Written By Rey Anthony ChiuPhilippine Information Agency
The life of Bohol couple Milagros (52) and Amado (47), former rebels and now government partners in reform could well be translated as miracle of love.
Poor and yet wanting to give a good future to their two children, “Ka Amado†or Francisco Payot left home and family so he could get out of poverty. Along the way, he almost lost it, until love did the rest.
Turning away from the warmth of home, the company of his wife and the joy of being with his two children, Ka Amado drowned the lost comfort with the passion for work. He left home to organize the New People’s Army mass base. He did it knowing it could mean paying with his blood.
In Bohol, the Payots are just some of the 185 persons who, in different stages of their lives, believed a promise told them: equality, land reform, money, security and even free education.
For the Payot’s, the rebel movement gave Amado something that is too good to be refused.
He was told he’d get P3T a month, the rebels would send his two kids to school, the movement would redeem his mortgaged farm lot and if they succeed in toppling the government, there’d be genuine land reform.
Tilling a small lot, Amado knew sending his kids to school is beyond his capacity.
So, joining the movement and leading red fighter units of the Chocolate Hills Command for four years, he soon strengthened his influence and fame as a passionate warrior.
But as years rolled, Ka Amado’s family was even much poorer. The P1T that his family gets is way off the promised P3T.
He slowly realized the promise has not only been empty, it has separated him from his family, a poor Boholano’s very last possession.
While asked to collect revolutionary taxes for the rebels, it dawned upon him that he has also become an oppressor of the poor like his family.
He has always thought of going home, he admitted but he kept the plan to himself.
When the haunting became too heavy and the persistent military calls to peacefully take the way of peace got to him, he decided to go home finally.
In Bohol, instead of going hard against the rebels like then, the military strengthened its civil military operations instead, shared 302nd Brigade Executive Officer Maj. Lao Lucas.
According to 302nd Brigade CMO Officer Maj. Anastacio Suaybaguio Jr., teams joined forces with poverty alleviation community organizers to insurgency affected barangays for a singular vision: to uproot poverty and make people feel the government at work. Such teams directly talked to rebels and succeeded in chipping out the mass base.
Now, Amado and his family has become one of the many who have taken the same paths of peace by responding positively to the government’s call to lay down their arms.
When he realized a silent surrender is not the way to end it all, Amado volunteered to correct the past by joining the government anti-insurgency information campaigns of truth.
Now along with nine former comrades, he speaks where the military conducts civil military operations or where the local government unit conducts civic activities in attempts to rectify the lies they peddled in areas where they once operated as rebels.
He admitted his task earned him threats but that has been a calculated risk since he ran to the hills.
Now, Amado and wife agree that the decision has boded them together as family, their two sons now slowly regaining from the past life.
Tilling a small lot within the military reservation where they are now peacefully settled, life they said has never been made more promising.
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