From: news@netnews.upenn.edu (USENET News System)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.filipino
Subject: Mt. Pinatubo 2
Date: 31 Aug 92 16:21:38 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.filipino
Organization: University of Pennsylvania


	MAGALANG, Philippines (UPI) -- Apo Serrano gazed into the heavy
afternoon mist toward the mountain that had mothered his people for
centuries. He turned back to the regimented rows of huts in his
evacuation center and wept.
	``I am scared,'' he said, speaking more to the mountain than to those
around him.
	He is not alone.
	Tens of thousands of Serrano's fellow Aetas, members of a dwindling
nomadic tribe, fled their homes on Mount Pinatubo when the peak exploded
in June last year. About 700 died, most of them in evacuation centers.
	A new series of eruptions predicted by scientists, continued flows of
volcanic ash and the inevitable compassion fatigue that stalks the
victims of any crisis threaten to bring more suffering to the gentle
people who have lived through the end of their world.
	Accustomed to hunting, fishing and farming for survival, the Aetas
for the first time now subsist on donated rice and fish in 28 evacuation
centers scattered around Mount Pinatubo.
	Supplies of food and fresh water, already low, are diminishing as
international relief agencies begin to shift their efforts to help
victims of new disasters.
	``In the beginning the aid was pouring in,'' said Dr. Arthur
Odchigue, chief physician at the Ayala-Magalang Evacuation Center, about
30 miles east of the volcano. ``But it has slowed to just a trickle. We
are going to be scaling down our operations here in October and begin
just treating serious cases.''
	The center, which houses about 1,000 Aetas, sits on land loaned by
the government and is scheduled to be closed by March 1993.
	The government is attempting to convince Aetas to transfer to one of
nine resettlement areas. Thousands have moved but many are hesitant,
fearing the unknown.
	A small, dark-skinned people, the Aetas are believed to be
descendants of the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines. Over the
years they have moved further and further into the mountainous north to
avoid lowlanders and migrants who brought new diseases that struck down
thousands of their people.
	More than half the Aeta population was thought to live on Mount
Pinatubo before last year's eruption.
	A quiet wisp of a man with kinky hair the color of steel wool,
Serrano spent most of his 53 years hunting wild pigs with bow and arrow
and farming on the mountain's fertile slopes.
	Then last year the earth began to tremble and dense clouds of sulfur
poured from new cracks in the volcano.
	The Aetas knew outsiders had angered the mountain by trying to build
a road near it and they begged the peak to calm down. But the mountain
ignored them. The rumbling grew worse.
	``My family and neighbors came to me and asked what we should do,''
Serrano said. ``I told them that we needed to leave.
	``They said 'Where are we going to go? Who will help us? This is our
land, our home, we don't belong anywhere else.'''
	The group abandoned its village, farms and livestock three days
before the volcano's first major eruption June 12, 1991. Its members now
are scattered in evacuation centers.
	Despite the warnings and signs of an impending eruption, the
government says about 3,000 Aetas have returned to within the 10-mile
radius danger zone around Mount Pinatubo.
	The move baffles many, but it is nearly impossible for an outsider to
comprehend the Aetas' reverence for the earth and for Mount Pinatubo in
particular. They look on the peak as a god and believe the souls of
their ancestors gather at its summit.
	Aeta men can easily identify at least 450 plants, 75 birds, most of
the snakes, fish, insects and animals in their area, including 20
species of ants, according to the writings of Robert Fox, an American
anthropologist who studied the people in the 1950s.
	Their oral tradition links important events to particular places, or
even a specific rock, tree or stream.
	``For the Aetas, their own surroundings are the silent witness that
gives realism to their history,'' wrote Japanese anthropologist Hiromu
Shimizu in his 1989 book ``Pinatubo Aetas, Continuity and Change.''
	Most, if not all of that history now lies under a heaving layer of
volcanic debris. With a buried past, their future seems lost as well.