Remembering Father Nerilito "Neri" Dazo Satur

This past Thursday, October 14th, 2011, residents of Valencia City's Barangay Guinoyuran remembered a former Assistant Parish Priest, Father Nerilito "Neri" Dazo Satur. The day marks twenty years in which the loved ones and friends of the well liked priest have failed in their quest for justice.

Father Neri was born and raised in the municipality of Linamon in Lanao del Norte Province until, shortly after beginning highschool he and his family moved to the adjacent province of Bukidnon. Born to a peasant family Neri struggled with funding for his education and yet still managed to always keep one eye on the prize. Finally, at age 28, after much perseverance he was able to graduate from a Catholic seminary in Davao City. Assigned to the Diocese of Bukidnon, its Bishop, Gaudencio Rosales, assigned the ambitious young man to the Parish of Guinoyuran. Located nearly 12 kilometers to the northeast of Valencia proper Father Neri would climb aboard his treasured Honda 250 for the long trip to and from the barangay. Like most rural Philippine parishes Guinoyuran was devoid of a rectory and having grown up in a one room "nipa," as the bamboo and palm leaf thatch huts are known, Neri was in no rush to return to that hardscrabble existence and so he serviced his parish travelling to and fro from his room in a large rectory overlooking Valencia's jeepney terminal.

The Bukidnon Province of 1989, the year Neri graduated and arrived in Valencia, wasn't too far removed from the Bukidnon of today in that the same all pervasive corruption, mind numbing poverty, gratuitous violence, and plain old thuggery was over-abundant. In the mid-1980s peasants living in Bukidnon's municipality of San Fernando had with Church support engaged in a very vocal anti-logging campaign. With the Catholic Church then assuming the lead in this and several other environmentally sensitive causes the initiative took on a cachet of its own as rich and poor alike jumped on the ecological bandwagon. It wasn't long before the national media began to take notice and by December of 1986, after staging a hunger strike and a noisy street demonstration in Manila, the DENR, or Department of the Environment and Natural Resources began actually enforcing its own statutes and dedicated laws. Indeed, public sentiment was so strong that by the Summer of 1988 the DENR issued a moratorium on all logging in the province.


Not long after Father Neri arrived in Valencia (which hadn't become a city yet), the Diocese of Bukidnon's Bishop Gaudencio Rosales named the priest as one of five diocesan priests who were to be deputised by the DENR as "Forest Guards," Filipino-speak for "forest rangers," in September of 1990. It was in this capacity that Father Neri soon began stepping on some very important toes, neigh, even stomping on them. By the Summer of 1991, a mere 9 months after his deputisation, Father Neri had managed to confiscate nearly 7,000 board feet of valuable lumber.

Like most organised crime on Mindanao, illegal small scale logging, or "tablon-tablon," was deeply tied to the local power structure, especially the AFP and PNP, or the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police. Although a full moratorium on logging had been in place for nearly three years, Valencia itself had at least three sawmills operating full time, fed by the tablon-tablon trade. Both the sawmill operators as well as the loggers themselves paid steep bribes to the AFP/PNP in order to continue doing business.

At the same time the NPA Insurgency had recently peaked with an estimated 25,000 regulars in the nation's hills. The AFP has always used force multipliers to boost manpower and operational AOR ("Area of Responsibility," as in Area of Operation). The main force multiplier was the then-recently created CAFGU, or Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit (today the acronym is defined as "Civilian Auxiliary Force Geographical Unit"). The CAFGU were and are trained as static armed reserves. Trained, armed, paid, and supervised by the AFP, CAFGU soldiers were and are geographically dedicated forces, manned by residents of a given municipality and allowed only to operate within the borders of that same municipality. The stipend given to CAAs, or Civilian Active Auxiliaries, as CAFGU soldiers are known, was and continues to be paltry at best so that CAFGU members are incredibly ill equipped and extremly underpaid. As a result certain supervisory officers, or AFP CAFGU Cadres, tend to look the other way when their subordinates engage in illegal profit-making enterprises.

Naturally, one of the foremost ways in which CAAs engage in such endevours is through tablon-tablon, whether as a logger, driver, wholesaler, sawmill operator, or middle man. Almost always the AFP cadre is taking his healthy cut as well. In terms of Barangay Guinoyuran, it and the adjacent Barangay Lourdes fell under the 26IB (Infantry Battalion). The 26IB's CO, or Commanding Officer had formed a profitable relationship with a local shaman of the Higaon-on Tribe, Datu Bantu Domia, who had developed a rabidly loyal following in that immediate area. Bantu, a highly charismatic leader condoned the wholesale rape of his tribe's traditional lands by both logging and mining. He viewed the AFP as only the lesser of two evils as opposed to actually being ideologically invested in either the Government in Manila, which even today ignores the Lumad, Igorot, and Tingguian Peoples, and the NPA who pay too much attention while providing nothing in the way of goods or services. If and when the NPA ever assumed power the Higaon-on would fare no better than they had under the faux Liberal Democracy imposed upon them by the Government.

By the time Father Neri arrived in Barangay Guinoyuran Datu Bantu's followers had assumed control of the local tablon-taboln trade feeding Valencia's aforementioned illegal sawmills. The silent majority in the two adjoining barangays were outgunned to the point that even the NPA couldn't assert itself. A modern parallel might be the municipality of San Francisco, popularly known as San Franz, in Agusan del Sur Province. Whatever NPA activity takes place within that town's borders is of a non-violent nature and highly secretive with the NPA being no match for the right wing paramilitaries supported by the government as well as by the highly sophisticated organised crime that pervades the town. One sees the NPA with its parallel governments in the Agusan del Sur municipalities of Trento, Bayugan, Prosperidad, and Lianga over the border in Surigao del Sur Province, all encompassing San Franz, but within San Franz itself the NPA doesn't dare rear its ugly head.

San Franz is the domain of two powerful clans, one of which is the Lademoras whose patriarch Carlos is the infamous Philippine Constabulary officer who ran the Ilaga during its anti-NPA phase, as well as being the man single handedly responsible for the extermination of an entire sitio on Samar in the Visayas Region, and of course for running rampant over the then-NPA controlled San Franz as he carved out the massive Guthrie Palm Oil Plantation in the late 1980s. Only when a commander is as ruthless as Carlos Lademora, or Luzon's Palparan, does one see the NPA pull back into the shadows. A lamentable reality and yet reality never the less. The 26IB was merely one of many IBs and brigades who held that same "all or nothing" view and sponsored questionable paramilitaries so as to obtain plausible deniability should things get ugly as they indeed did in Barangay Guinoyuran. The Guinoyuran CAFGU detachment earned its carte blance by killing an entire NPA Team. "Teams," the lowest rung in the NPA command structure, usually consisted of less than 10 guerillas.

Obstensibly to amicably solve the tension in Guinoyuran's Sitio Magsa, the last NPA baliwick in that barangay, Datu Bantu invited the NPA to attend a forum, Filipino speak for a mediation dialogue, as long as the guerillas entered the barangay unarmed. Guaranteeing their safety under a flag of truce Bantu finally convinced the reluctant NPA to attend. Upon entering the barangay all six guerillas were executed at point blank range. Of course it was the 26IB who received the commendations and praise, although the AFP handed Datu Bantu P100,000 ($2,500 at the time) as a "bounty." The praise received by the 26IB from the chain of command translated into the AFP taking its muzzle off of the Guinoyuran CAFGU in the hopes of it scoring another "victory."

The 26IB's Cadre in Guinoyuran was Seargant Catalino Gabison who delegated most responsibilities to the infamous CAFGU member Romeo Abesta. Abesta himself ended up serving 3 years of a 6 year sentence when his wanton murder and destruction exceeded even the AFP's extremely liberal allowances. On February 3rd, 1989, Abesta walked up to Sabeniano Borres, an NPA supporter (at the very least) from Valencia's Barangay Cawasan as the farmer stood in front of his barangay's public market. Borres had been repeatedly warned about his organising in the name of a Catholic organisation enmeshed in Liberation Theology. Without getting into a Shandyesque digression, Liberation Theology is a brand of Catholicism that arose out of 1960s Latin America and espoused Marxist-based social organising within the context of Catholicism. While the words "Marxist" and "Catholic" MAY seem mutually exclusive to some, Liberal Theologians viewed the Church as a vehicle for social change and though most theologians and adherants don't condone violence, the tiny leap from Marxist-based organising into armed "defence" wasn't that great a chasm.

Sabeniano Borres' death was merely one of several personally commited by Romeo Abesta. Offering a mere three examples that are irrefutably tied to Abesta:

1) On March 28th, 1987, Abesta, along with fellow CAFGU members, shot Martin Cabusas and Warlito Paraiso to death in front of their families and then hacked the corpses with bolos (machetes). Abesta and others then committed canibalism by consuming strips of their victims' thighs.

2) On December 30th, 1988, Abesta and friends opened fire on George Bahian and Francisco Tadiamon. Although Mr.Bahian was instantly killed Mr.Tadiamon survived, albeit with extremely critical wounds.

3) 10 months later, on November 22nd, 1990, Abesta et al shot Mr.Tadiamon's wife Juliana Tadiamon to death, her only crime having been her marriage to Francisco Tadiamon.

Three examples of other killings undertaken by other CAFGU memberss in that same detachment:

1) On December 7th, 1988, Felipe Camarillo was shot to death

2) On October 15th, 1990, a farmer from the last bastion of NPA control within the two barangays, Sitio Magsa in Barangay Guinoyoran was murdered in broad daylight. On the day in question CAFGU member Jody Gamayon and a second man only known by the eponym "Lito" carried out the killings.

3) On July 13th, 1991, Nasario Burlas shot to death by Romeo Abesta's cousin, Boyet Abesta.

On October 14th, 1991, Father Neri and a female assistant attended Barangay Guinoyuran's patron saint fiesta where Neri offered mass and hob knobbed amongst his parishoners. At a bit past 2PM Father Neri and his assistant remounted his trusted motorcycle to begin the long and arduous trip back to Valencia proper. Travelling at a high rate of speed Nari probably had no time to even process the situation as three men walked out of the jungle ahead of him, each carrying M16s. Raising their rifles they took aim and opened fire. Of fifteen rounds fired, seven met their mark, badly wounding the priest. His assistant, Jacqueline Lunzaga took a single round to the leg. The three gunmen, one of whom was unmasked quickly made their way over to the fallen priest and his assistant. Taking his M16 the unmasked attacker then began beating the priest in the head with it. On the third blow the rifle's stock broke into pieces due to the force with which it was wielded. Having killed the priest the attackers left Jacqueline writhing on the ground in pain as they made their escape through the underbrush.

The killing ended up galvanising a nation who had heretofore pointedly ignored the country's second largest island. Instead of giving into threats of violence Bishop Rosales then deputised 41 more clergymen as Forest Guards. After two CAFGU members:

1) Guillermo G.Ipanag

2) Carlito Baraquil

confessed their roles in planning the attack to Bishop Rosales, the cleric promptly notified local authorities. As a result, the Bukidnon PPO, or Provincial Police Office then promptly filed charges on October 30th, 1991 against four individuals:

1) Seargant Catalino Gabison, Cadre of the Guinoyoran CAFGU garrison

2) Datu Bantu Domia, Higaon+n shaman, spiritual leader of the Guinoyoran CAFGU garrison

3) Crispin Onor, CAFGU member

4) Allan Cesar Abesta, CAFGU member

The AFP responded by charging the two complaintants as the actual murderers and refused to even interrogate the four men charged by the Bukidnon PPO. The result was oh so typical of the Philippine justice system. Seargant Gabison was restricted to base after a quick transfer but other than that there were no consequences to anyone involved. Indeed, noone has ever been prosecuted for the heinous attack.