A look back at Marag Valley: Folks tell tales of violence, abuse

>> TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2015

By Larry P. Fabian

MARAG VALLEY, Luna, Apayao – Once the hotbed of rebellion against the Marcos dictatorship in the early
seventies, Marag Valley now sees its future in  tourism as the province gears for brighter future.

Barangay Marag, located within the Municipality of Luna, boasts of a thickly forested landscape with hidden rock
formations and limestone caves that had once been the perfect spot for rebels to set up camp and training grounds
for new recruits fighting on what they believed was a corrupt government.

Romina Morales, a resident of the village recalls how she and her family had to evacuate to the inner jungles of the
valley after having had experienced what they called “military injustices” in their community.

“It was too much for us to bear, some of our neighbors were abducted by the military for suspicion of being rebels and
then seeing them the next day piled up dead inside one of the artesian wells used by the community,” Morales said.

“We feared the military because they could easily accuse anyone in our neighborhood for being a rebel, then the next
thing, we see are their dead bodies,” Morales added.

Morales denied she or any of her kin ever took arms against the government during those times of turmoil. “I nor any
of my family members never fought against the military or joined the rebels because fear was all over us. That was
why we had to move to the most remote part of the forests,” she said.

In these forests, they ate ferns and other edible plants that they could find. “It was a heavy burden for us to find rice.
We had to walk many kilometers to the nearest store just to purchase a kilo of rice since we left our rice fields
unattended for fear of being suspected and snatched by the military on suspicion of being a rebel,” Morales laments.

“When the military helicopters started dropping bombs in 1986, things got worse as these carpet bombings affected
all of our lives,” Morales recalled.

This trauma was shared by most of the community members during those times.

As another survivor recalled, he spent months at the evacuation center in Pamplona, Cagayan in the early 90s after
he was brought there by a humanitarian group which had found him wandering aimlessly after his family’s house was
heavily strafed in the crossfire between military forces and the rebels. Both his parents died in that incident.

The survivor, who asked to be called Ricky, could remember: “I could not even take a look at a man in a military
uniform, for fear that he will shoot at me with just a stare.”

He said he was a young boy when that happened in 1992, and without the people who evacuated them in Pamplona
Refugee Center, he would have been long gone.

Years have passed and the rice fields are once again teeming with the color of greens and animals are being
pastured near the forest edges in Marag. The river is bountiful with fish.

Asked about what would the people in Mamasapano, Maguindanao feel with regards the recent clash between
government and a Muslim armed groups that killed 44 Special Action Force personnel, Morales shrugged and just
said, “I pray to God all these killings would stop, because the civilians there, like us are also deeply affected.”

Morales added : “The residents in the area are the most affected because they are the ones who are most helpless. I
hope the leaders would soon realize that their lives are also important.”

“A part of Paco Valley is in Upper Atok, it is adjacent Aurora barangay of Pudtol town. It is where ‘our
friends’ (referring to the NPA rebels) used as a passage in going to Lasam and Rizal towns in Cagayan
starting the 1980s. Sometimes they also spend a few days there,” Flora town Mayor Rodolfo Juan said in
a media interview last February 14.

Paco Valley used to be a stronghold of the NPA rebels like what Marag Valley was in the 70s up to the
80s.

LUNA, Apayao – At least 200 Ilokano writers and journalists in the country and from abroad are attending the 51st
annual convention of the Gumil Filipinas, the Ilocano Writers Association in the Philippines and Overseas, at the
Apayao Eco-Tourism and Sports Complex here.

The two-day convention, and language and literary seminar workshop. dubbed as Dap-ayan 2019, ended April
28.
“Our GUMIL Filipinas annual convention is our commitment in connection to the observance of the National
Literature Month as mandated by the Presidential Proclamation No. 968 issued in 2015,” Vilmer Viloria, Gumil
president, said.
“Gumil Filipinas had always been supportive to the observance to the National Literature Month lead by the
National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF), both headed by
Virgilio S. Almario, and the the National Book Development Board (NBDB) chaired Flor Marie Santa Romana-Cruz,”
Viloria said.
Among the prominent Ilokano literary writers and journalists honed and discovered by the Gumil Filipinas are
Bannawag managing editor Cles Rambaud, multi-awarded writers/journalists Honor Cabie Blanco, Dionisio Bulong,
Johnny Hidalgo, Linda Lingbaoan, Reynaldo Duque and Godofredo Reyes.