On Placed History: A Strugglist Response

Ferdinand Ammang Anno1

In a relatively isolated faculty house at Union Theological Seminary in Dasmarinas, Cavite, Philippines, are mounted some visual art works - my amateur attempts to translate some thoughts and feelings that have seized me for some time: the passion, death and resurrection of the Ygollotes (or Igorot) of Cordillera. Among them and done with some recycled materials, from styrofoams as canvass to left-over acrylic paints, are images of the Igorot dancing the pattong (community dance), playing the gangsa (gong) and the kalaleng (nose flute) - performing the last rites of a dying tribe.

'Dying' may not be an apt description and depiction of today's Igorots. But I use 'dying' to highlight the state of the land in view of intensified damming and mining activities in the mountains of northern Philippines today.  I also use 'dying' to emphasize that this near death experience of the land actually precipitated a cultural and political revival in the region, as evidenced by the heightening militancy of indigenous people's organizations. 'Dying' in this context means dying from an old to a new consciousness - from a subordinated one to an identity-affirming and self-determining consciousness. The Salidummay, the famous music ditty of the Igorots, again fills the region's pine-scented air, as in the old days. This time, the singing is no longer to entertain the curious tourist but to bare the soul of an abused, exploited and marginalized race. The Igorots are now becoming more militant in voicing out their alternative development agenda for the Cordilleras. This was articulated in the theme of a recent celebration of Cordillera day: "Resist the plunder of indigenous people's land and resources. Advance the politics of change to achieve the people's aspirations."

This is my very brief response to the emerging Asia-Pacific theologies from the perspective of space - theologies of land (e.g. Geoffrey Lilburne), tribal (e.g. A. Wati Longchar) and Aboriginal or "Rainbow Spirit" theologies (e.g. Islander & Aboriginal Australians). It proceeds from this Philippine experience: the Igorots' struggle for land, identity and self-determination, together with my personal struggle to re-root myself in the Igorot story.

To tillers of the soil, including peasants of the lowlands, discourses on the restoration of creation come as a truly powerful rhetoric, for they echo calls for a radical review of property and inter-human relations, current agrarian and social policies of the state, and the grounding of human spirituality. However, as sharply pointed out in G. Lilburne's "Sense of Place," "contemporary experience should warn us that no simple return to Eden is available."2 This is the same assertion our (struggling) theologians of struggle in the Philippines have made as the starting point of their theological reflection.

A Theo-Political Literary Response

1.   Locating a Theology of Struggle.  A theology of struggle locates itself in the interregnum between the 'events of first Easter' and the 'new heaven and a new earth' or, in Hebrew spatial and historical terms, between Egypt and Canaan. Like the ever-expanding liberation theology's inclusion of land-centered liberation themes of indigenous communities and tribal theologians, Theology of Struggle's very resource (i.e. the people's struggle), also points to an intimate link between creation and new creation, between space and time, between place and history. It also affirms that historical liberation is at once a work of restoration of the earth and all its creatures, and salvation story as also envisaging the vision of cosmic redemption.

One concrete illustration of 'placed history' linking time and space could be seen in the Cordillera people's politics of re-reading their ancient stories in the context of their resistance against the pillage and desecration of their ancestral lands.

During the November 1996 APEC conference in the Philippines, when a 200-vehicle caravan of protesters was blocked by an army-backed phalanx of anti-riot police and negotiation was underway, a group of gangsa-carrying Igorots, in their characteristic pattong formation, danced their way to an open space approaching the first of the police barricades. They moved expressively following a narration from a megaphone. Their dance was one of protest based on this ancient Ifugao-Igorot story:

In the beginning there were no people living in the land. There was nothing but forests all over, with ugly monsters and hideous animals roaming through thickets and marshes. One day, Lumauig, the great God of the mountain provinces, came down from heaven. Gathering a bundle of reeds, Lumauig went to the top of Mount Pulag and, in a loud powerful voice which reverberated throughout the land, commanded: "rise and speak!"And lo! The reeds immediately became people.

The hideous monsters and animals in the story were interpreted in the dance as the development projects in the Cordillera, their foreign financiers, economic technocrats and bureaucrat capitalists. Echoed in the powerful beating of their gangsa was a cry of resistance against the enemy, the logging concessionaires and mining companies, and gigantic dams that are ravaging the land and reducing the Igorots into non-people, i.e. reeds. The myth that was used to explain how people first inhabited the land now tells a story as contemporary as the age of development aggression in the Cordillera.

Through the dance, indigenous people affirm that the becoming of a people is possible only when they are able to rise and speak in defense of their ancestral lands. The context of the story is spatial crisis: the rape and loss of the dwelling of their ancestors. The people's process of becoming, the 'imaging of God' in Judeo-Christian theological parlance, is intrinsically linked to the struggle for emancipation of the land.

I resist consigning to a footnote the other intent of the cultural performance, that is, to challenge the dominant development discourse - the language of globalization.

2.   Toward a Land-Based Theological Anthropology of Development. The protest dance is not only against development aggression. It also offers some valuable conceptual constructs and theological insights for a liberationist-integralist-strugglist understanding of development.

Through the dance, the Igorots were affirming, first of all, that the creator god does not will a reed-like life for humanity. God wills human life to blossom to the fullest. The reed, like many other grass varieties may have the capacity to survive and regenerate even when onslaught-after-destruction is perpetually wrought in its natural habitat by wild animals and environs. But to the creator god, human existence is more than survival and regeneration. Human life was conceived and made to image the will of its author and creator. Likewise, the human collective was made to reflect the reality of a truly divine-ordained human community.

Second, the making or creation of a people is a divine initiative, and thus, humanity's struggle to evolve into a people is basically a response to that initiative (will) of the divine for humanity. This divine act of creation was not effected from above but from below, from the very base of a de-peopling human situation and it takes an active human response for a people to be born.

Third, the descent of Lumauig speaks of a continuing creative and redemptive work of god in history and creation, of a god who is fully involved in the historical and existential struggles of the human to break free from reed-like identity and existence. It is this involvement of god in creation that makes possible the liberation and ascendancy of the human to higher stage of collective existence - peoplehood.

Fourth, acts of 'rising' and 'speaking' are what make the human community a people. Humanity that does not have the will to rise and speak is forever consigned to a reed-like existence..

The dance protests against the dependency engendered by developmentalism's trickle-down approach that exploits, enslaves and strips people of their basic humanity. It reduces them to the proverbial reed of the Igorot story, leaving them in dire need of redemption. But redemption is not to come from elsewhere. It comes from the people themselves, through radical (breaking-into-halves) act of conversion. This process of conversion is itself the genesis of a people's process of becoming - a process in genuine development.

Development partly revolves around the uplift of people to a full life. In this sense, development is more than an economic issue, but essentially an anthropological issue. Economic growth is not separate from but an indicator of a people's well being. The quest for new levels of economic activities always presupposes a process of development. Hence, economic well being is reflective of peoplehood and wholeness. Equally significant is that within the process itself is a protracted people's struggle. From the people who are in the thick of a prolonged conflict, development is a journey; it resides in a people right in the beginning of their struggle for emancipation. In other words, authentic development is a process by which a people emerge through their own acts of 'rising' and 'speaking.' It is realized in their struggle to be 'people' in all aspects of their existence - in the reclaiming of their name, identity and dignity as a human collective. This anthropology of development is clearly outlined in the Ifugao story of the peopling of the earth.

3. Other Sources for 'Placed History'. Another source which celebrates both cosmic redemption and human liberation, is a poem by a deaconess-turned-revolutionary, Filomena Asuncion, who perished in an armed skirmish between government troopers and revolutionaries in 1983. To her poem I have added few lines from another revolutionary song, 'Pagkatapos ng Digma (After the War):

The words above powerfully express the hope for both social renewal and the greening of the land resident in the struggle. The becoming of a people in historical struggles, as articulated in the poem and song is in fact processed with a high sense of place. 'Praising the roses' and the Paghilom (healing) of relationships are at the summit of Filomena Asuncion's hierarchy of dreams in the struggle.

The song speaks of a reciprocal relationship between land and people, between place and history in the healing process. The land prepares itself for human habitation even as the human tills and celebrates the beauty and bounty of the land. This fact of reciprocity brings us back to that cult-ic link between people and land which is particularly strong among the Cordillera tribes. Cultic in the sense that this link is established on mutuality of responsibility, as suggested by the Latin word colere - where the Igorot and the land are bound to each other in mutual dependence. This relationship is fed with the belief summed up in the words of a martyred Kalinga-Igorot pangat (chieftain), Macliing-Dulag, who led the war of resistance against the Chico Development Project during the seventies and early eighties.

Afo Kafunian, Lord of us all, gave us life

and placed us in the world to live human lives.

And where shall we obtain life? From the land.

To work the land is an obligation, not merely a right.

In tilling the land, you possess it.

And so, land is a grace that must be nurtured.

To enrich it is the eternal exhortation of Afo Kafunian

to all Kafunian's children.

Land is sacred. Land is beloved.

From its womb springs our Kalinga life.4

The theology of struggle in the Philippines continues to be expressed primarily through the stories, prayers, songs, dances, reflections, and ministries of Christians in the struggle. These also include wrestling and celebrating with the land-centered theological expressions of tribal people and lowland peasants in the country. Doing theology with indigenous resources and spirituality should be taken seriously as a challenge to Filipino theologians in the struggle, for in it lies more discovery, fresh winds leading to new directions - that will bring the people's struggle closer to God's intent for God's creation.