Readers that have examine my current four part series of entries entilted, "Bad Blood: AFP Sponsored Paramilitaries in Caraga, 1991" will be amazed how nothing has really changed in almost 22 years. Actualy, there has been a very slight, almost negligible improvement in the loves of most residents. In 1991 almost every road in Agusan del Sur Province was dirt so that for four to six months out of the year it was virtually impassable to vehicular traffic. Only Butuan City, the largest population centre had electricity and potable running water. The only telephone service was from phone centres in the largest towns. Waiting to send or receive a phone call often had people waiting two days or more just to complete.
Yet, the NPA still controlled a good portion of the countryside, something that unfortunately hasn't changed. Having firsr surfaced in Caraga in 1975, by 1983 the region became the national Centre of Gravity, the area with the largest number of guerillas who controlled the largest amount of land. Led by the "Barefoot Priest," Father Francisco "Frank" Navarro, who, under the nom de guerre "Ka Migo," served as the Secretary for the Operations Command of what the NPA today calls the "Pulang Diwata Command" of the NEMRC, or Northeast Mindanao Regional Committee- and who was killed in 1993, has been replaced by the even more iconic Jorge Madlos, known to the naïve and gullible folks serving in the NPA as "Ka Oris." Madlos, a native of Surigao del Norte Province's Siargo Island has seen it all and has lived to tell about it. Still, the only time Madlos can be found in the field nowadays is on the NPA's Anniversary or that of the NPA's political wing, the CPP, the Communist Party of the Philippines to which Madlos is fiercely dedicated, as is his wife, a cadre who uses the alias "Maria Malaya." While Madlos has assumed Spokesperson duties for the NDFP, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, a position he was appointed to by the CPP Party's leadership just as Aquino took office in July of 2010, his wife assumed his role as NPA-NEMRC Spokesperson.
Madlos' has been suffering from severe kidney disease and a urinary tract problem that requires a 24 hour catheter threaded through his genital so that he has pretty much been tied to whatever corner of hell he calls home for the last several years and yet, when one thinks of the insurgency in Caraga they usually envision Madlos with his Ho Chi Minh goatee and Mao cap that even the most moribund of the Chinese party hacks threw in the Yantzge two decades back. Hokey to a fault, one must offer respect to someone like Madlos, albeit grudgingly, for having remained in that stark wilderness for nearly four decades, avoiding Extra-Judicial Execution, or "Salvaging" in Filipino-speak, having also avoided being abdudcted and horribly tortured, having avoided dying in what by now must be more than two hundred tactical offencives and perhaps half that number in defencive actions as Military assets led the attacking soldiers in the capture of major camp after major camp...and of course both the physical AND ideological purges that greatly affected the NPA from 1985 to 1995...and yet Madlos has survived.
OK, now that we have graduated from Adulation 101, Madlos' NEMRC has been busy as it always is; on September 15th, 2011, in the municipality of Bislig City's Barangay San Jose, in Surigao del Sur Province, the NPA's Front 14 implemented a checkpoint in Sitio Sikahoy. A convoy from Bislig Ventures, a trucking outfit located on the edge of that same city, and en route into the city proper, was targetted for its owners refusal to pay the NPA's "Revolutionary Taxes," I mean rank extortion, I mean "Revolutionary Taxes" (cough).
The convoy consisting of five tandem dump trucks and three tractor trailers l fully loaded with coal were forced to pull onto the side of the road next to the checkpoint at 2PM. As the eight drivers were forced at gunpoint to dismount from their trucks, four guerillas set about dousing the vehicles with petrol and then lit a match. As coal is of course quite flammable, albeit slow burning, the convoy made quite a conflagration for several hours, and yet the NPA was in no hurry. Only at 5PM did it release the eight drivers for what was to be a long walk back to the company compound. The NPA of course folded up its checkpoint and withdrew into the jungle.
While the Maoists portray themselves as "Anti-Big Business" and "Anti-Environmentally Unsound Business" they are actually as avaricistic as any rapacious multi-national logging or mining outfit. Indeed, if truth be told, Artisinal, or so called "Small Scale" Miners and Loggers do much more damage to the Mindanowan Environment than any multi-national could ever do. Ehile those large corporations are fully liscenced and permitted and at least ostensibly monitored by redundant agencies like the DENR (Department of the Environment and Natural Resources), MGB (Mining and Geosciences Bureau), NCIP (National Commission on Indigenous Peoples), and other alphabetically challenging entities, the small and often illegal operations are using the most intrusive and destructive methods for the shortest term financial gain without a thought in the world about nurturing their targetted resource so as to leave it in a renewable state (so far as logging is concerned of course).
In mining, methods such as "Banlas," or "Sluice" involve he denudation of entire hillsides worth of vegetation to construct massive, engineeringly unsound wooden sluices which are then built at a steep angle so that their slag- or waste- runs directly into rivers or major creeks which also serve as the water source for the sluicing process, thus being destructive to the waterway on both ends of the process. Sluice Mining, at least here on Mindanao, entails running a very high volume of water, at relatively high pressure, through a set of gates and chutes until- hopefully- one nets a desired precious metal while 99% of the materiel being worked is dumped into a river, as opposed to a hillside from which it has been excavated...and "Banlas" is the least damaging of methods mind you.
The use of TNT and other explosives by untrained personnel without requisite engineering input does amazing amounts of damage geologically, while the use of cyanide and mercury in leeching processes naturally reek havvoc on the environment to almost unimaginable degrees.
Each year our island loses more and more of its timber and ground cover. Even leaving the island for six weeks can leave a mildly observant person shocked upon their return to see the rapid deforestation taking place. IF the NPA were TRULY concerned about such all important issues we would see them attacking ALL multi-nationals, not just the same companies over and over which merely (strongly) indicates an ulterior motive- even if one isn't privy to the hard intelligence centering upon the "Revolutionary Tax" brouhaha. Moreover, they would be implementing "No Mining" and "No Logging" bans within their considerable AORs, or Areas of Responsibility- as in "Areas of Operation" (note that the Southern Mindanao Regional Committee, or SMRC, under Leonicio "Ka Parago" Pitao of the Committee's Operational Command, Merardo Arce, HAS instituted such a ban in two Davao City districts but only because he has demanded a price that interested mining companies are unwilling to pay. The rest of the SMRC's AOR has no such ban, and he has NOT implemented a logging ban in those two aforementioned districts), they would never do that because they thrive where such small scale activities flourish. Unlike the multi-nationals, who- if intelligently managed- form private paramilitaries under the guise of the Armed Forces of the Philippines "SCAA," or Special Citizen Active Auxiliary programme...Atisinal operations rarely have the means or the muscle to form such private armies and so they take "the path of least resistance," as Mao correctly predicted, and pay their "Taxes" on time. When they don't, they face a mild wake up call as the first step in remedying their delinquency. Take for example, the following case in point:
Silvio Gogo, a smalltime sawmill operator doing business in the municipality of Tagbina's Barangay Batuna in that very same province of Surigao del Sur had recently been saddled with a low supply issue. Most small time sawmills rely almost entirely on illegal logging as their source of supply. Periodically interdiction occurs in a few isolated instances and when it does, business at such sawmills suffers greatly. The small number of employees are laid off and operators like Mr.Gogo fall back on other income producing activities- sawmills rarely form one's only source of income.
Yet the NPA still expects its monthly or quarterly installment on one's "tax bill." If one is unable, or refuses to comply, they get a relatively gentle wake up call, such as the following case in point:
On September 19th, 2011, at 2AM, five guerillas from the NPA's Front 14 entered Gogo's unnamed sawmill and dragged two Yanmar table saws out into the compound. The saws, one of which was a 16khp, the other an 18khp, were then doused with petrol and set on fire. In this case the damage was P100,000 ($2,200). While that may seem downright mild to many of my foreign readers, it is in fact half a year's net income for the average peasant on Mindanao. For a small time operator like Silvio Gogo, who like virtually all such operators exists outside the benefit of any insurance policy, it very well may represent the difference between remaining in business and folding up. Should Mr.Gogo ever resume business his delinquent "tax bill" is still hanging over his head as a new debt begins the day he saws his first log. It becomes a running treadmill (no pun intended).
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