Aetas roam Metro Manila streets hoping for Christmas cheer

MANILA, Philippines — Days before Christmas, Aeta couple Rony Cabalig and Edelyn de la Cruz came down from their mountainside house in Zambales to greet Metro Manila residents hoping for Yuletide cheer.

Roaming around Rizal Avenue in Caloocan City on Thursday, they knocked on people’s hearts to give them a few spare coins so they could collect money to buy seeds for their crops destroyed by Typhoon Karding last September.

Rony also carried a sack of coin banks made of bamboo wood that he harvested from the mountains. He hoped to sell each for P100, but some stingy passersby asked to buy it for half the price.

They had to compete with other Aetas selling the same indigenous craft, a yearly December affair for the ethnolinguistic group hoping to sell their wares in Metro Manila on Christmas.

Rony spread out the bamboo coin banks on the street to show the paintings of flowers and birds – sights they see in the Zambales mountainside – adorned on the wood by Edelyn, who said they had to sell banana blossoms to be able to afford the paint.

Amid calls from authorities not to give alms to indigenous groups going to Metro Manila every Christmas, Rony and Edelyn asked the public not to judge them, and for authorities to extend help.

They said they would not travel to the metro if only they had the means back in the mountains.

“We need help to set up a small store at our house so that we won’t be on the road all the time,” said Edelyn, whose four-year-old son kept squirming loose from her grip and running away to the busy crowd.

Edelyn lamented her struggles both as a mother and farmer: she would carry her son on her back while planting crops such as banana, ginger and cassava.

She said their crops either die due to extreme heat or inclement weather – signs of a changing climate – but in her perspective are indications of the apocalypse.

“We used to have a lot of crops, but they died sometimes of heat, sometimes due to the storm. It’s like judgment day already,” said Edelyn, who described herself a Catholic.

She lamented that the government’s conditional cash transfer program or 4Ps plays favorites because barangay authorities in their area prioritize their indigent relatives.

“You won’t get chosen if you don’t share their surname, even though you share the same hair,” she said, referring to the Aetas’ characteristic curly hair.

They assured the city people that they are not visiting the metro to cause harm or to commit any crime, but only to ask for assistance amid the hard times.

“We do not steal. That is a sin in the eyes of God,” she said.

Just below the Light Rail Transit 1 Monumento station, 19-year-old Bonang Sta. Maria sat on the roadside with her seven-month-old baby and her sister-in-law Carmen Cajobe, who also brought her 10-year-old daughter.

With a plastic cup in front of them that she extends to passersby to ask for coins, Bonang said they did not have any choice but to beg for alms because indigenous peoples like them find difficulty getting employed due to stereotypes.

“We curly-haired ones don’t get hired because they think we are thieves. We are not here to cause harm,” Bonang said.

The Aetas said they are hoping to earn P520 each for their bus fares back to Zambales.

They stayed in Metro Manila streets for a few days until Christmas, which is the day they go back to the mountain, hoping to have earned the money for their next crop season.

Next December, they said they would surely go back to the metro, especially if their hardships don’t improve.

“I hope people won’t judge us and help us instead,” Bonang said.