I joined Lakaw Sumilao March last December 5. From Cubao to Ateneo, we marched with the Sumilao farmers and a couple hundred friends and supporters. Absolutely ZERO compared to the 1,700 kilometers the farmers walked from Bukidnon to Manila. I joined it for so many reasons. Maybe to assuage the helplessness and the guilt that I have so much while others have so little. Maybe I joined it just to stroke this stupid part of my ego. And maybe, maybe, I joined it to satisfy some morbid, selfish, intellectual curiosity on my end. For whatever reason I joined, I honestly, with all my heart, believed that I couldn't NOT be there.
I learn about all these things in graduate school, how the capitalist system works, how landed elites and farmers are constantly embroiled in massive power struggles. In school, they teach you that capitalism ISN'T first and foremost about greed. It's just a system, a way of explaining how societies transform. Capitalism is driven not by greed, the books say, but simply by this phantom objectivity that affects BOTH those who own the means of production and those who don't.
Still, when you're confronted with something like this, it's very difficult not to believe that it isn't about greed at all. Honestly, what else can it be? It is injustice at its very core. You promise to convert your land, your EXCESS land, land you don't NEED to survive, into an agro-industrial park just so the government won't be able to confiscate it from you. Then you just sell it after five years, FIVE years where not even a single goddamn shed has been put up, to another corporation who just put up pig pens. Pig pens!
"Masakit isipin na mas pinahalagahan pa nila ang mga baboy kesa saming mga tao," a Sumilao farmer bemoans.
These farmers walked for almost two thousand kilometers. They left their families back home, some of them not knowing how their children will eat while they're gone. They just knew they had no other choice. From 63, they're down to 55. These farmers brave the heat, they walk under the midday sun and they walk even when it rains. They even walk through the night, in the dark. And they don't walk to BEG. They're not looking for money, or food or even pity. They're just here to claim what's rightfully theirs. That is the most heartbreaking and gut-wrenching thing of it all, to see them still trying to maintain a semblance of dignity underneath all that desperation.
"I need to shake their hands Nikko," I told my friend. "I'm not leaving this place until I shake their hands."
So I did. "Ang galing nyo, kuya," I told one of them. "Sobrang bilib ako sa ginagawa nyo."
"Salamat ha," he replied with a smile.
Please lord, don't make me cry in front of them, I begged silently.
Really, all my life I've tried to believe that people are good, that no, we can still work WITHIN the system, but things like this just make me question such basic, fundamental beliefs. Nobody should be reduced to that kind of desperation, ever. Even when you summon all sorts of reason and logic, all means of trying to be objective and dispassionate about this issue, it's not possible. But then again it shouldn't be possible, because this issue doesn't even make sense in the first place. It doesn't make sense when farmers are stripped off the land that was promised to them, it doesn't make sense when farmers are stripped off the land they NEED to survive and it sure as hell doesn't make sense when people who can and should do something about it just don't.
When the day comes that something like that finally does make sense, well, heaven help us all.
I learn about all these things in graduate school, how the capitalist system works, how landed elites and farmers are constantly embroiled in massive power struggles. In school, they teach you that capitalism ISN'T first and foremost about greed. It's just a system, a way of explaining how societies transform. Capitalism is driven not by greed, the books say, but simply by this phantom objectivity that affects BOTH those who own the means of production and those who don't.
Still, when you're confronted with something like this, it's very difficult not to believe that it isn't about greed at all. Honestly, what else can it be? It is injustice at its very core. You promise to convert your land, your EXCESS land, land you don't NEED to survive, into an agro-industrial park just so the government won't be able to confiscate it from you. Then you just sell it after five years, FIVE years where not even a single goddamn shed has been put up, to another corporation who just put up pig pens. Pig pens!
"Masakit isipin na mas pinahalagahan pa nila ang mga baboy kesa saming mga tao," a Sumilao farmer bemoans.
These farmers walked for almost two thousand kilometers. They left their families back home, some of them not knowing how their children will eat while they're gone. They just knew they had no other choice. From 63, they're down to 55. These farmers brave the heat, they walk under the midday sun and they walk even when it rains. They even walk through the night, in the dark. And they don't walk to BEG. They're not looking for money, or food or even pity. They're just here to claim what's rightfully theirs. That is the most heartbreaking and gut-wrenching thing of it all, to see them still trying to maintain a semblance of dignity underneath all that desperation.
"I need to shake their hands Nikko," I told my friend. "I'm not leaving this place until I shake their hands."
So I did. "Ang galing nyo, kuya," I told one of them. "Sobrang bilib ako sa ginagawa nyo."
"Salamat ha," he replied with a smile.
Please lord, don't make me cry in front of them, I begged silently.
Really, all my life I've tried to believe that people are good, that no, we can still work WITHIN the system, but things like this just make me question such basic, fundamental beliefs. Nobody should be reduced to that kind of desperation, ever. Even when you summon all sorts of reason and logic, all means of trying to be objective and dispassionate about this issue, it's not possible. But then again it shouldn't be possible, because this issue doesn't even make sense in the first place. It doesn't make sense when farmers are stripped off the land that was promised to them, it doesn't make sense when farmers are stripped off the land they NEED to survive and it sure as hell doesn't make sense when people who can and should do something about it just don't.
When the day comes that something like that finally does make sense, well, heaven help us all.
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