Holy Carabao! Where Have All These Beasts Of Burden Gone?

MANILA, October 27, 2004 (STAR) By Wilson Lee Flores - Please allow me
to vehemently deny the false rumor that I am a carabao thief! Let me
share with you what happened last month at the National Bureau of
Investigation (NBI), when two NBI officers confronted me with the charge
that I, Wilson Flores, had stolen a carabao in a certain barrio in
Pangasinan and therefore violated P.D. 533 or the Anti-Cattle Rustling
Law. They can accuse me of being a tax evader, smuggler, subversive, or
even a rapist, but not the ridiculous charge of stealing a carabao!

I was tempted to yell at the two NBI officers, "You
thick-faced sons of a carabao! This is an injustice! Just because I
don't have the looks of a Tom Cruise, do I look like a carabao thief?
Just because I don't have the billions of San Miguel's Danding Cojuangco
or Zobel de Ayala, do I have to steal a carabao? *&%^#@#%*%#!"

Why be a carabao-napper even? For farm work, milk and free
fertilizers?

They accused me of stealing, but in fact, I'm now gifting the
English vocabulary a new word - carabao-napper. This is not Lito Lapid or
Melanie Marquez's carabao English. Since a person who steals a kid is
called a kidnapper and a person who steals a car is called a carnapper,
then the NBI agents are in effect accusing me of being a carabao-napper,
di ba?

Our semi-feudal and topsy-turvy Philippine society is often
absurd and funny to those who think, and tragic to those who feel,
that's why we often shake our heads like a weary carabao and say, "Only
in the Philippines!"

Don't you think it's carabao shit that many of the bull-headed
high and mighty in politics, the military, police and other sectors are
rarely punished for their milking our state coffers of gazillions? But
how come ordinary citizens like us can be dragged into court for
stealing just one carabao or making "kupit" a few thousand pesos? That
is unfair carabao justice!

My driver said one carabao costs P17,000 in his hometown in
Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya. Holy carabao! That's not even enough for a
night of carousing in a high-class nightclub for many of our wild bulls
and toros in government!

Actually this was an old case filed in 1996, and the only
reason the NBI had only now confronted me with this was due to a friend,
sculptor Juan Sajid Imao and his wife Cielo, who were nominating me for
an award which required that I submit an NBI clearance. When the two NBI
officers asked me to enter their office, and told me there was a slight
problem with my clearance request, I felt like a carabao lost in a roast
beef restaurant! I was worried there might be a crazy guy among our
country's 84-million population with the same name as mine, who was a
rapist, murderer or a big-time funds embezzler.

Thank goodness, there was indeed a certain Wilson Flores of
Pangasinan whose only crime was having stolen a carabao in a rural barrio
in 1996 with a case filed in the Municipal Circuit Trial Court of
Binalonan, Pangasinan! I felt like a carabao who had escaped the
slaughterhouse after asking the two NBI officers, "Do I look stupid
enough to steal a carabao?" The two NBI officers smiled and gave me my
clearance faster than a carabao can shout, "Moo"!

Who was that carabao-napper with the same name as mine in
Pangasinan province? Why did he steal a carabao in 1996? Maybe he just
wanted to eat roast beef carabao! A singer friend of mine heard this
case and asked, "What did the Pangasinan carabao tell the late Elvis
Presley? The animal sang to the tune of the song Love Me Tender - Roast
me tender, roast me true, roast beef carabao!"

Despite our politicians' decades of gross neglect of rural
farmers, farm mechanization in irrigated farms had caused many farmers
to replace carabaos with hand tractors. However, farmers in the uplands
and rain-fed farming regions still favor carabaos. Perhaps because
they're not only easier to direct on high terrains, but because carabaos
use no expensive fuel and also give free fertilizers. Was carabao-napper
Wilson Flores one of the many impoverished farmers now victimized by the
ongoing rampant rice smuggling in this country, forcing him to steal a
carabao for his rice farm out of frustration and desperation?

Our semi-feudal Philippine society is truly a funny place for
those of us who think, but tragic for those who feel. Could it also be
possible to liken this carabao-napper with the same name as mine with
the 19th century character Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's novel Les
Miserables? Jean Valjean was jailed for 19 years by French authorities
and hounded by the law for the petty crime of stealing a loaf of bread,
an act which forever scarred his whole life. Was this carabao-napper a
poor but filial son, whose widowed mother was very sick and who stole the
carabao to give his mother some milk and meat? Did they jail this poor
carabao-napper, and for how many months or years?

Maybe it was uncalled for when I described to the NBI officers
that stealing a carabao was stupid, for this animal represents an asset
and real livelihood possibilities for the many rural poor. About 99
percent of the more than three million carabaos or water buffaloes in
the country are raised and bred by small-hold farmers.

Who Stole All The Tamaraws?

Coincidentally, our fiscal crisis republic just recently
hosted the October 20 to 23 event, "7th World Buffalo Congress", at
Shangri-La Manila. A primemover was the International Buffalo Federation
(IBF). Did our leaders discuss our many carabao problems in the
Philippines, or was this just a series of bull sessions and a grand
party for foreign guests?

In this era of the shrinking pan de sal and the shrinking peso
purchasing power, it is sad that our estimated three million Philippine
carabaos also suffer from declining physical size and growth rate due to
poor breeding practices and other problems. In 1989, then Senator Joseph
Estrada authored one of his few bills - Senate Bill 1165 entitled, "An
Act Creating the Philippine Carabao Center to Propagate and Promote the
Philippine Carabao and for Other Purposes". Erap denied that his support
for the carabaos had anything to do with his supposedly carabao English.
Is this Philippine Carabao Center making a big positive difference to
save the carabaos and help our poor rural farmers?

Another problem of our carabaos is the vanishing Tamaraw
specie, the largest endangered land animal in the Philippines, which has
been stolen from us by our politicians' failure to stop shameless greed
and environmental degradation.

In 1900, American military officers suppressing the Philippine
Revolution organized the "Military Order of the Carabao" at the Army &
Navy Club by the Manila Bay, an organization which today includes
officers of the US military who served in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
In the 1900s when American military forces fought with Filipino
insurgents, there were about 10,000 heads of these unique Tamaraw pygmy
water buffalos freely roaming all over the island province of Mindoro
where the Tamaraws are endemic.

Today, the Tamaraws have been stolen from the landscape of
Mindoro. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
in 1996 listed the Tamaraw as one of the 10 most endangered species on
earth. What is the government and other sectors doing about this grave
crisis?

First studied by Dr. Pierre Heude in 1888, the Tamaraw is a
unique animal a little smaller than the carabao or Asian water buffalo.
The dexterity and strong short legs of its bulky body enable Tamaraws to
traverse through dense tropical jungles or climb up steep mountains.
Tamaraws are unique for their V-shaped horns, while the horns of carabaos
are curve-shaped.

Many people call it wild and aggressive, a favorite prey of
adventurous hunters. Unabated hunting, coupled by the destruction of the
animals' natural habitat drove the declining number of Tamaraws to a few
remote areas in the mountains.

The tragedy of the harassed Tamaraws reminded me of my former
Ateneo teacher Atty. Charlemagne Yu, now president of Empire East Land,
who said he was a former volunteer who taught the Mangyan minority their
legal rights in the face of lowland settlers who drove them into the
mountains.

The 20th century influx of people in Mindoro caused the
indiscriminate hunting of the Tamaraw for food and livelihood. Worse,
thrill-seeking hunters and poachers plundered Mindoro wildlife, with
elite Manila hunters in the 1960s and 1970s using high-powered weapons
to hunt the wild Tamaraws as sport and took home their heads as trophies.

From 10,000 heads in the 1900s, the number of Tamaraws dropped
to only 369 heads by the late 1980s. Reports said that by 1996, Tamaraws
were sighted in only three areas - Mt. Iglit, Mt. Calavite, and the area
of the Sablayon Penal Settlement. Today, there are estimated to be only
20 Tamaraws in the wild. How can we reverse the generations of non-stop
stealing of this unique Tamaraw, which is found only in the Philippines?

Comedy & Tragedy Of Carabao-Napper & Kidnap Victim

In September 2002, Secretary Richard Gordon and this writer
arrived from a China tourism promotions tour. At the airport, his aide
Judee Aguilar showed him a summary of recent crimes which incredibly
included the kidnapping of a certain businessman Wilson Lee Flores in
Butuan City in Mindanao. This kidnap victim paid ransom and was released.
The Tourism Secretary was surprised and I was shocked.

Though I'm not a poor farmer who stole a carabao in rural
Pangasinan and neither am I a wealthy tycoon kidnapped in Mindanao, I
couldn't help but empathize with their tragic plight. What fears,
anguish and untold family sufferings did they endure? These two persons
who shared my name remind me about the fates of those poor fellas who
are punished by their penury and also those hardworking entrepreneurs
whose hard-won success are endangered by criminality.

Why are we no longer shocked by these kinds of negative news?
Why are our leaders so bull-headed, their minds and their rhetoric often
still full of carabao dung and crap? As an ordinary citizen with a
peaceful existence, I am angered by the massive poverty, social
injustice, shameless corruption, rampant criminality and other iniquities
which have seemingly become so normal to our Philippine society.

We should subvert the cynical, inequitable and decaying status
quo with vigorous economic, social, cultural, moral and even political
reforms. We should not allow ourselves to be victims of cruel fate. Let
us radically change the destiny of Philippine society - so that there
shall be no more kidnappings and extortions by corrupt men in uniform or
by bandits in politics, no more swarms of street kids begging at night
under the rains, no more mass exodus of our talented youth overseas. And
also so that there shall be no more poor farmer anywhere in the
Philippines so desperate that he has to steal a carabao!

* * * Thanks for all your messages. Comments and suggestions
are welcome at wilson_lee_flores@yahoo.com,
wilson_lee_flores@hotmail.com, wilson_lee_flores@newyork.com, or P.O. Box
14277, Ortigas Center, Pasig City.

From: lquesada@newsflash.org