Pitied Pipers

The children in Iloilo were taught to fear them like they were a group of Pied

Pipers, but the infanticidic musician from Germany was actually not discriminated

the way the Aetas were.

As a kid, Bernabe Fantilagan was told to stay away from the small and dark-

skinned people who wandered aimlessly into their town from time to time.

“The elders talked of them like they were little spawns of the devil,” said the

50-year-old from Miag-Ao, Ilo-Ilo. According to their stories, the nomadic Aetas

were skilled in hypnotism and often charmed the children and the young adults of

the neighborhood into joining them in their drifting travels through the woods and

towns of the island of Panay.

It’s a fascinating country folk twist on the legend of the Pied Piper of

Europe, who, after using his flute to rid a hamlet of a rat infestation, turned on the

ungrateful townspeople by luring the children into following him to their deaths in

the nearby mountain caves.

“The Aetas just want to trade something in the city market, but they were

looked at as if they would bring the city market people with them on their way

back to the mountains,” he said.

Displaced

Scattered in groups all around the Philippines are its indigenous natives, the

aetas. Short, dark-skinned and sporting kinky hair, the aetas are natural whipping

posts of discrimination of the Malay-descended Filipinos, no matter wherever they

are and however they are known—whether as Ifugaos in the north, as Badjaos in

the south, or as the Ati in Iloilo.

The racial injustice had been there even before the Spanish came.

The book on pre-Spanish period Maragtas has it that 10 datus from Borneo

arrived in Panay when it was still inhabited by the Ati. The foreigners then bought

the island from the aetas, claiming for themselves the rights to the riversides and

the plains, leaving the Ati with the mountains and the hills.

Ironically, this is the same story that backdropped the one celebrated in the

colorful and lively Ati-Atihan and Dinagyang festivals of the Visayan region.

Displaced and alienated in the changing times, the Aetas were forced into a

nomadic island life in Panay, traveling from woodland to woodland hunting for

animals and fruits to eat, and from town to town for barter.

“They couldn’t adapt to the contemporary way of taking up a job, so they

just resorted to trading,” he said. The ati exports included their patented vibrant

textiles, accessories, and herbal medicines, which in turn, got them food and items.

But of course, suspicious stares accompanied the exchange of goods.

A Bad ‘Tradition’

That had dated back even from the pre-Spanish era, to the colonial days, to

up to the modern times—the Ati were the wanderers, barterers, and outsiders they

had always been. Slowly, they’ve tried to adapt—learning to don t-shirts, pants,

and sandals to at least gain acceptance from the other Filipinos.

But that acceptance had been slow to arrive.

It’s been almost a third of the century since Fantilagan had last been in Iloilo

to see first-hand the treatment of the Ati, but the whispered stories about the Pied

Pipers have apparently endured among the folk of Miag-Ao. His generation of

kababayans which have become parents themselves have also adopted the

‘children’s stories’ about the short, kinky-haired and dark-skinned gypsies who

hypnotize and transform naughty kids into becoming one of them.

“I think that this is like a tradition among the people of our town,” says

Fantilagan, who had lived and worked in Manila ever since college. “It’s not good,

but it’s the way the ideas in the rural areas work.”

Had been told of that story, the Pied Piper must have appreciated he was

born looking like every Caucasian child he lured to their doom.

Fantilagan, Arvee 4jrn2