When Heaven Turns Into Hell

Ten years after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the Aetas are still unable to find a permanent resettlement site. As though that is not enough, they are once again confronted with yet another imminent disaster, this time man-made. Part of what they consider as their ancestral domain will be turned into a “sanitary landfill” where Metro Manila’s garbage will be dumped.

By Zelda Soriano

The Aetas, considered the Philippines’ earliest inhabitants, used to maintain a life of their own. Driven to the hinterlands mainly in Central Luzon north of Manila by foreign colonizers, they were able to develop a self-sustaining albeit primitive agriculture as well as preserve nature and their own culture.

In 1991, Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted after centuries of slumber, sending molten lava to cascade down its slopes and dangerous ash clouds gushing several kilometers up. A canopy of lahar and rocks covered the plains and valleys of Central Luzon and destroyed farms and fishponds. Hundreds of thousands of families found themselves refugees.

In this tragedy, 200,000 Aeta families trekked down the hills bringing with them whatever was left by the natural calamity. Many of them believed that nature had taken its wrath against man – a private company was trying to explore the top of the volcano to start a geothermal project and angered Pinatubo.

Ten years later today, the Aetas – still unable to find a permanent resettlement site although many of them have since braved continued lahar threats by returning to their homes – are once again confronted with yet another imminent disaster, this time manmade. Part of what they consider as their ancestral domain will be turned into a “sanitary landfill” where Metro Manila’s garbage will be dumped.

Even before Metro Manila’s 40,000-tons-a-day garbage problem worsened late last year, plans were already afoot to turn Barangay (village) Cutcut II in Capas, Tarlac into a landfill. The particular village to be affected is called Sitio Kalangitan (literally, Village of Heaven) by the  Aetas. Reports said that the landfill occupying some 2,000 hectares was to be used to dump wastes coming from Germany. Its development into a dumpsite for the metropolis’ waste some 250 km away has been accelerated by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) headed by former Mandaluyong City Mayor Benjamin Abalos.

Officials of BN Consultants Philippines Inc., a German contractor that clinched the $200 million deal for dumping the metropolis’ trash, say that a group of Aetas living some 500 meters away need not be relocated and would be compensated as soon as the landfill begins operation.

Outraged

The Episcopal Commission on Social Action, Justice and Peace of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is outraged by this apparent government insensitivity to the Aetas’  life and livelihood. “The threat to health and environment is compounded by the fact that the site is a resettlement area inhabited by Aetas who have been displaced by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo,” a recent CBCP episcopal commission statement said.

The commission said that landfills eat up precious lands that could otherwise be used more productively by future generations. “There is also a high likelihood of landfill leachate and runoff that will pollute land and bodies of water," the commission further said.

The CBCP Social Action Center of Tarlac (or SACOT) has joined hands with anti-landfill groups in the province in opposing the landfill project, with the call, “Basura ng iba, ‘wag sa Tarlac ipasa” (Other people’s waste should not be dumped in Tarlac). “We will never allow Kalangitan to become hell,” SACOT director Fr. Osias Ibaretta said.

The Aetas are one of 40 ethnolinguistic groups in the country. Tribal Filipinos number about 4.5 million.

Historically, the Aetas were the least influenced by Christianity and Hispanization. Neither were they Islamized. They were able to preserve their culture and way of life as reflected in their communal views on land, their cooperative work exchange, communal rituals, songs, dances and folklore. They have preserved the forest, improved agriculture and sustained their basic needs.

They were able to survive several other Mount Pinatubo eruptions by resettling from one place to another, starting agriculture and flexibly renewing resources.

Best Solution

Ricardo Guiao, secretary general of the Pampanga-based Central Luzon Aetas Association (CLAA), says that  declaring the territory that stretches from around Mount Pinatubo crater down to the edge of the mountain slopes as an Aeta ancestral domain is the best solution to the Aetas’ continued marginalization. Here, they could tend to their orchard farms and vegetable gardens while preserving the remaining forest cover, which is also their source of food.

Guiao complains that most of the Pinatubo land – their original ancestral territory – has been privatized. For instance, about 44,000 hectares now claimed by the Clark Development Corporation (CDC) is open for development projects. At the boundary of Pampanga and Zambales is a 2,000-ha. estate claimed by Don Jovencio Dizon. Even the fringes of Pinatubo have been claimed by government as a reforestation area where no Aetas would be allowed to enter.

Already denied of their ancestral land, such renewed threats to the Aetas’ bare existence would be like adding injury to insult. They have mounted an opposition to the landfill project. This new struggle is a new chapter to their continuing crusade to reclaim their own ancestral domain – and to protect their community from threats of sheer extinction.#