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A DIALOGUE WITH CULTURAL MINORI­TIES:

KALINGA-APAYAO WITH PARTI­CULAR REGEREIMCE

TO THE CHICO DAM PROJECT

 

The dialogue intended to give a general picture of the condition of the Cultural Minorities (CM) in the Philippines. With the general view is an elaboration on why the Kalinga - Apayao people resist the Chico Dam Project of the government.

 

The Cultural Minorities

The total number of the cultural minorities in the Philippines according to the govern­ment is 4 million. There are two categories:

1. Muslim in Mindanao - they are called minority in terms of religious affiliation, which affects the whole life activity. They number about 2,000,000 and are found in Jolo, Basilan, Isabela and Western part of Mindanao.

2. Hill tribes — these are found in several provinces in the whole country. Aside from Mindanao, the biggest concentration of the minority community is in the Moun­tain Province, north of Luzon. Religion-wise, they are animists. There are approximately million of them.

 

Political Organization

The Muslims who have achieved a relatively higher degree of political organization through the sultanate or Datu ship also has a relatively high degree of economic life, i.e. feudal or semi-feudal. But the other cultural minority communities have not yet developed a sophisticated centralized form of government. This is simply because their economy does not call for such Political organization; theirs would still be in the subsistence farming economic level. Most of the political form is on the village level with the village elders as head. It is a sort of democracy. They have not even reached the federation of tribes’ level. Both are not participating in the national economy.

 

Cultural Development

The people, particularly we are referring to the Igorots (people of the mountain), are not fully developed culturally. This has mainly been due to the resistance to integra­tion, which is the government's basic policy. Historically, there is always a danger for people to lose their cultural identity through this process of integration. It is more telling on these groups as they have not reached an economic-political life on which they can find unity. For the same reason, most of the Muslims are actively struggling for cessa­tion and autonomy because of the fear of losing their cultural identity. Or it may mean the disintegration of the Islamic faith together with the institution of the Sultanate and other institutions that unite and keep the Muslims together.

A factor, which seems to carry the main scheme of the dominant culture is the Church which has launched a program of missionary venture with characteristic aggressiveness both in Mindanao and the Mountain Province. Perhaps it was because of a sincere desire to civilize or Filipinize the hill tribes or to Christianize them, con­verting them from their animistic faiths. As to whether this policy of the Church is justi­fied or not, we should let history be the judge.

The basic problem of the minorities es­pecially in this area is the question of the contradiction between central authority and the bare needs of the tribes for organiza­tion. Through the power of the Central Authority, its laws and also the propaga­tion program of the Church, most of the areas have been penetrated by forces outside of the control and comprehension of the people. And all of these forces are averring that they have come to "develop" the people. The people at this point are asking: development for whom? What is our partici­pation in this scheme? Who are all behind the scheme of development' How is the issue of our being minority seen vis–a–vis

 

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the dominant culture which is basically feudal and Christian?

But more important than the preservation of our cultural identity is the problem of sheer survival. Basic economic survival within the context of subsistence economy. What is seen here is that the Central Author­ity would want to transform this economy within the capitalist lines in such a rapid pace that the cultural institution which gives meaning and direction even for a renewed situation will be lost completely.

 

Development and its Perspective for the People.

The topic implies the question of what the people are doing and how do they solve the problems, which confront them. Here we shall take up the more urgent problem they have now, which is the construction of the Chico River Dam.

 

Queston 1: What is this project all about?

The project, according to the government, is for the development of the people; how­ever, in the sight of the people, it is not for their own but the very destruction of their community and life as a whole. The Chico River Dam Project calls for the construc­tion of 4 dams along the Chico River which extends from bank up to the side. These dams are supposed to be financed by the World Bank, but there have been changes in financing. Now it is supported by Japan­ese money. With the construction of the dam, it was noted that about 16 villages will be submerged and about 100,000 population will be displaced. The government has been on the area since 1964 to do the surveys, but has not been successful because of the people's resistance. Every time the govern­ment brought their tools and men to survey the area, the Bontocs and the Kalingas al­ways met them and would not allow them to work. But since Martial Law has been de­clared, the military force of the government and at gun-point, the surveyors were able to enter the place and initial surveys had been done. But the conflict continues as the people with only their bodies meet the army and stage their protest. There have been a number of killings.

 

Question 2: Are the people united in their resistance to the government?

Because the project is deemed as a priority of the government, it has seen to it that in order to push it through, the people should be divided. The old tactic of "divide and rule" is very much in operation here. One means that has been used is the setting up of the PANAMIN (Presidential Assistance on Minorities) headed by Manuel Elizalde a member of the ruling elite. What Elizalde does is to take pictures of the Kalinga and present these in other countries interpreting for the minorities what their problems and needs are. Whenever he receives money, he uses the money to bribe the Kalingas who are under his and the government's control.

In the past, congressmen who represented the people belonged to the lowlands but maintain their haciendas and lumber con­cessions in the uplands. By buying votes, they were able to maintain their power and seats in the government, thus, perpetrating their hold onto choice lands.

At present, the governor is a highlander who is a Kalinga but who is being used by the state to accept the million dollar pro­ject. And because the people particularly in Lubuagan have not developed a sophis­ticated political life, they have not been able to organize against the campaign attacking their community weal and unity.

Another means used is the giving away of scholarships as education is very much valued among Filipinos. Picked people are given education, which they use against their own people. So here we see evolving the pattern we observed in Vietnam where tribes and villages were pitted against each other. So the BODONG, the peace pact among these tribes, is broken and the result will be the villagers killing each other. In  the process, the issue which began it all will be forgotten.

 

Question 3: What is the land ownership pattern adhered by the people and how is

 

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this seen in the national program of developing the land for the people?

According to the customary laws of the people, land belongs to the whole people. It is a communal ownership of fishing, hunt­ing, of forests where they can get their material for house building and wood carving. But because of the formulation of national laws which promulgated private ownership of land as property, much of the lands of the people have been lost. In many cases the tribes have not even received the value of their lands. Still there are areas where communal ownership is still operative, that is where the economy of subsistence is present.

The land tenancy of the national govern­ment is very uneven. The whole of Mountain Province area is one of the most depressed areas in the whole country, despite the fact that it is one of the richest. The biggest gold mine in the Far East is located in Benguet. And the minerals abound such as copper, silver, nickel aside from gold. Two biggest dams in the country are located in this area. The problem of development lies in the generating of sufficient power to open the mines. Thus, the dam site is supposed to supply the electricity for this need. But the question is still the same: for whom? So if the dams will be constructed in this area, and the mines will be opened, who shall benefit? The people who still are using Pine tree for their light at night? Or the big transnational corporations together with the national allies?

 

Question 4: Can you further describe the living conditions of the people?

Malnutrition is quite rampant. Many people work from the break of day to nighttime but get very low nutrients from the food they can harvest from their agricultural crops. Even now, in the midst of this big scale development program of the govern­ment, the people are not allowed to expand from their slash and burn type of agriculture (kaingin). The percentage of illiteracy is high. The health conditions are quite poor — there is a very high percentage of tuberculosis, which is a poor man's disease. A good number of children die of pneumonia. Most of the diseases in the area, as in other areas in the Philippines, are caused by poverty and one cannot help but see the iron here: right in the place where gold mines copper mines and nickel mines abound which produce millions of pesos in capital the people who belong to the place and based on their concept of ownership would own the land and the resources in them, are suffering from mass poverty and subsistence level of living conditions.

 

Question 5: Some articles printed in national magazines allege that the people representing different tribes have come together for a Botong and have accepted the construction project; what do you say to this?

These are mere propaganda! It is not only now but even in the past that the government has used the media to project to the people that all is well up in the Mountain province. For example, once they published an article featuring 160 leaders from different tribes of the Kalinga who met together and marched to Malacanang Palace and made a Botong with the President. What really happened was that only few persons who were government workers or under the control of the government and not representative of the real tribes put up this show for propaganda purposes.

 

Concluding Remarks

The question of opposing the construction of the Hydro Electric Power (HEP) should not depart from the question of the nature of development. If one is for development there is a process in which people must pay the price for development. And in this particular process, it is the minorities who have to pay the heavy price. The question is — should the minorities always pay the price of development for the few? Is it possible that the HEP be constructed or this particular process of development be done so that the minorities will also benefit?

We are saying then that our people are not

 

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against development per se. The problem arises when the people are sacrificed for the development of the sector in society, which is already highly developed. But this is never presented by the press which is quite power­ful. The minorities are always projected as primitive, culturally backward and do not have any concept of nationhood. Since the minorities are not willing to sacrifice for this type of development, the press brand them as groups who are standing in the way to progress of the whole country.

We maintain that there should be various degrees of development, which are applicable for different societies within our country. On the one hand, history teaches us that in a country like the Philippines, which is semi-feudal and an element of capitalist develop­ment, uneven development seems to be a part of our situation. But should we just accept this situation or shouldn't we look into a possible vision of a society where perhaps the issue of minorities can be seen as a transitional aspect of the society? The question of minority status of people is a society. Most Asian societies got if from their colonial past and unfortunately, a re­mnant of this past still influences the present life and conditions of the people. On the other hand, people should be able to dream and envision that one day there will be no such thing as minority and majority. In order to achieve this dream, it is important how people look at the problem. Is it purely a religious problem? Does one look at the problem from an ethnic, linguistic, cultural perspective?

Fortunately, in the Philippines a new way of looking at the problem of minorities is emerging. One may call this outlook as a horizontal approach. That is, the poor farm­ers of the tribes are as exploited as the poor farmers in the lowlands. That the poor Christian farmer is as exploited as a poor Muslim. Because if one looks at the problem from the linguistic, religio-cultural perspec­tive, one might end up with some abstract analysis. This in turn may end up with an abstract program of liberation or social development. On the other hand, if one would look at it from a horizontal approach then there is a vast communality that can be a basis for people to unite. So, it is possi­ble, for example, for a poor white Australian or a New Zealander to unite with the color­ed Aborigines or Maoris on the basis of their economic status in life and on the basis of the role they have to play in the economic development of their country.

So, back to the problem confronting the Mt. Province people, one should look at this problem not in isolation but as part of the national problem. It is a national pro­blem. It is a transitory problem, and it is a problem brought not because our people wear G-strings while people in the lowlands wear pants but because of historical and economic factors. Thus, looking towards the day when such structures which exploit not only the people in the highlands but also those in the lowlands will change, may we say it might be a time for a new Jerusalem for the minorities in the Philippines?

 

A Ballad — a Gayam

One of the members of the Kalingas chanter a gayam for the whole group:

"Ay, ay gayam dakkil a inna nga iyamang

Ta Intaya nagsasaritaan

Dagita nga problema nga intaya maawis

Istorboan gayam intay amin

Ket dawatteccoma nga intay ngata makilaba,

Tapno intay comma tanni Dios Kaburian

Ta inna datay coma idaldallan

Tapno intay coma masilawan

Nu ania ti intaya pagsayaatan

Gayam datay amin, Kumac pay."

 

Translated: I am thankful that we have been here to talk about our problems and our concerns with our brothers and sisters and challenging everybody. What shall we do in order to free ourselves from this problem? I am asking the guidance of Almighty God to enlighten us and to guide us through our conscience so we can come out with the best means of confronting our difficulties.