He ran to the highway and hitched a ride to evacuate to another barangay nearby. So much for livestock maintenance.
We ran out of people to interview. Others seemed willing to talk, but many politely refused, and told others to do the same. My companion, who understood a bit of Maguindanaon, said that she could hear persons behind us whispering to others to refrain from talking more to us about the issue. I sat and thought about the next thing to do. Then we were told that we could go see the site of the encounter.
We walked towards the wooden bridge in Tukanalipao, perhaps the only wooden bridge in history that gained national attention. From where we conducted our interviews, it was probably a 10 minute walk to that bridge. Not a very good distance between a blocking force that had already been blocked in a cornfield that provided little cover, and 300 SAF troops in the highway, some of which have been reported to have looted stores nearby as they waited for further orders.
I was so excited to cross that I did not immediately realize that the word “bridge” could come in so many forms. A series of alternating planks and logs aligned by two’s, measuring up to a mere ruler’s width and tied together by some plastic wire, consisted this bridge. If ever I was caught in gunfire near a stream and that bridge was the only way to get across, I would have dug a tunnel underground before the fight started. Or swum across. Crossing the approximately 30 meter bridge required both legs and arms, if not the occasional reminder of my companions that distance should be kept between persons when crossing the bridge, to avoid any possibility of its collapse.
To expect the SAF troopers to cross with the weight of their rifles and gear in a time and manner of crossing that would have provided them survival, gymnastics courses on balance beams should have been included in the SAF trooper education.
I tried to imagine myself in the boots of the 55th SAC as I stood in the cornfield where they fought their last. I looked around, and told myself that unless the corn stalks were as tough as trees, it would be a losing battle.
I imagined how they might have crawled around, how their commander must have shouted orders to his men, how the wounded may have been treated, if in their last minutes they cursed the aerial support that never came. A helicopter could have easily fired upon their current enemies, as there was little for them to take cover to as well. I remembered the feeling city people get when they have to commute at noon and have to wait for jeeps on sidewalks that provide no shade.
I had to multiply that by 10, and add whizzing bullets in the equation, to get a feeling of how the members of the 55th SAC must have rationalized about the situation. It’s no mean feat to keep your cool under the heat of the sun. Much more, when people are trying to kill you.
Tukanalipao is one of the many ordinary towns in the archipelago, with no tourist spots or mineral wealth to attract developmental funding. Most of the people in the area are peasants. As of now there are no Nobel laureates from Tukanalipao, or beauty queens. And there, I think, is one tragedy no one has yet heard: it is easy for the public to generate outcry over the fallen 44, but not to the residents who are victims as well.
Not just of divestment and destruction of property and extra judicial killings due to the events of January 25, but to the systemic land problem in the country. Which leads us to a greater tragedy: the tendency of many to miss the bigger picture. Had the 44 not died that day, I doubt if Tukanalipao gets the same attention it has right now. And even now that the place has been in TV’s and papers, the visual depictions of 44 counts of overkill that had only been around for less than a month is given more attention than discussing over the root causes of conflict, one that has fuelled the likes of MILF and terrorists Marwan and Usman.
People’s emotions are stirred by the deaths of the 44, but not of the daily toils of millions of peasants in the country, some of which will be pushed to enlisting armed service to the country and will meet similar fate to the dead SAF commandos, or down the revolutionary path, one that state officials often stupidly aligns with terrorism.
How come we ask about what really happened in Mamasapano, but not much on why there are forces like MILF, PNP, and AFP, and what exactly do or for who they fight for? Perhaps the danger in solving the puzzle in Mamasapano is not the possibility that some pieces may be hidden or destroyed by the government, but the current scenario where people do not understand that Mamasapano is just another puzzle in the bigger puzzle, that is, why civil wars waged in the country, why US troops are in Philippine soil, why cornfields are giving way to oil-palm, why the state spends so much on military expenditures but not on bridges for Tukanalipao.
To focus solely on the 44 is to de-historicize what happened in Mamasapano. To de-historicize tragedies is to allow them to repeat themselves. Perhaps Tukanalipao is a wake-up call not just to the incompetence and puppetry of the Aquino government, but to the apathy, shortsightedness of the public and their misconceptions as well. I wonder why many dwell so much on the current investigation in the senate.
Do they actually think that star-studded cast of the upper house would not bungle the investigation the same way Aquino did with Operation Wolverine? Do they expect the witnesses to be truthful about the matter? Or is trial publicity similar to the way the SAF 44 had been killed: full of actions and thrills, not to mention additional laughs as witnesses get to be lambasted by public officials who deserve greater lambasting as well. If so, this again is another case of missing the picture.
The most dangerous thing about asking for truth and accountability is doing something that you think ultimately contributes to such cause, when the reality is that it only partially does so. Commenting on Facebook is one thing. Getting out of the room and telling others about the root causes of war and why Aquino has to be ousted is another.
I doubt if truth and accountability for Mamasapano can be achieved in the senate. I doubt if state-sponsored BOI’s can uncover the truth. Only when people realize that living everyday under the Aquino’s rule is in many ways worse than having to die in some cornfield will they take the struggle in the streets. I think that’s when the public wakes up and, unlike the man I interviewed in Tukanalipao, actually perceive the real situation and come ready for it the moment they get off the bed.
Marvin de Castro
(mdddecastro@gmail.com
Editor’s Note:
AFP – Armed Forces of the Philippines
BOI – Board of Inquiry
MILF – Moro Islamic Liberation Front
PNP – Philippine National Police
SAF – Special Action Force
SAC – Special Action Company
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