ESSC - 2. Reflections on Youth and Peace in Mindanao

2. Reflections on Youth and Peace in Mindanao

Friday, 10 July 2009

A group of youth recently walked from an outer sitio (hamlet) down through a number of barangay (main village) to celebrate peace. What difference did it make?

1. Orientation: Mindanao Context

Mindanao is presented as an island rich in diversity of peoples and beliefs, natural resources and opportunity yet having many contradictions and problems. The uplands of Mindanao embody even more the difficulties and are approximately 40 % of the island. Most of this has been deforested by unsustainable logging and migrant practices of slash and burn have cleared the land for extensive areas of poorly developed agriculture. Imperata grass has become more widespread that the forests providing a livelihood often not much beyond subsistence. The soils in places are poor and even mineralized, other areas have been greatly eroded with unsustainable activities in all barely supporting several million people on the mountain slopes. Beyond this opening of land have been the Indigenous Peoples whose rights and wellbeing were not greatly enhanced during the twentieth century.

Development practices that started with logging seem to have an innate sense of destruction in the uplands while more intensive agriculture in the valleys and plains is evidentially much more productive. Long before martial law many of these areas did not know sustained peace, since then various armed groups including many private armies operate. An estimated 60 language groups to varying degrees experience deprivation, economic or social marginalization, a few wield a level of control as some attain a level of economic stability and equity within the broader society. There is a growing sense of government presence but far behind policy definition and promise.

2. Community Experience

In the mountainous region of eastern Bukidnon were the Pulangi rises, peace - kalandang - has had a very tenuous existence over-shadowed seasonally by violence. While any talk about peace in such areas at a provincial or island level is often an abstract conversation, local people are seeking to get beyond the fear and insecurity of troubled times in tangible ways.

In March after an encounter down the road the body count was 18 and numbers of injured unknown. The personnel and silent shock of recognizing people - dead - cast a broad silence. Fear in community was tangible; fear based on different experiences of the past of what would happen next. When six months earlier on the sighting of arms in the area the school had been closed for several weeks, people kept close to the village and did not work far afield. This time the fear was greater. Fortunately grade school exams had finished the day before the encounter so dormers were already home bound, volunteer teachers were evacuated and the group of youth (partly returning from high school) went far away for a week's workshop, while people waited alone in silence. Members of the community and the community at large are vulnerable to any group making its way into the area; a few people who have alternatives leave.

The fear born of being misrepresented or reported to one side or the other isolates the adults. A few women talk quietly by the store, two men speak with clarity of not being involved with any group as their responsibility in the local church demand their accountabilities elsewhere; any meetings are strangely silent. The escaping army for multiple reasons might return by the community; the pursuing army might come directly. People fear the crossfire of an encounter and also what would happen if forced to evacuate. There is a need to talk about the fear and face the problems rather than be caught rigid in silence. Just a few people gather for a eucharist in the open chapel. We have to accept the situation but could we not talk of the fear and uncertainty? We need to identify a meeting place when in fear of groups in the area, and have a way to gather that would not appear threatening. Each day the group grows quickly; the eucharist in the large house overflowing with women and children is a wonderful and reassuring experience of trust and of hope. That hour or so makes a lot of difference as to how people feel being together. It is now the fifth day, the height of the fear, and then slowly ease enters life in the community. We are together and left alone, as the different groups never came. It feels good to have faced the fear, not to have been paralyzed.

3. Youth sustain the discussion

The youth, meaning those finished with grade school, married, single, jobless or on summer break are troubled and want to understand in some way why it is so much a struggle to live life in the uplands with the only other choice these days being the likes of a trucking job in Cagayan de Oro or mining in Surigao. They have gone to meet the mining explorers who came without invitation or explanation a few years ago. Recently they talked with those cutting the trees of their gaup (domain) even though they were armed. The questions they ask are basic, unintended to manipulate but hard to avoid. For years they ask about peace, see how the elders talk, perform the traditional dances of planting and harvest, war and peace, courtship and prayer. They understand the rituals of tagbanaw (covenant or pact) and dramatize the struggles with tuberculosis, intoxication and logging. The youth group is active but not very consistent in their meetings or approach.

In a mountain village where peace is insecure there is an overriding fear that affects what you say every moment and what you can commit to in the future. So people don't talk about the problem for fear others will interpret any tiny bit of what they say as judgment and in turn be wrongly or falsely accused. On the other hand the youth seek freedom, they have not judged nor condemned but seek understanding. They seek peace so they can learn and study and explore life, they are not accusable in their basic desires as manipulating, attacking or undermining any system or operation. Exploring, understanding, caring, living out the freedom is what youth is about and responsibility can be shared.

4. Youth Peace Activity

The group is planning a gathering of youth from around the valley for activities and sharing on peace during the last days of May. They go out from the village to gather others already informed from the neighboring ten villages. They come back early morning disheartened with only a third of the expected participants. With great determination they continue with the schedule of the workshop and by noon most of the gaps have been quietly filled by youth making their own up the valley. Great drama, songs and games echo across the village. Sharings punctuate the exuberance of song and basal (bamboo ----) early night; there must be two hundred people around and yet such silence. The noise of the insects and frogs highlight the silence, the carpet of stars above seem to listen as a youth speaks of the fear of his dreams. How can our world change?

Sunday morning the caravan of activity gathers, there are 150 participants with at least another 50 from the community. Children and adults want to make their way down the valley for a three-hour walk. Some jeepneys are contracted to come up and shorten the distance.

The walk for peace has no agenda put to spread the hope for living freely. The youth sing without instruments, chant peace, tie ribbons on fences, school gates, flowering bushes, signs for no drugs, mirrors of a vehicle as people wash around it as if caught in flood waters all the way down. They do not know any discrimination between the gateposts of those who were threatened or those who die, they just want peace and peace lived by others. People along the way come out to see; the women smile kindly, the children called out, some of the men respond, perhaps they are surprised by the other's openness. The youth reach the local town; they perform and participate; they share cultural dances and speak of peace as the fiesta takes over. They are happy and free again, while with a knowing glance the power of their assertion for peace lives free within to speak again.

5. Truths

People are frightened and isolated
People hear the word peace and know we are not making any genuine advance.
Fear does not have to be total if we have others to trust.
The walk is over in a short time but the expression is remembered.
The walk sparks a thought for the future as other threats emerge and people want options or ways to express hope and find a different path.
The walk has no power but it wakes the freshness and freedom of seeking peace.
Peace is strength without power.
Peace is shared with out judging.

6. Questions for greater understanding.