Breaking from the Bitter Past
As a term, G7 provokes thought. No one we asked seems to know how the term came to be. When queried what G7 means, people in the border barangays of Pikit and Aleosan in North Cotabato were wont to say “Space for Peace” or “GINAPALADTAKA”.
GINAPALADTAKA is an acronym for seven Pikit barangays, namely Ginatilan, Nalapaan, Panicupan, Ladtingan, Dalengaoen, Takepan, and Kalakakan. On the border of Pikit and Aleosan in North Cotabato, people have come to know that these former conflict-affected barangays have gotten armed combatants—the MILF, AFP, and the MNLF—to recognize the villages’ declaration that their locality be spared from armed conflict.
The idea for civilians themselves to assert their aspiration for peace and to negotiate with armed combatants to honor this aspiration started with Fr. Roberto Layson, OMI who was the parish priest in Pikit during the 2000 all out war. Layson saw the humanitarian crisis in the deluge of the IDPs and called public attention to it as the displacement stretched over several months. Nalapaan barangay captain Abdul Tinbungcog credits Layson with the idea of calling for a community meeting to formulate a proposal that barangay officials would forward to the MILF Central Committee and to the higher command of the AFP.
Tibungcog attests that negotiating the approval of the declaration took a few months, and that it was only upon the public signing of the document by the MILF chairman Hashim Salamat and the AFP chief of staff Angelo Reyes, now both deceased, that the Nalapaan IDPs believed it was safe to return home. The ceremony was held on 1 February 2001, some nine months after the Nalapaan residents had unceremoniously evacuated their homes because of intense fighting.
When war again broke out in 2004, many barangays in Pikit were affected by the armed clashes. Nalapaan, however, was relatively spared, with only one brief incidence of armed encounter. Nalapaan was quick to call attention to the 2001 Space for Peace declaration and to appeal to the warring parties to take their battles somewhere else. The appeal was apparently heeded until the cessastion of hostilities.
When the smoke cleared, the other barangays also wanted to declare their community a Space for Peace. They sought the help of Nalapaan on how to go about the process. Eventually, owing to the shared aspiration, the seven barangays formed the GINAPALADTAKA, thereby expanding the Space for Peace to cover the seven barangays now.
Ladtingan barangay captain Mabanag Solik is the current GINAPALADTAKA chairperson. He shared that the idea behind the G7 is to
“…give a little Space for Peace in the community. That’s the challenge. First of all, we know that this problem has a historical background. That’s why it is important to study this. The community needs to understand where this all started and why it has turned out this way. Educating the community on the historical background of this violence, this distrust… We have been able to do this with the help of different civil society organizations—there is Tabang Mindanao, Balay (Mindanaw), Kalinaw (Mindanao), also Oxfam. What they did was, they divided among themselves what needed to be done. Some undertook peace education, some addressed livelihood… and also social development in the community.”
Peace is also fostered by an understanding of the emotions of conflict. Solik elaborates that the inputs pay special attention to
“…what we call psychosocial (services) to address the trauma. In conflict, you’d expect that bad feelings are evoked in people. Anger. The entire emotional history of it. We study that and well, we realized… The ordinary people—my nephews here—they don’t know that when there’s conflict, there’s also trauma that’s like a form of emotional distress that becomes a disease. What should you do with trauma? In schools, in offices, when bad things happen, there’s trauma healing. So too should there be in communities.”
He also clarifies that negative emotions stem from a sense of grievance that could be addressed properly through more peaceful means:
“Well, hatred is hatred. But the way we see it, however heated it becomes, it would have to cool eventually. It’s like just like any other resentment, if it will not be properly addressed, expect retaliation. For every injury, if it is not properly addressed, expect another… But nowadays, while there are others who still espouse (continued grievance) on the ground, they are not as effective (in drawing converts) as before because now the community knows that the issue is merely used by some leaders in order to promote themselves.”
It is not only peace education, the history of conflict in these communities, and efforts to heal generational trauma that are addressed by the GINAPALADTAKA. Inputs also try to inoculate community residents from being dragged into future wars, especially those that only serve the interest of some people who would stand to benefit from the continued misunderstanding among the Muslims and Christians in the area. According to Solik,
“That has happened here. Some leaders (and) politicians who maneuver for position have used some communities to achieve their goals. It served their purpose when there were damages, casualties. In the past that was how there came to be a gap between the Muslims and Christians here. Something like that happened right here, too. The Christians couldn’t come here, we Muslims couldn’t go to their area also. But now, with the initiatives of the organizations, we have come to understand each other. Our main objective in the work that we do is dialogue.”
GINAPALADTAKA employs dialogue to break down generational stereotypes that Muslims and Christians hold of each other. While Solik recognizes that these stereotypes may continue to hold outside of their communities, what he finds important is that these do not apply any more to the way neighbors view each other in their locality:
“Before, it was said that Muslims steal carabaos. The Muslims would say that the Bisaya eat pork. Stuff like that, simple misunderstandings that escalate because they don’t talk to each other. But now, the Moros expect that our Christian brothers, especially those that are in Cebu, they won’t be able to understand the nature of the conflict here. You see, going back to the Spanish times, the mindsetting of the Cebuanos under the colony was that the Moro was the enemy. Until now, many Christians in Cebu think that without knowing that that belief worked for the Spaniards, so Cebuanos would fight the Moros then. Moros, on the other hand, naturally if they are being attacked, that must be the enemy. So that’s what we want to emphasize to the younger generation. That’s over. That was long ago. We’re done.”
Asked what the Space for Peace has allowed him to wish for, Solik replies,”Now, it’s time to dream of abundance in our community.