Words
Words
Updated 10:54pm (Mla time) Jan 10, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the January 11, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
"TODAY, I offer you a choice of life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life and then you and your descendants will live."
The words are from Deuteronomy, and they preface the Quezon clergy's indictment of government for the deaths in Quezon last December.
"While there was heavy rainfall," a statement signed by Bishop Rolando Tirona, his predecessor Julio Labayen and 24 priests said, "(the deaths) would not have happened if heavy logging had not taken place. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines and different groups had been campaigning against logging in the Sierra Madre for many years now. The government, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and local government officials did not listen.... We should no longer allow the irresponsible use of the environment for the gain of a few individuals and the so-called development agenda of the government and some private sectors."
The group called for the prosecution of the loggers and the government officials who approved their contracts.
I'm glad the Prelature of Infanta has spoken out on this. I was beginning to think it would go the route of other tragedies, things this country tends to accept without question as heaven-sent, with no small help from government which has a habit of unctuously cajoling the public to "move on" after tragedies occur. Or indeed after sandpapering the horrors with the language of damage control.
Chief of the words of that language is "natural." You affix the word "natural" to "disaster," and you're home free. The dead, or their kin, have no one to blame but God, fate, or bad luck, depending on their religious disposition, or lack of it. The three storms that visited Quezon province might have been wrought by Nature -- though even there, from the perspective of a messed-up global climate precipitated by global warming, they may not have been entirely so -- but their effects were wrought by human hand.
The deaths in Quezon Province were not just caused by Nature, they were caused by loggers. It wasn't the winds that howled and the rains that fell in a torrent on Infanta and environs that killed hundreds of their residents, it was the logs that rumbled down the mountain and buried them in the mud. The prelature has every reason to be furious. Those logs claimed the life of one of their own, Fr. Charlito Colendres.
I had been wondering for some time when the outrage would come. Have we gotten so inured to death, even those so blatantly wreaked by people, that we agree so easily to let go and build on the bleached bones of the dead? Have we gotten so used to the sight of pain and suffering, particularly when assailed by one tragedy happening on top of the other, we console ourselves so easily we are not alone to have deaths in the family -- others are worse off than we? Have we gotten so weak and resigned and voiceless that we surrender ourselves so easily to the narcotic of platitude and forgetfulness?
The deaths in Infanta are not just a catastrophe, they are a crime. Catastrophes are solved by relief, crimes are resolved by justice.
By speaking out against the crime, the prelature corrects yet another word that has been so widely bandied about, whose effect is to bury the dead in the mud twice over. That is the word "illegal," especially as affixed to "logging." By harping on "illegal" logging, government has exculpated, or tried mightily to, the true criminals in this case, which are the legal loggers, made so by the documents they carry from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Can anything be more idiotic than attributing the tons of logs that fell down the mountains and washed up to the sea to the nefarious activities of "illegal" loggers? Can anything be more idiotic than suggesting that the solution to that is to add more checkpoints to catch the “kainginero” [slash-and-burn farmers] and indigenous folk who operate on the fringes of the logging routes -- and often feed on them-and punish them "to the full extent of the law"?
The evidence is plain for all to see. The only thing worse than injury is insult added to it. The only thing worse than death is murder. The only thing worse than murder is the murderer getting away.
And finally, I am glad the prelature has spoken out because of yet another word that government has been using to bury the crime, along with the dead, in an unmarked grave. That word is "growth," or as the prelature calls it, "development agenda." All government has had to do in the past to excuse crimes like this is invoke growth, or survival (amid crushing) poverty, and everything is made all right. Tragedies like this are the price we pay to grow, develop or indeed survive as a community, people and nation.
Well, they are an unacceptable price to pay. Or the wrong people are paying it. The death of a single child is an unacceptable price to pay for that kind of growth and development. The death of an entire community is a devil's bargain. I say this in particular because barely had the last earth been shoveled on to the dead of Quezon than government began talking of the wonders of opening mining to foreign capital. I said it before: that is all very well, but first let Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Mike Defensor and their cabal put their money where their mouths are, or their lives where their words are, and let their children live and breathe the air of the thing they call safe. Otherwise it's just some people's fortunes growing and developing on the contraction and deterioration of the sources of life of the rest of the nation.
There are words and there are words, some words being more worth heeding than others. Deuteronomy's are one of the latter. Choose life, and you and your descendants will live. Choose death, and, well, just make sure the right people end up in that state.
Updated 10:54pm (Mla time) Jan 10, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the January 11, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
"TODAY, I offer you a choice of life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life and then you and your descendants will live."
The words are from Deuteronomy, and they preface the Quezon clergy's indictment of government for the deaths in Quezon last December.
"While there was heavy rainfall," a statement signed by Bishop Rolando Tirona, his predecessor Julio Labayen and 24 priests said, "(the deaths) would not have happened if heavy logging had not taken place. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines and different groups had been campaigning against logging in the Sierra Madre for many years now. The government, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and local government officials did not listen.... We should no longer allow the irresponsible use of the environment for the gain of a few individuals and the so-called development agenda of the government and some private sectors."
The group called for the prosecution of the loggers and the government officials who approved their contracts.
I'm glad the Prelature of Infanta has spoken out on this. I was beginning to think it would go the route of other tragedies, things this country tends to accept without question as heaven-sent, with no small help from government which has a habit of unctuously cajoling the public to "move on" after tragedies occur. Or indeed after sandpapering the horrors with the language of damage control.
Chief of the words of that language is "natural." You affix the word "natural" to "disaster," and you're home free. The dead, or their kin, have no one to blame but God, fate, or bad luck, depending on their religious disposition, or lack of it. The three storms that visited Quezon province might have been wrought by Nature -- though even there, from the perspective of a messed-up global climate precipitated by global warming, they may not have been entirely so -- but their effects were wrought by human hand.
The deaths in Quezon Province were not just caused by Nature, they were caused by loggers. It wasn't the winds that howled and the rains that fell in a torrent on Infanta and environs that killed hundreds of their residents, it was the logs that rumbled down the mountain and buried them in the mud. The prelature has every reason to be furious. Those logs claimed the life of one of their own, Fr. Charlito Colendres.
I had been wondering for some time when the outrage would come. Have we gotten so inured to death, even those so blatantly wreaked by people, that we agree so easily to let go and build on the bleached bones of the dead? Have we gotten so used to the sight of pain and suffering, particularly when assailed by one tragedy happening on top of the other, we console ourselves so easily we are not alone to have deaths in the family -- others are worse off than we? Have we gotten so weak and resigned and voiceless that we surrender ourselves so easily to the narcotic of platitude and forgetfulness?
The deaths in Infanta are not just a catastrophe, they are a crime. Catastrophes are solved by relief, crimes are resolved by justice.
By speaking out against the crime, the prelature corrects yet another word that has been so widely bandied about, whose effect is to bury the dead in the mud twice over. That is the word "illegal," especially as affixed to "logging." By harping on "illegal" logging, government has exculpated, or tried mightily to, the true criminals in this case, which are the legal loggers, made so by the documents they carry from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Can anything be more idiotic than attributing the tons of logs that fell down the mountains and washed up to the sea to the nefarious activities of "illegal" loggers? Can anything be more idiotic than suggesting that the solution to that is to add more checkpoints to catch the “kainginero” [slash-and-burn farmers] and indigenous folk who operate on the fringes of the logging routes -- and often feed on them-and punish them "to the full extent of the law"?
The evidence is plain for all to see. The only thing worse than injury is insult added to it. The only thing worse than death is murder. The only thing worse than murder is the murderer getting away.
And finally, I am glad the prelature has spoken out because of yet another word that government has been using to bury the crime, along with the dead, in an unmarked grave. That word is "growth," or as the prelature calls it, "development agenda." All government has had to do in the past to excuse crimes like this is invoke growth, or survival (amid crushing) poverty, and everything is made all right. Tragedies like this are the price we pay to grow, develop or indeed survive as a community, people and nation.
Well, they are an unacceptable price to pay. Or the wrong people are paying it. The death of a single child is an unacceptable price to pay for that kind of growth and development. The death of an entire community is a devil's bargain. I say this in particular because barely had the last earth been shoveled on to the dead of Quezon than government began talking of the wonders of opening mining to foreign capital. I said it before: that is all very well, but first let Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Mike Defensor and their cabal put their money where their mouths are, or their lives where their words are, and let their children live and breathe the air of the thing they call safe. Otherwise it's just some people's fortunes growing and developing on the contraction and deterioration of the sources of life of the rest of the nation.
There are words and there are words, some words being more worth heeding than others. Deuteronomy's are one of the latter. Choose life, and you and your descendants will live. Choose death, and, well, just make sure the right people end up in that state.
posted by Dante at 4:00 PM
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