DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 16 Feb) — I speak for my generation. I speak for a generation that is quick to pass on judgment. I speak for a generation of multiple truths. A consequence of instantaneous feedback and social media, my generation forgets to take a standstill. We forget to listen. We forget to look back to understand where we are today.
My family is among the settlers in Mindanao. My father’s roots come from Southern Tagalog while my mother’s come from Central Visayas. I was born and raised in Davao, a mile more comfortable than Cotabato, Maguindanao, Sulu or Basilan. I had the opportunity to attend school. I hardly missed a day. It was only when I got sick that I had to miss my classes. Every day, I would go home to a family that is complete with enough food on the table. I felt safe and without a care about what awaits tomorrow.
Antara, the child in the Bangsamoro would have a different story. Unlike my childhood, this child learned to have marathoner skills at age 5. Why wouldn’t he? Every time skirmishes came about, he had to walk or run kilometers to find a safe place. In place of the alarm clock, he would awake at the sound of gunfire and the screams of anger of soldiers and rebels. He hardly had time to go to school – evacuating from one place to another was all he learned all his life.
His father, a farmer, was a product of the Martial Law. His mother who had him at 15 tries to make ends meet by selling some locally made goodies near the highway. Also children of conflict, his parents have not had any chance at a better life. In Antara’s family, only one can read and write – the luckiest to have stepped in fourth grade. His sisters would eventually get married at an early age to ease the burden from their family. And so the cycle goes. Unlike me, Antara sleeps every night, with real fear of what tomorrow might bring.
Every time I open my social media accounts, I cringe at the lack of humanity among the privileged kind. Many would say that an all-out war is the solution, most of whom are comfortably living in Imperial Manila or in Visayas. There are Mindanawons who are ignorant enough to shun the Moro and Lumad narrative as if living in today’s so-called democratic state is enough for us to be equals.
The damage of war takes decades to restore. Those who have been affected by it continue to bleed from the pain and brokenness.
The state in which we are in today is the saddest place possible. Today, in our hands lie that opportunity to create a new narrative – to take the path to peace because no one wins war after all. In our hands, we can revive the lost glory of our Bangsamoro communities -a place that remains culturally our own in a country that has almost, if not, fully assimilated Western traits. But it is these same hands that can just throw it all away.