TABUK CITY, Kalinga – The province of Kalinga has lost a peacemaking mainstay and a staunch advocate for good governance and the environment with the death of clergyman Luis Aoas from a lingering illness on January 23 at the age of 73. He was buried on January 28.
Aoas, spent the last two decades of his life tirelessly working for the amicable settlement of conflicts and thus preempt violence or negotiating for an end to the violence if this has already broken up and likewise in exploring means to permanently eradicate the tribal war practice in Kalinga.
In an interview in 2001 when he was the main peacemaker of the province being the executive vice chairman of Executive Council for Tribal Affair, Peace and Development, the provincial government’s answer to the rampant tribal violence then, Aoas had rued that Kalingas are set apart from other people by their vindictiveness and their “sin of one, sin of all” practice.
“The flaw in the Kalinga character which offsets his good qualities is his obsession with revenge. The moment something happens to a member of the tribe, he could think of nothing but retaliation. Other people also avenge but the Kalingas are different in that they avenge the sin of Juan on any member of his tribe. Most Kalingas do not want this but are prisoners of an age-old practice,” he had said then.
However, Aaos, a retired minister of the Lutheran Church and a member of the Basao tribe of Tinglayan, Kalinga, had lived to see the day when even the fiercest tribes have become open to amicably settling violent incidents which would have automatically sparked tribal vendetta in the past.
Interviewed in 2018, it was hard for him to believe that the day has come that even the warlike tribes would now allow an incident where blood has been spilled to go unavenged even as he expressed the optimism that it is only a matter of time that the practice of tribal wars, the scourge of life in Kalinga, will become a thing of the past.
Aoas had attributed the newfound restraint of tribes to embroil themselves in armed conflict to practical demands of life among other factors saying that in the case of his tribesmates, they would not want to jeopardize their employment and other economic pursuits by allowing the hotheads among them to make decisions when the sub-tribe is faced with a conflict.
Aoas, the first ever member of the Basao tribe of Tinglayan to earn a degree, added that the awareness that tribal wars have stunted the educational progress of the sub-tribe also factors in the decision-making.
“The dispersal of the members of the sub-tribes has also weakened the Kalinga ‘sin of one, sin of all’ mentality which used to justify hitting any member of the other sub-tribe during a war regardless of personal participation in the act being avenged,” Aoas had said.
Aoas had said that population growth which have forced tribes to look outside the ancestral village for food and better life have also diverted the attention of members to economic pursuits in their new locations away from the old obsession to maintain the honor of the sub-tribe in the community of Kalinga sub-tribes by inflicting more harm whenever provoked.
“The motive of improving one’s life has weakened the ‘sin of one, sin of all’ culture which used to unite sub-tribes like one man whenever aggrieved. This is very important because in cases where vendetta does happen, it no longer involves the whole tribe but just families or clans,” Aoas, a consultant of the Matagoan Bodong Consultative Council, the Tabuk City LGU’s peacemaking arm, until his death, had said.
By contrast, Aoas remained a frustrated anti-corruption advocate to the very end saying trying to minimize corruption in government project a thankless and seemingly hopeless task.
Aoas was the chairman of the Kalinga and Apayao Religious Sector Association (KARSA), an ecumenical group in the province, when it waged a war against corruption in government infrastructure projects notably the multi-billion peso widening and concreting of the road from Tabuk to Bontoc, Mt. Province, one of the Arroyo administration’s so-called SONA projects, starting in 2008.
The group had complained that the time and resources they spent in monitoring practically went to waste as the Ombudsman and the Commission on Audit sat on the complaints they filed making them look like fools.
Further, two members of the KARSA received death threats to the extent the Philippine National Police provided one of the targets with guards. The two clergymen would eventually relocate for their safety.
Aoas had more success in the fight for the environment having led the Kalinga Anti-pollution Action Group (KAPAG) which he co-organized in 2011 in response to information that large scale mining was about to resume in Pasil, Kalinga in forcing the closure of the open dump site of the Bontoc, Mt. Province LGU located along the Chico River. He chaired the group from 2012 to his death.
Through a Writ of Kalikasan petition, the group successfully had the open dump site permanently closed in 2013.
This was considered a significant development because the open dump site which dates back to the late 60s had strained the relations of Kalinga and Mt. Province for a decade as the repeated pleas of the former for its termination was taken for granted by the latter.
Born in Basao, Tinglayan on August 14, 1948, Aoas is survived by wife Victoria and children Stephanie, Lydia, Samuel, and Stephen and their respective families. **By Estanislao C. Albano, Jr.