Of freedoms, surrender and survival

Let’s have an Independence Day challenge: try to define independence in one image or one word.

Two things came up to me.

First is survival. And I see that with images of vendors on the streets selling flags for the celebration. No one seems to stop and buy these things anymore.

Imagine that vendor. He may be a father of three, trying to find ways to feed his family. This week, he tries to sell these flags. After June 12, he might be back selling towels, ice water, or find any work out there.

It’s been 120 years after we had won Independence, but with people barely surviving, is independence really won?

How did this happen? If we stayed awake in history class, maybe those books and lectures and videos can tell us how one president after another failed to make that change. And instead, we have a republic that welcomes more the global power of corporations who build plantations and factories, and employ us on the cheap.

No matter who that occupant in Malacañang is, even this present one, is not trying to change this system. Wages are still low, labor only contract is still practiced, land is exploited for corporations instead of food sustenance, and his economic managers still think workers are lazy, and a P10,000 monthly budget will do fine.

The second image is one of surrender. Last Saturday, the Philippine Army flashed a picture of Talaingod chieftain Datu Guibang Apoga surrendering to them in an assembly. Guibang is the leader of Salugpongan, who had defended their ancestral land which is Pantaron Range, from logging and mining companies. For decades, Guibang had been chased by the soldiers and his community harassed for his defense.

For the soldiers, Guibang’s “surrender” is victory at last.

But looking back in an interview with Guibang in 2006 by Davao Today, Guibang speaks of the irony why he is hunted.

“Is it a crime to stand up for our land? We did not encroach into other people’s land.”

His question stir us of the irony on how we look at Lumads. Are they uneducated savages? Or are they the core fabric of our national culture and heritage?

Now that Guibang is old and ailing, and was forced by the paramilitary to come up on that stage, it is an irony that they call this peace and victory. Peace and victory for whom?

It reminds me of what happened after 1896, when the remaining Katipuneros fought the American colonizers in the hills. “Bandoleros” they were called, to mislead the public that they were patriots. The “Bandolero” Macario Sakay was hanged. Miguel Malvar was the last to surrender after years of fighting.

History repeats itself, sadly. Remembering that line in the movie Heneral Luna: You fight an enemy outside, you fight an enemy within.

There is so much to learn in the past 120 years and in our present. There is no surrender for us to surive.