Again, the Lumads. Again, the Talaandig people of Malaybalay.

BAYANGGUDAW NOW. 21 JAN 2016. THUR. N1.
Again, the Lumads. Again, the Talaandig people of Malaybalay.

I PROMISED myself to get out of Facebook for a time to honor commitments in da Pinas by writing something logical and reasonable and substantive, but I got hold of this news of the Talaandig people.

All of a sudden, I remember Malaybalay, my Malaybalay.

All of a sudden, I remember now the silence of the monastery perched in those hills that overlook the plains and the holy silence of fields, trees, birds, rivers, and the sides of mountains.

Include the laughter of friends and the memory of highjacking the van of the state university courtesy of an Ilokano-born Bukidnon man who was so kind to give his university's van for my use. Think of being a guest in a state university and think of being a feeling-important man because, well, with me were important professors and administrators who made sense all the time.

But it is Malaybalay I remember most.

From the language of silence of that monastery I have dreamt of residing in one day and there write the obra maestra I am writing in my mind, the images of the place come now in profusion, one image overlapping another in that collage of life of the Talaandig people and the settlers who have called the place their home as well.

But it is the Talaandig people that are getting the receiving end at this time.

It is their remote, indigenous lands, those lands being coveted by the miners, those who have been given the franchise to destroy the universe of the Lumad because, well, that universe has metals and minerals and mines that the world covet.

This president gave them the right to exploit the Talaandig earth, and in doing that, militias have to be used, these militias so ignorant of the bigger narrative and logic of exploitation, some of them members of their own people, members of their own communities, and thus, coming from the same earth they ought to protect for their own children and the generations coming after them.

The Talaandig evacuation?

Simple, people: the miners are encroaching. Let us not kids ourselves, even if these militias are calling the Lumad NPAs.

What an excuse!

HNL/