THERE WAS BUT THE DULL porcelain glow of a half-moon over Mount Batal in Sitio Lantad, a legendary communist Shangri-La in the 1980s, located about 60 kilometers east of Cagayan de Oro City.
The provincial government erected a Christmas tree—a dozen strands of rain-proofed lights hung from a bamboo pole topped with a lantern. The tree has remained unlit despite the newly installed solar power technology.
But singing, yes, there was incessant singing, you’d wish to God and Allah and Magbabaya, and the Sto.Niño, or Saint Videoke, Dispenser of Songs, for the end of the sound blight.
On Christmas Eve, the residents laughed while listening to a radio commentator imagining Lantad as the now-and-forever city of bright lights by the fog-covered forests. For their noses continued to gather soot from the kingkilya (improvised kerosene lamps) while slurping the season’s instant noodle soup.
The villagers gathered at midnight over biko, binignit and coffee after prayers at the Roman Catholic Chapel of the Sto. Niño, in the background the warble of a soldier whacked-out on beer and whiskey over the videoke inside the new warehouse.
Christmas Day was still workday. Some women washed clothes at the communal laundry tub and the others spread their coffee beans, corn and peanuts to dry on the cemented basketball court. Some were grinding coffee by a sari-sari store as they swapped critiques on last night’s videoke-thon.
The children were at the pool of rainwater, pulling the strings tied to rather amphibious, candy-colored plastic toy cars—gifts from the 8th Infantry Battalion’s Col. Eric Vinoya.
The rest of the day was spent mostly at the bodega-cum-community hall, where children and adults watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on HBO and later a Jean Claude Van Damme film on VCD, while on the videoke, self-declared bards sang, full blast, songs by 6cyclemind, Renz Verano, Elton John, Bob Marley and Britney Spears.
Once an impregnable natural fortress, Lantad is now linked to the rest of the world by a 21-kilometer road and solar power.
The solar electrification is a component of the Solar Power Technology Support (SPOTS), a Department of Agrarian Reform project which “integrates the development of human resources through trainings in rural enterprise, agribusiness and institutional development with solar power technology.”
The village cooperative handles the pay-for-use enterprise of appliances, like the refrigerator, DVD player, a computer, cable TV and the videoke. The health center also has a refrigerator to store vaccines and first-aid drugs. Some 100 families will soon avail themselves of electricity in their homes.
Two detachments of the 8th IB and paramilitary volunteers of the 23rd IB guard the village—24/7, as they say.
But the soldiers know theirs is an uncanny position.
“We are guarding the people from the rebels who are mostly relatives of the residents here. At iba po ang lukso ng dugo. Dugo sa dugo. Mas mabigat po ang dugo kaysa tubig, alam mo yun,” explains 2Lt. Jonald Fallar, the commanding officer of the Army detachment.
John Maruhom, DAR regional director, said that making Lantad an agrarian reform community was essential to its post-conflict reconstruction. “Most insurgencies find deep anchor in tenurial disputes. That’s why it is important that we gave the farmers here stewardship over their farmlots.”
Yet Flora Lindahay recalled some better aspects of the time when Lantad was a commune: “There was no drunkenness, no gambling, no wife-battering.”
The village used to be the headquarters and training camp of the Front 4B of the Northcentral Mindanao Command of the communist New People’s Army in the 1980s.
Gov. Oscar Moreno is setting his sights on another quest to encourage villagers to bring peace and development into their midst, one remote village at a time.
“We know Lantad is the most difficult of all challenges to local governance. But if Lantad is a success, then all the other conflict areas will be easy,” Moreno said.
