“The Lumad students went to Cebu to escape the repression brought about by the militarization in Mindanao only to experience continuing harm. It is the relentless attacks perpetrated by no less than the government that is wreaking violence in the lives of Lumad youths who only seek to go to school and learn.”
It was then that I knew that alternative news agencies like Bulatlat are instrumental in speaking truth to power. Without the shackles of corporate interest that filters and distorts news agenda, independent media is what is grounds us and directs us to reality.
“Artists know that their freedom to create the art that they wish to is premised on the freedom of expression. When this freedom is taken away, so is their freedom to create art. And they create art to serve the basic sectors, because we basically owe everything to farmers and workers—what we eat, the things that we use everyday. When they are suppressed, then everything else is rendered meaningless.”
“We are in a very crucial time, and our pork producers are in such vulnerable state, if the DA and the Duterte regime rely too much on importation now to unreliably lower prices, millions of small hog raisers are bound to go bankrupt and close permanently. Only increased local production can sustainably lower pork prices.”
For almost 30 years, I was granted the privilege of being issued a permanent resident VISA. I have been living my mission in the Philippines and I have no further desire than to continue my mission among the oppressed workers.
Carinderia vendors and consumers considerably lean on each other to combat the threat of food insecurity, but several vendors also stressed that they can’t hold on long enough and hope to receive subsidies from the government.
The stories in Sitio Compra and Sitio Buntog share many sad parallels. They are both stories of land-use conversion and violence against the nation’s dwindling agricultural communities. While peasants clamor for land reform, the Philippine government has deemed land-use conversion by large corporations as an acceptable substitute.