Remembering the massacre victims

MANILA – Loved ones of the 19 people massacred in Toboso, Negros Occidental gathered at the University of the Philippines Diliman Theatre on May 11. 

Titled Negros 19, Panaghoy at Paghihimagsik, inspired by community journalist RJ Ledesma’s “Not Memorial, But Fugitive” essay, the night was filled with music, poetry, and songs depicting the suffering of the people of Negros, including the murdered Ledesma, Alyssa Alano, Maureen Santuyo, Errol Wendel, Lyle Prijoles, Kai Sorem, and the rest of the Negros 19.

Alano’s mother Sheila remembered her kind-heartedness during her childhood up to her decision to become an activist in her college days. “I saw my child’s desire to help the marginalized. I can’t stop her from pursuing her advocacies.”

Never forgotten

Alano was a child of the people long before she became a martyr. Her mother remembered her as a five-year-old who radiated warmth to everyone she met. 

Whenever asked to pause her political work, her only answer was, “I am happy with what I do, mommy.”

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Marienne Cuison, Prijoles’ wife, remembered how his basic food groups were sugary drinks, Oreos, and fast food. She also remembered how Lyle’s departure to Negros became their pillow talk for days and how he joked when asked what if he was captured or killed, that he would say, “My wife is coming for you!” 

Ledesma’s friend Carla Nicoyco recalled how he had so many crushes and how the 2019 crackdown on activists in Negros strengthened his political conviction. 

Troy Osaki, Sorem’s friend, described her as a loving and gentle soul with a saxophone tattoo on her arm, and how they remember her for every sugarcane stalk they see. 

Miko Collado, Wendel’s friend, said that he was naturally funny. “He will probably cringe at how everyone mourns his death.”

He recalled Wendel as being somewhat nonchalant but serious in political education and tasks. Collado also revealed that once, Wendel told his mother he was going swimming but instead went to the ‘bungkalan’ in Tarlac, where 100 farmers and advocates got arrested, including him. 

Santuyo’s elder sister said that she was a loving child, friend, and sibling. She also expressed how she learned so much from her, like speaking on stage for Santuyo’s tribute.

Meanwhile, activists interviewed by Bulatlat expressed their grief and rage. 

University of the Philippines Student Regent Dexter Clemente shared the youth’s collective grief and incensed fury over the Toboso 19 killings. He stressed that the tragedy exposed the state’s relentless pattern of silencing dissenters who demand a better system.

For Clemente, Alano’s memory is tied to the physical spaces of the university, a silhouette in the University Student Council office or a familiar face in campus coffee shops who is always working and happy on her chosen path. 

Nicole Domingo of Artists for Just Peace (AFJP) said, “Beyond our sorrow, we must hold on to our rage and stand firm in our struggle like what the Toboso 19 did.”

“You know that our comrades in Negros were defending the environment. Negros is widely known for the encroachment of quarrying companies, massive oil palm plantations, and, above all, haciendas. This is why there is such an intense longing to achieve justice for them and for all those slaughtered by this executioner regime,” Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (KPNE) National Coordinator Cathleen de Guzman said.

Negros as microcosm

Cathy Estavillo, secretary-general of Amihan Women, said, “The cause the Negros 19 took up is that of the farmers: the fight against landlessness, hunger, and exploitation and for a just tomorrow. They now stand among the long line of martyrs and heroes of Negros.”

She stressed that what happened in Negros was a microcosm of the ills of a semifeudal, semicolonial society.

Despite the island’s immense wealth in resources, the peasants of Negros remain among the poorest in the nation, trapped in a cycle of debt and landlessness in a land still monopolized by a few elite families.

A previous Bulatlat report stated that many farmers in Negros are forced to toil for as little as P150 ($3) a day in rice fields or P250 ($5) in sugar plantations. This abject poverty is not an accident of nature but a consequence of a semifeudal system that tethers the worker to the soil they will never own.

The Negros soil also has not escaped the brand of “development” that prioritizes profit over people and the planet. Militarization clears the path for environmentally destructive projects, ranging from large-scale quarrying operations that scar the mountainsides to massive oil palm plantations like the 6,652-hectare Hacienda Asia Plantations, Inc. (HAPI) that swallow ancestral lands and diverse ecosystems. These ventures, alongside the expansion of sprawling haciendas, demand the displacement of the peasantry and the silencing of its defenders. 

To live in Negros is to witness a direct assault on the environment, its tillers, and where the motherland’s natural wealth is extracted at the cost of its children’s lives.

It is these very same ills that drove the long list of its martyrs, now including Negros 19 to serve its masses, until their last breathe. 

Marco Valbuena sent his message paying tribute to the killed members of the New People’s Army, including Roger Fabillar (Ka Tapang), who served as commander of the Northern Negros Front. He also honored the six civilians—Alano, Santuyo, Wendel, Ledesma, Prijoles, and Sorem—for their decision to serve and live the life of the masses in Negros Occidental. He also extended deep condolences to other civilians killed in the April 19 military operation. (With reports from Anne Marxze D. Umil) (AMU, DAA)

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