The martyrdom of Dorothy Stang

``Speaking truth to power is a prophetic act and Sister Dorothy Stang paid for it with her life. (She) spoke for the dispossessed and the voiceless to the wealthy ranchers and lumber companies who ruthlessly savage the rainforest and exploit it for personal gain.’’ This was from the statement of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) of the U.S. on the recent murder of a nun who worked among the poor of the Brazilian Amazon.

A citizen of both the U.S. and Brazil, Stang, 73, took four bullets in her face and head from two gunmen on Feb. 12. The killers attacked Stang in a settlement near the rural town of Anapu, in the state of Para, where she worked to help some 400 families survive. Anapu is along the Trans-Amazon Highway whose construction several decades ago wreaked destruction on the Amazon wilderness.

Stang was murdered less than a week after meeting with Brazil’s human rights officials about threats to farmers from loggers and land owners. After receiving several death threats herself, Stang recently said: ``I don’t want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment.’’

(After Stang, two other murders followed. Killed were the former president of a rural workers’ union and a farmer.)



A CNN report said that witnesses saw two gunmen approach Stang. Seing them, she pulled out a Bible and began to read. Her killers listened for a moment then stepped back and fired at close range.

Last year, Stang was named ``Woman of the Year’’ by the state of Para for her work in the Amazon region. In Dec. 2004 she received the Humanitarian of the Year award from the Brazilian Bar Association. And early this year she received an ``Honorary Citizenship of the State’’ award from Para.

This nun who wore T-shirts and a short bob was no parachutist, here now, gone tomorrow. Like the trees, Stang had grown roots in the Amazon region. One more mighty tree has been felled but the Amazon has certainly been made richer by the sap of Stang’s life and the manner of her death.

It’s martyrdom any way you look at it. And those of us who had dreamed in our youth of giving up family, fortune, career and comfort for the least and the lost could only wonder whether we would have had the fortitude that Stang had, whether we would have been as graced.

Having written about church-related stuff in succession these past weeks (last week, nuns and the Banwaon-Manobo under threat in Agusan), I told someone that I was not going to write about god/church stuff for some time. Well, I could not say ``Pass’’ on Stang the way I could not pass up the murder of Italian Annalena Tonelli who worked in Somalia for 33 years and lived among the poorest, giving hope to refugees and HIV-AIDS sufferers.

Like, why are they murdering all these great, selfless women? These are the real stars. They do not dazzle with glamour and glitter, the give light and life.

Stang’s fate was not unlike that of Chico Mendes who was murdered in 1988. Mendes worked among poor rubber tappers and fought road builders and international banks that threatened the jungle, the humans and the wildlife that depended on it. Get the book ``The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest’’ by multi-awarded journalist Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. Or watch the film.

What Revkin wrote about Mendes could well be for Stang. ``It became clear that the murder was a microcosm of the larger crime: the unbridled destruction of the last great reservoir of biological diversity on Earth.’’

Think of our own Sierra Madre, our ``last great forest.’’ And think of the recent series of disasters that showed us how nature strikes back.

For centuries, Brazilians have tried to conquer the Amazon (size: 4 million square kms.) which covers more than half of Brazil. Brazil is 28 times the size of the Philippines. I’ve read that the jungle frustrated ventures even by Henry Ford and billionaire Daniel Ludwig. Brazil’s 1964 to 1985 military government built the Trans-Amazon Highway and gave free land to populate the region. The plan attracted settlers as well as speculators who took control of the logging operations. Loggers, ranchers and politicians conspired and hired hit men to eliminate those who stood in the way.

The Amazon rainforest continues to be a battleground, with the poor inhabitants and ecologists together and the loggers and ranchers forcing themselves into the wilderness.

On the edge of this special place, Stang helped develop sustainable development projects for the poor of Anapu. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Stang belonged to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She began her ministry in Brazil in 1966 then moved to the Amazon in the 1983. Stang worked with the Pastoral Land Commission, a Catholic organization that fights for the rights of rural workers and peasants and defends land reform in Brazil.

You should hear the wailing of the swallows, a Chinese-Filipino activist told me, when the nests (dried bird saliva) are snatched from the limestone cliffs of Palawan, later to soak in that pricey Chinese soup. ``Do you know what a sobbing monkey sounds like?’’ Stang was quoted as saying to a group of legislators.

I hear them now, calling to us.

The Amazon holds some of the greatest wonders and secrets of this planet. Here now lives the spirit of a true ``Amazona.’’

Letter from the edge

Here is a letter I received on Valentine’s Day, from Good Shepherd Sisters who live and work both peacefully and dangerously among the lumad (indigenous people) of Agusan del Sur. Peacefully because they have been accepted by the people, they have grown roots with them and their work of 26 years has borne abundant flower and fruit in the community. Dangerously because the people and the nuns have to contend with the hazards of military presence and suspicion.

The Religious of the Good Shepherd-Tribal Filipino Ministry is flourishing in the municipality of San Luis. The place where the nuns run an ``ecology and spirituality farm’’ is called Tuburan, which means spring, which means life in those parts could indeed be joyous and abundant if only…



Dear Ceres,

We wake up to the chirping of birds and the sound of pigs and chickens asking for their morning meal. There is a forest nearby, the reason perhaps why the horizon is always wrapped in mist at dawn. It is a little slice of heaven on earth. The Banwaons and the Monobos are a peace-loving people, very simple, honest and deeply connected to the earth. Their culture is rich in tradition and steeped in spirituality. We always get inspired when we join their rituals.

However they are very poor materially. Their ancestral domain, the forests of San Luis, are rich in natural resources but the people have been deprived of these natural wealth.

Our latest concern is Barangay Balit which has been occupied by the military since November last year. Balit is 7 km. from the town center and is quite accessible. Here we have established our tribal ministry and various programs and projects in education and farming. We have also started a small infirmary.

Our ministry is open and above ground for everyone to see. We’ve had so many visitors here—top government and church officials from here and abroad, benefactors, ambassadors and their wives, our own superiors in the congregation, the media. They appreciate and support what we do. Sad to say, it seems it is only the military here that are not happy with our mission here. We and the people cannot understand.

At present, the 29th IB under Lt. Col.Johnny Macanas accuse the Balit community as an NPA (New People’s Army) barangay. We know that state security is the priority of the military so their job is to run after the enemies of the state, not after civilians. Balit is a registered barangay, its people are registered voters. The barangay officials have no criminal records.

In Sitio Minlinao, 14 people were given arms and made to surrender as rebels. They and their families were made to leave their homes and farms and resettled in a detachment at Km. 24. The children had to quit school. Two datus who were old and weak were listed as surrenderees. People say, ``this is good business for money and promotion.’’

Last month, Macanas took 12 men from Balit to undergo Cafgu training. They were again tagged as rebel returnees even if they were never with the NPA. How sad that this is being done by those who call themselves Christians, are educated and supposed to serve the people. Luoy kaayo ang mga lumad. (What a pity for the lumad.)

The people have asked the military to pull out, that the military should

• stop living in civilian houses without the community’s consent
• stop cutting trees in private and titled lands. (They never even ask permission.)
• move their camp away from the Balit community and follow the law
• stop their housing project. (They build without the consent of the barangay officials and the community.)

Are they not violating the people’s rights? Military men continue to live in civilian houses they have built at the back of people’s homes. Macanas said they have orders from ``above’’.

A fact-finding mission in Balit headed by Fr. Bench Balsamo MSC was conducted late last year and we are sending you the report. We have sent this to the civilian authorities but so far, no results. Last Dec. 27 the Inquirer came out with a story (by Ma. Kristina E. Cassion) titled ``Army project sends villagers away on Xmas.’’

Through the housing project the military has occupied the community. The soldiers, despite protests, put up a cooperative store. Nine stores closed shop.

Planting season is here but the lumad are afraid to go to their farms. They ask: ``What does the military want from us and our territory?’’ Their past experiences tell them that after military operations multi-national projects enter. The people are apprehensive. Four industrial tree plantations approved during the time of environment secretary Heherson Alvarez are waiting to be started. You know, the forests here are still thick with trees and other vegetation.

Why are the Banwaon-Manobo communities always the target? One datu said, ``If the military are after the rebels, they look for them in the mountains and not in Balit.’’ We, the Sisters are also being harassed and accused of many things but we do not want to focus on ourselves. We simply want to continue our work.

We have three main programs—education for children, sustainable agriculture for food and sufficiency, and health services. The people had asked for these and these are consistent with their efforts to develop and defend their ancestral domain. The right to till the land precedes the right to own.

We hold on together in times of crisis, when there are natural calamities and military operations. There have been threats to us and our staff—teachers, agriculturists, health workers—who have been with us for 10 to 16 years.

Our mission with the lumad is the mission of the Church. This mission is difficult but it is worth dying for.

Come and spend some time with us.

Your friends forever,

Good Shepherd Sisters
Kalilid Community

Spirituality and nation building

``Never mind, we’re topnotchers naman in spirituality, NGOs and deuterium deposits.’’ That was the comment of Butch Perez on Juan Mercado’s column piece titled ``Cellar Status’’ (Inquirer, Jan. 13, 2005) which was posted in the plaridel e-group. Mercado had bewailed Filipino students’ Math proficiency thus: ``So when do we scramble out this cellar?…Jammed between Morocco and Botswana, our kids limped in putting our country at No. 41 among 45 countries in Math.’’

Perez’s one-liner gave me an aray moment but it made me laugh because of its sheer sarcasm. Aren’t we tops din in jeepney mudguard epigrams?

Seriously now, spirituality—the deeply rooted and enriching variety--ain’t no laughing matter. In the recent Karangalan National Conference/Festival, which had for its theme ``Mobilizing Excellence to Create a Visionary Philippines’’, the subject of spirituality was discussed.

Sr. Mary John Mananzan OSB, prioress of the Missionary Benedictine Sisters in the Philippines spoke on ``The Role of Spirituality in Nation-Building.’’ She began by noting that a lot was said about the different kinds of energy--economic, political and cultural--needed to re-create the country, as well as the natural energies that must be harnessed. But, she stressed, ``I believe one of the most untapped resources of human kind is spiritual energy and yet no nation building can succeed without it.’’



Spiritual energy, Mananzan said, is the mother lode and the most powerful of all energies. It is the most available energy for it is around and in us. It is inexhaustible, that is, the more we use it, the greater it becomes.

It goes by different names in different traditions. Shakti-kundalini for the Hindus; chi for the Buddhists; tao for the Taoists and the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition. It is the life force, the divine life, the spiritual principle.

I have myself noticed that people sometimes confuse spirituality with religiosity or even with pietistic rituals. Reciting novenas to a dozen saints or memorizing a thousand verses from holy scriptures, per se, does not necessarily mean you are holy in the eyes of the God whose name you invoke. And such practices, if you ask me, are not entirely what spirituality is all about.

Mananzan presented Hindu spiritual teacher Sri Aurobindo’s take on what spirituality is not: ``Spirituality is not a high intellectuality or idealism; it is not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity. It is not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervor and not even a compound of these excellent things. It is not a mental belief, creed or faith; it is not an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula; it is not spiritual achievement and experience.’’

Spirituality, Mananzan stressed, is, in its essence ``an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than the mind, life and body. It is an inner inspiration to know, to feel…to enter into contact with the greater Reality behind and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being.

``It is to be in communion with it and in union with it. It is a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union. It is a growth. It is a waking into a new becoming or new being, new self, new nature.’’

I found a great working definition of spirituality which I needed for a book being prepared. This came from noted theologian Fr. Percy Bacani of the Missionaries of Jesus: ``Spirituality is expressed in everything we do. It is a style, unique to the self, that catches up all our attitudes: in communal and personal prayer, in behavior, bodily expressions, life choices, in what we support and affirm and what we protest and deny. As our deepest self in relation to God, to the whole, and so literally in everything, spirituality changes, grows, or diminishes in the whole context of life.

``Consciously cultivated, nourished, cared about, it often takes the character of struggle as we strive to integrate new perceptions or convictions. And it bears the character of grace as we are lifted beyond previous levels of integration by a power greater than our own.

``Spirituality is deeply informed by family, teachers, friends, community, class, race, culture, sex, by our time in history, just as it is influenced by beliefs, intellectual positions and moral options. These influences may be unconscious or made explicit through reading, reflection, conversation, even conversion. And so spirituality includes and is expressed in our self-conscious or critical appraisal of our situation in time, in history and in culture.’’

Enriching one’s spiritual life, Mananzan said, means building a core of beliefs, values and attitudes from which fundamental decisions and choices spring. Of course, this must bear fruit and face external challenges on the ground such as economic injustice, the woman question, the environmental crisis, fundamentalism and religious intolerance, the culture of violence. How do we respond?

And so Mananzan spoke of ``transforming spirituality.’’ One that is affirming and mutually empowering, integrating and liberating. It is prophetic, it announces the good news and denounces the bad. It is contemplative, that is, it draws from stillness and solitude and is attuned to the present. It is healing and compassionate. And of course, yes, of course, it celebrates.

To Chinese-Filipinos who have enriched this country, Happy New Year of the Rooster. Shuey e, or better still, Kampei!

SWS corrects my reporting error

Mea maxima culpa.

I missed out on two words--a pronoun and a preposition--and this made a world of a difference. The words were ``it to’’. Because I missed those (my eyes did not coordinate with my brain) I wrote a sentence that turned one of the Social Weather Stations’ 2004 survey findings upside down.

This had to happen in the second to the last sentence of a longish news article, that is, when I was about to put a bullet on the article and write ``30’’. I hope not many readers got to that end part on the jump page. How I wish I had written something shorter and stopped at the usual 5,000 characters. Then the last two sentences would not have been written and live forever in the digital archives of the universe. Oh, but the right and good stuff, too, will live forever.

SWS president Dr. Mahar Mangahas’ letter to the editor will surely see print in a section of this paper but, just the same, here it is :



``Subject: PDI Error in Claiming that Filipinos Prefer Authoritarian Government

``In the PDI issue of Saturday, Jan. 29, 2005, the article by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo `Pinoys make do with less’ based on the SWS Survey Review of 2004 which I presented on Jan 26th at AIM, has a very serious error in claiming that SWS `said most preferred a more authoritarian government.’ What the presentation actually said (attached slide 61) is that ``Though only 40% are satisfied with how democracy works, most Filipinos prefer it to authoritarianism…’’ This was followed by a slide (attached Slide 62) with the clear labels: `57% prefer democracy’, and `24% prefer authoritarian government’.

``I trust you would agree that the issue of public preference between democracy and authoritarianism is of such great importance that for a newspaper to report the very opposite of what an opinion poll found is a very serious error indeed, and deserving of a very prompt and prominent correction.’’

SWS presented a whole year’s findings in 69 slides that showed dazzling colored graphs, statistics and summaries. These covered the elections, foreign relations, personal quality of life, governance, the Erap factor, corruption, democracy and general morale. The presentation was a comprehensive recap of what had been presented last year. It also went back 20 years. How has this nation progressed, what have we become?

SWS, a non-profit, non-government institution, is 20 years old, by the way.
I am not known to be a careless reporter, irresponsible feature writer or abusive columnist. So what happened? Did my mind play tricks on me?

I was myself baffled that most Filipinos would prefer an authoritarian government—for that is what my mind wrongly grasped. In fact, that is what I wrote, and mercifully, almost as a footnote.

Slide 61 on which I based my erroneous sentence and which Mangahas partially quoted in his letter, completely reads: ``Though only 40% are satisfied with how democracy works, most Filipinos prefer it to authoritarianism—and are again keeping a watchful eye on the loyalty of the military. They think democracy worked better a decade ago, and that in the next decade will recover partially.’’

Note the two highlighted words that blipped in my brain. The second sentence was the gremlin. I thought, people thought democracy worked better a decade ago but it does not work now. That it will work better in the next decade but it does not now. And so I wrote ``(SWS) said most preferred a more authoritarian government, and that they were keeping a watchful eye on the loyalty of the military.’’ Or so, I thought.

``A more authoritarian government’’--that was what I wrote, not ``authoritarianism’’. But I don’t blame the copy editor for putting ``authoritarianism’’ as subtitle for my last three sentences.

Now, postmortem, as I examine my SWS hard copy, I think I should have, while writing, referred to Slide 62, no matter how microscopic its numbers and words, that showed that—hear ye, everyone--57% in fact prefer democracy, while 40% are satisfied and 24% prefer authoritarian government.

It was slide 64 on my hard copy that caught my attention. It says ``Public anxiety about the loyalty of the AFP is back at the high levels of 1990-91.’’ During Mangahas’ presentation I scribbled ``worry?’’ Was this really anxiety, I thought.

The test statement for the respondents was: ``Ang Sandatahang Lakas ng Pilipinas o AFP ay tapat at masunurin sa gobyernong pinamumunuan ni Pang. (Aquino\Ramos\Estrada\Macapagal-Arroyo)’’. (The Armed Forces of the Philippines is loyal and obedient to the government headed by…) Did the dive in the ``agree’’ responses and the rise in the ``disagree’’ responses (the line graphs almost meet somewhere near 30%) for the Arroyo term necessarily mean anxiety? Might there be respondents who in fact prefer this scenario or simply don’t care?

I wanted to bring this up during the forum but I thought I’d rather listen. There were many facts and figures to absorb and I was trying to think of a good story angle. Surveys are high and dry, so how to bring this down to ground level?

I decided on how the Pinoy made do with less in 2004. I relegated the issue of democracy (just for now!) minus statistics to the second to the last sentence as it had been tackled so often. Well, it struck back as if saying, ``Daing (the fish, the lamentations) and democracy could go together.’’

I hope this lapse on my part would not be used by dark forces that threaten democracy.

****

Synchronicity? Tomorrow I attend the 2nd Philippine Summit of the News Media. It is dubbed ``Media Nation 2: Owning Up’’. Sponsored by the Inquirer, Phil. Center for Investigative Journalism, and other media institutions.