Cool winds blew and faint sunlight seeped through the morning when the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, celebrated the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when Mary conceived Jesus Christ free of sin.
The priest’s robes revealed rubber shoes underneath as he hopped over the crevices, where dead branches and dry bones lay, left to further decompose.Cresalie Agosto, the woman leading the pack, pointed to her husband, the lone niche with its face in ruin, its headstone hanging by the little concrete that was left.Over five years have passed since the President’s declaration of war. At least 7,000 have been killed at the hands of police officers alone.
Charly Gacos, 53, was that morning’s leader. He had dug up graves for decades. He was there long before priests or a scrum of photographers came, and he was there even before men like Richie started being buried in the cemetery after the tough-talking President rose to Malacañang. There were many who had been killed back then, he said. The killings slowed down during the pandemic.
Most of the families could not pay. The dead who were buried were their breadwinners – fathers, brothers, sons. Such was the purpose of the mothers’ pilgrimage to the cemetery, a mission to save what their loved ones had become before they were lost forever.EXHUMATION. Flavie Villanueva assists gravediggers in pulling out the remains of the early victims of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
Mariza Hamoy, the mother of 17-year-old Darwin Hamoy, who was shot dead after being told to buy cigarettes in 2016, called Villanueva. She told him she could afford extending the lease, but she would rather have Darwin back home in an urn than have him stay in a boxed tomb she could not even visit during the notoriously crowded day of the dead.As of December 2021, Villanueva has prayed over 44 remains that were exhumed, all of them victims of Duterte’s drug war.
Because hardly any of the police-perpetrated killings resulted in a complaint, the cops involved in the operations have remained in the service, rising in the ranks as their bosses bagged plum positions.SAVED GRAVES. The remains of drug war victims are saved with their gravestones and queued for cremation.
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