Jose “Joe” Caramihan was 53 when he breathed his last inside a ramshackle hut where he and two other armed regulars of the Northern Negros Front made their last stand and lost to a far superior opponent, the Philippine Army.
Joe was the eldest among the three rebels who were found dead in a hut on 21 February 21 2025, the first day of hostilities that lasted almost the entire week.
The Pinapugasan battles lasted for about a week, about the same number of days that Escalante City got almost the same attention from the Bacolod-based press and Manila ones decades ago when a massacre happened in the 1980s when this once remote town was one of the hotbeds of the Communist insurgency.
It will never be known if Joe would have, like any father does, asked for a blowout from her eldest daughter, Charlene, who is now working in Cebu City after the Army helped her get a college degree.
“They helped us after Joe died,” Susan, Joe’s wife told DNX after a Holy Mass was heard at the 79th IB headquarters in Bato village in Sagay, a city less than an hour away from the clash site.
Susan was among the relatives of rebels who died on 21 February 2025 in Pinapugasan, a mountain village in Escalante City that was once the propaganda center of the Northern Negros Front, a made up name of Communist terrorists to make it appear that they influence an area roughly the size of a political district.
“Hindi ibig sabihin na tapos na ang labanan tapos na din ang aming ginagampanan para makamit ang kapayapaan (It doesn’t mean that our task to sustain the peace ends when the fighting stops),” Arnel Calaoagan told this reporter as his staff rushed preparations for the Saturday activities that came a day after the Pinapugasan clashes marked its first year last Friday, 21 February 2025.
Calaoagan, a Zamboanga native, is nearing the end of his tour as commanding officer of the 79th “Masaligan (Trustworthy)” IB, the maneuver unit assigned to confront the NNF, but he now feels a deeper obligation to Negrenses not only as an officer, he tells DNX, but also as a father and a son who does not want harm to befall his children nor see parents lose theirs.
“Ako po ay isa ring tatay at sa rin pong ulila (I am also a father and an orphan),” Col. Arnel tells those gathered at his conference table,including Susan and the parents of Ka Jandie, a young woman who was killed with Caramihan.
As he talked to his guests over breakfast, a framed photo of his four daughters can be seen on the commander’s table nearby.
I know how it feels to lose a parent and can understand the pain of losing a child, he says as Jandie’s elderly parents nod and Susan looks, at him intently.
It was a gathering rarely initiated by military commanders, inviting the widow and families of enemies slain in battle but on that day, Col. Arnel wanted the anniversary of Pinapugasan to be a day to mark reconciliation and peace even as hostilities are ongoing on the ground as soldiers chase a few rebel remnants.
In fact, the Holy Mass that day was also offered for the souls of the three dead rebels aside from being a thanksgiving for the heroism of three soldiers and a militiamen who were wounded but survived the initial clash.
“Battles are won by courage and fighting hard but winning the peace takes a different kind of courage,” Col. Arnel says to this reporter after the Mass.
As the Army remains to be the tip of the spear against Communist insurgents, it has also reshaped its approach, combining warfighting with direct community integration through its Community Support Program teams, an all-out approach to winning the hearts and minds of mountain folk who have long been vulnerable to the wiles of the Communist movement that has both armed and unarmed organizers and propagandists in their legal fronts.
Calaoagan, however, sees winning hearts and minds as simply treating those even across the battlefield, especially those they leave behind, as human beings.
That means, for example, helping send the daughters of Caramihan to school with the help of government officials and private stakeholders.
Colonel Arnel might soon leave the province and Pinapugasan might soon be a distant memory for Negrenses but to him, rebuilding lives and peace from the ruins of war is a legacy he can leave behind.
