Maria Lourdes Tison: The Gift of Grounded Pessimism

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MARIA LOURDES ‘LULU’ TISON’S

 journey as a peace advocate startedthe summer after she graduatedfrom college at the Ateneo deManila when she worked for theUnited Nations High Commissionerfor Refugees (UNCHR) at theBataan Refugee Processing Center.She taught English as a SecondLanguage to refugees fromCambodia, Laos and Vietnam priorto their resettlement in the United

States after having ed their war-ravaged countries in the late 1970s.At the end of that summer, she cuther stint in Bataan to return to herhome province of Negros Occidentaland fulll a commitment to theBenedictine Missionary Sisters toteach for a year at St. Scholastica’sAcademy in Bacolod.

Honoring this commitment wasLulu’s way of paying back her alma

mater. But the academia was not hercup of tea. Thus, after a year, she wasback at the Bataan Refugee Camp.And this was where she rst saw thedown-side of utopian revolutions:

“On hindsight, that set me on atrajectory. Because in the refugeecamp, you saw everyone from allclasses, from all sectors of society– a university professor, an army

colonel, a prince, a farmer –all ofthem, victims of the war. All ofthem, refugees. All of them, boatpeople. . . I remember one time I wasat the camp Catholic chapel hearingmass and I happened to look at aVietnamese who was also there tohear mass and whom I knew to bea university professor. And thenI remember thinking, ‘My God –this is what war has made of him.

A refugee! A boat person. Ito pala yung puede mangyari sa giyera (Sothis is what can happen in a war).”After seven years of working withrefugees and learning their stories,Lulu enrolled at the University ofthe Philippines masteral programin Urban and Regional Planning. In1988, she spent a semester away

from school and went back toNegros. It was during this time thatthe military’s counter-insurgencycampaign, Operation Thunderbolt,was at its height and thousands ofinternal refugees were eeing thecountryside. Lulu again saw rst-hand the human cost of armedconict: the exodus of internallydisplaced peoples to the city. ForLulu, it was another moment of

realization:

“Again the human cost (of war) – thedestruction and death, the chaos andlth in the evacuation centers, thehuman misery because of the warthat was raging in the hinterlands– bakit kailangan maging ganito tayo (why do we have to be this way)?Why do people have to be subjectedto this kind of life?”

With others, she assisted theinternal refugees through relief andrehabilitation programs, conductingfeeding programs in temporaryshelters. And they organized“stop the war” campaigns throughadvocacy work and prayer brigades.Three years into their work,they responded to the call of the

Catholic Bishops’ Conference of thePhilippines (CBCP) “to seek peace andpursue it” by establishing Paghiliusa saPaghidaet-Negros.

Since 1988, Paghiliusa has built acommunity of peace-builders inNegros Occidental who help createthe conditions of genuine and lastingpeace both in their province and theentire country through advocacy for

 justice, freedom, integrity of creationand authentic peoples’ development;seek, advocate, and engage in thepeaceful resolution of internal armedconicts; and support community-based initiatives towards these ends.

Direct involvement

In 2001, Lulu was the civil society(CSO) representative that reviewed

Maria Lourdes Tison:

The Gift of Grounded

Pessimism

Lulu Tison: From the ground and of the ground

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the peace agreement between theGovernment of the Philippines (GPH)and the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng

Manggagawa-Pilipinas/RevolutionaryProletarian Army/Alex BoncayaoBrigade (RPM-P/RPA/ABB).

In 2010, she was invited by OPAPPSecretary Teresita Quintos Delesto be a member of the governmentnegotiating peace panel with theCPP/NPA/NDF. She responded withreluctance, questioning her owntechnical competence to do the job.Secretary Deles nonetheless requestedher to y to Manila to attend ameeting. There she met her fellowpanel members.

Lulu continued to question hertechnical competence: “I am notcompetent, that is not my world... yung world ko ay ‘yun sa baba (myworld is at the ground). Throw me inmy world and I will survive becauseI have the skills and the wisdom tonavigate that kind of terrain, but thetable is not my area of competence.”

And the question nagged at her:“What right do I have to decide orrepresent the people in this issue?”But when Secretary Deles asked ifshe was open to it, Lulu rememberedsomething from her years at theAteneo: the exhortation, “ght yourinclinations”. Her inclination wasto say no to a world that she wasnot comfortable in. However, shechose to go against her comfortzone and saw her Jesuit educationmaterializing.

Grounded pessimism

In her two and half years as a memberof the GPH panel, Lulu has alwaysbeen clear about what she stands forand what she needs to contribute tothe peace process. First, she believesthat the government should have a

peace process with its own people andnot just with armed rebel groups. As apeace worker for the last 25 years, shebelieves that government, throughpolicies, programs, and projectimplementation that threaten oractually undercut the human security

of people and communities, couldactually push people to the embraceof the insurgent movement. Second,she rmly stands by the primacyof persons rather than ideologiesand frameworks. She is angered bythose who project themselves as “thesaviors, the messiah of the oppressed,the victims of social injustices”.

“For me, if you are what you claim

to be – that you are their messiah –then the rst thing that you need torespect is their autonomy, the rightto judge for themselves...You have torespect their innate ability to thinkfor themselves and, having thoughtfor themselves, their right to decidewhat is best for them.”

In dening her work, Lulu recalls JohnPaul Lederach’s ideas in his book The

Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul ofBuilding Peace. Peace processes usuallyfocus on reaching an agreement toend the conict without repairingrelationships: government withits citizens, armed groups with thepeople, and government with armedgroups. She cites Lederach’s conceptof the ‘gift of pessimism’, that peoplewho have experienced armed conictare critical of peace accords andapproach the supposed transition topeace with great caution.

Such is particularly true when theconstruction of peace does notinvolve them, and the peace processuses simply a top-down approach.With their absence from the process,it is highly probable that the peoplewill feel alienated with solutionsdictated upon them. In other words,

any social transformation mustinclude them since they are the oneswho understand the context andhistoricity of their own experience.

“I see the wisdom that we need todraw from the ground – it is some

kind of grounded realism. We aregoing to have a peace table, we aregoing to have a peace agreement –sure! But we need to be informed bythe ‘gift of pessimism’ of the peoplewho precisely know how things areon the ground with regard to thisconict.”

She reects that her contribution tothe panel is not technical competence

but the ‘gift of pessimism’ to thework. “It is like the people arespeaking to government through me.”

Reecting on her journey as apeace builder, Lulu recalls her ownnarrative. Because of several turningpoints in her life, nurtured by hereducation, allowed by her family “tobe”, ignited by her experience ofliving among people at the margins

who have largely been invisibleto government, she took the riskto be part of a very difcult peaceproject. She believes that peace willnot happen just because of a signedagreement. The process must engagethe people.

“My life experiences have broughtme to see and realize the genius andthe nobility of our people who, forall intents and purposes, do not havethe political, social and economicresources to be reckoned with bypower holders. It is like river watershaping the rocks. The river watersare my experiences, things that Ihave witnessed that ow throughme, shaping me in the process.Ultimately, I am from the groundand of the ground.” - Ma. Lourdes

Veneracion-Rallonza