Military – Page 2 – MORE PATHLESS TRAVELS

2015-02-202015-04-24

At the bottom of a ravine

I will put the choices very simply for you.

You’re riding a bus from Baguio to Sagada. You notice that the driver is a brash young boy, most probably inexperienced, perhaps even a college brat out for kicks. The bus already had a few heart-stopping near-accidents just out of Sayangan, then in Buguias, then again in Sinto and after Mt. Data–all because of the amateurish driver’s carelessness.

IRAIA thoughts

Then, as the bus negotiates the steep trail to Sabangan, it happens. The driver goes into a hairpin turn, barely manages it, finds out the brakes are no longer working, careens inches away from a ravine, and is finally stopped–only through sheer luck–by a short upslope road grade.

The driver insists that the bus can still make it to Sagada, or at least to the Dantay junction. But most passengers want to get down, catch their breaths, hopefully flag down the next bus, perhaps even walk to the next junction where they can hire a jeepney instead. Continue reading “At the bottom of a ravine”

2014-06-072019-10-17

War veteran, vicariously

At twelve, I was a World War II veteran and D-Day survivor in Normandy. Vicariously of course, only vicariously.

Blame it, first, on the weekly episodes of Combat!, which at six I began to watch with my brothers and cousins at Auntie Maura’s house along nearby South-9 (now Scout Fuentebella) Street, which had television. Blame it, second, on our family driver and most cheerful lifetime friend Manong Natoy, who brought us kids to watch the film The Longest Day, a cinematic retelling of the June 1944 Allied landings in Nazi-occupied France, when I was seven. Both the TV show and the movie made a huge impression on me.

The frenzy of a Normandy beach in 1944, by the famous war photographer Robert Capa.

Continue reading “War veteran, vicariously”

2013-07-272013-07-28

The Manero mindset is all around us

Fr Tullio Favali — FR. TULLIO FAVALI WOULD JUST BE THE FIRST AMONG MANY. I regret to say that until now, the Manero mindset is as prevalent as ever among us.

Tullio Favali was an Italian missionary who was a parish priest in a town in Cotabato where the New People’s Army operated and who therefore was a suspected NPA sympathizer because he worked among farmers and protested martial law abuses. He was confronting a government militia force led by the Manero brothers when they shot him in cold blood, his head blown off by a militia gun fired pointblank into his face. (Fr. Favali’s story is told more fully on the Bantayog website.)

That was in 1985. But that did not stop foreigners—priests, nuns, lay volunteers, researchers, activists—from joining progressive organizations and protest rallies not just in Metro Manila but in other cities and town centers as part of their advocacy. We welcomed all forms of support that they extended to unions, urban poor groups, peasant associations, indigenous communities, and Filipino activist groups that worked among the poor. Continue reading “The Manero mindset is all around us”