Baguio is weeping

A gloom has been hanging over Baguio these past days. The clouds that blanket these mountains after a rainfall used to remind me of a mother gently wrapping a child in a blanket for a warm, good night’s sleep. Now, the grey that envelopes what was once thought to be the most beautiful hill station in Asia helps paint a portrait of a tired, abused mother. Baguio is weeping.

Because the very people who are supposed to protect her are perpetrators of that abuse. They take and take from her, and almost never think of giving back. Our mothers always reminded us as children: “put things back where you found them.” It’s as if their own mothers never taught them that. Or perhaps they never listened.

“Never take what’s not yours.” I’ve always admired the Igorot concept of land stewardship. Nobody owns the land, we are mere stewards. They do cut down trees whenever necessary, and before they do they pray to the spirits that dwell in those trees. And they give back whenever they take (take a tree, plant more trees), and they never take more than what nature can provide. They know they have to keep in mind the welfare, too, of the future generation – their children, and their children’s children.

There are those who look down on the Igorots’ concept of spirituality, it’s pagan, uncivilized, but to me the thought that a spirit lives in every single living thing around us makes so much more sense than the belief that we humans have dominion over everything around us. The difference in those two sets of beliefs has a lot to do with the destruction of our natural environment, and, in the process, our very own.

To cause so many ill-effects on so many people for the benefit of one, or one family, is wrong. It doesn’t matter that you’re holding a piece of paper that says you own that piece of land, your freedom ends where the freedom of another begins, your rights end where another person’s, or in this case, other people’s rights begin.

And those rights include the right to a healthful, safe environment – indeed, the right to be alive, to live at all. They cannot do that when the water in their wells have dried up because trees that provide hold water have been killed. They are not safe when trees that protect them from landslides and flooding and other natural calamities have been killed.

And who killed them, those trees?

Baguio’s very own congressman figuring in the massacre of hundreds of trees on Mt. Kabuyao says a lot about us. Most of us voted for him, chose him to represent us. He is us. With the way Baguio is today, it would seem like that the choice we made was apt. What he did to Mt. Kabuyao seems to represent what most of us do to the rest of the city – trees are being killed everywhere, garbage is dumped all over, every inch of natural space is being cemented over.

Baguio, our mother, can only take so much abuse. And we have been abusing her for so long now, more so in the last two decades. It’s time we stop, and start thinking of ways to help her recover from all that abuse. And once we have that in our minds, and hearts, we act on them, beginning with choosing leaders who would truly represent our dream of helping our mother get back on her feet. We do that for ourselves today, and tomorrow’s children who would want to play, too, as most of us did not so long ago, in un-fenced and un-gated parks, rest under the shade of majestic pine trees, drink water from unpolluted rivers and springs.

Baguio is weeping, her children have betrayed her. Let’s acknowledge that betrayal, and start making amends.