WHAT THE PLIGHT OF THE AETAS DURING THE 2019 SEAG CAN TEACH US ABOUT POLITICS
By Stephanie Pagdanganan
It was a stunning victory for the Philippines, as the Pearl of the Orient bagged 387 medals, 149 of them gold, in the last South East Asian Games (SEAG) held in 2019.1
The Philippines was declared the overall champion of the said games, our Arnis team garnering the most number of gold medals.2 Athletes such as Agatha Wong, who garnered the gold medal for Wushu; John Chicano, who boasted first in the men’s triathlon; and Olympic silver medalist Hidilyn Diaz for weightlifting, all brought pride to our nation.
However, the horns of triumph echoed with undertones of controversy and corruption from management—50-meter cauldron with the equally impressive price tag of 50 million pesos, and reports of foreign athletes being mistreated, tainted what should have been a flawless win for the Filipino.3 As corruption and incompetence have become almost a staple in political discourse, the question now turns to what we, as a nation, can do to progress. Perhaps a study of the core issue regarding the ancestral lands stripped from the native Aetas can illuminate the path we must take towards a progressive nation, free from the cancer that currently permeates our system. That path for progress lies in the preservation of our traditions.
North of Manila, around 170 kilometers away, lies Capas, Tarlac, home to certain indigenous communities of Aetas who tilled the farmlands as their ancestors had done several years before. On December 3, 2019, the Aeta inhabitants of a village were given a seven-day notice to vacate. The lands they had preserved were to allocated for a road to New Clark City4—regardless of the provisions of Republic Act No. 8371, which provided implementing measures to protect the rights of indigenous people (IP) to their ancestral lands , although the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) claims that the land is government-owned and that no ancestral domain titles have been issued for it. This caused outrage, despite the P300,000 financial assistance package offered to the indigenous people. Senator Risa Hontiveros emphasized that, “We need to understand that it is not just homes and livelihood that are being taken away from them.” No less than the United Nations stated that, ”The importance of land and territories to indigenous cultural identity cannot be stressed enough.”5
What the senator brought up is something that is hardly mentioned in local political discussions, but it is something that has been gaining prominence in Western culture—the idea that the way to move forward as a nation is to return to our culture and protect what is beautiful in our traditions. Like the sudden change of the Aeta ancestral lands to modern thoroughfares, before such changes were made in the name of development, it is important to ask ourselves these two points to ponder: why are we making these changes and what are we giving up in doing so?
This does not mean that we must do away with modern living and go back to our primitive ways. What we fail to realize is that politics is a downstream of culture, and that while there are so many aspects to consider when building a nation, the first thing to consider is always the people and their culture.
Culture is important because it gives people a sense of unity, a sense of something to collectively strive for and to build. With unity, we can have accountability. The progress of a nation is highly dependent on how the people can hold those in power accountable. The sad truth is that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Once we realize this, perhaps our nation can snap out of the fantasy of a benevolent leader who will somehow save our nation from all its ills. If power corrupts, and politicians are mostly driven by lust for power, then a system of accountability will force these politicians to listen to the needs of their flock if they wish to further their political ends. This, however, requires a population that is interested in not just their own individual well-being, but also in protecting and safeguarding the culture and the nation that they have inherited from their ancestors.
In our desperation to keep up with our Western and Eastern contemporaries, we have fallen into the trap of adopting ideas and identities which are suited for their people, but not our own. What we first must ask ourselves is this—what is our identity? What is it that we are fighting for? What is it that we are protecting? The Philippines is composed of a diverse set of people, with regions of different cultures and dialects, so what is it that we have in common? It is more than blood—it is our past. Before rushing forward with radical ideas, we must never forget the richness in our history that unites us.
That is not to say that we should adhere to every tradition, especially when they are not applicable to our current situation, or that we are to be forever beholden to our past. What we should realize is that moving on towards progress also means working against the unethical indifference that pervades in modern development.
If the cultural identity of the Aetas is tied to their land, what is our cultural identity as a nation? Perhaps that is something that we should ponder more if we truly wish to move forward as a nation.◾
1 Santos, Ana P (2019, December 11).SEA Games: Medals and controversy for the Philippines. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/sea-games-ends-medals-controversy-philippines-191211050407590.html
2 Nakpil, Danielle (2019, December 11).PH Is 2019 SEA Games Overall Champion. Retrieved from https://cnnphilippines.com/seagames/2019/12/11/2019-SEA-Games-Philippines-overall-champion.html
3 Domingo, Katrina (2019, November 21). LOOK: What’s Inside Multimillion 2019 SEA Games cauldron? Retrieved from https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/11/21/19/look-whats-inside-multimillion-2019-sea-games-cauldron
4 Santos, Ana P (2019, December 11).SEA Games: Medals and controversy for the Philippines. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/sea-games-ends-medals-controversy-philippines-191211050407590.html
5 Retrieved from: https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/mandated-areas1/culture.html