{"id":2058,"date":"2021-02-05T11:36:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T11:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/nestor-castro-better-red-than-dead\/"},"modified":"2025-02-03T22:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T22:36:09","slug":"nestor-castro-better-red-than-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/nestor-castro-better-red-than-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Nestor Castro: Better Red Than Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Nestor Castro: Better Red Than Dead<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span>Nick Street<\/a><\/strong>\n \n February 5, 2021<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nester Castro (left), professor of anthropology at the University of the Philippines, holding an English-language Filipino newspaper from 1972, when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in order to secure his grip on power.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMy brother joined the communist guerrilla movement in the Cordillera in 1974,\u201d Castro said when we met at a coffee shop in Manila\u2019s Makati district–with its shopping malls and posh hotels, a spot as unlike the simple villages of the Cordillera as any other in the Philippines.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was arrested in 1975,\u201d said Castro, who related his remarkable stories with a social scientist\u2019s wry detachment. \u201cWhen he was in prison, his comrades were contacting me, asking me to deliver messages. So when I graduated, I went full time into the underground movement, organizing students.\u201d<\/p>\n

The leader of the indigenous movement opposing the Chico River dam project was Macli\u2019ing Dulag, a chieftain of one of the tribes that initiated the peace pact initiative between the Kalinga and other Igorot groups. Dulag soon gained national fame as the voice of the Marcos opposition among the mountain people of the Cordillera.<\/p>\n

Castro met Dulag and spoke of him with great respect.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople from the National Power Corporation came and said to Dulag, \u2018Why are you opposing this project? You don’t even have papers to show that you own the land,\u2019\u201d Castro recalled. \u201cAnd his response was, \u2018How could a piece of paper own the land when it is the land that owns us?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1980, Dulag was killed by a paramilitary group loyal to the Marcos regime. Castro himself was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the regime in 1983.<\/p>\n

Castro said that the syncretistic Catholic culture of CICM, the Belgian Catholic order that took root in the Cordillera during the early 20th century, accommodated left-wing resistance to dictatorship as easily as it incorporated indigenous ritual into the Catholic mass.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was in the underground, we would hold meetings in CICM facilities,\u201d Castro said. \u201cAnd when I was a prisoner, Belgian priests visited me and gave me a gift of a cooking stove because they heard that there was not enough food for the prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Return to “Sapi’s Struggle<\/a>.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen I was in the underground, we would hold meetings in CICM facilities,\u201d Castro said. \u201cAnd when I was a prisoner, Belgian priests visited me and gave me a gift of a cooking stove because they heard that there was not enough food for the prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":881,"featured_media":103405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[72,35],"class_list":["post-2058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-indigenous-spiritualities","tag-nick-street"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNestor Castro: Better Red Than Dead<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/nestor-castro-better-red-than-dead\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nestor Castro: Better Red Than Dead - 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