My father’s hometown is in mourning. This was because one of its sons, Army Special Forces Capt. Clinton Capio, came home unexpectedly last week in a coffin.
Capio, the commanding officer of the special forces regiment (airborne) of the Philippine Army was reported to have perished during a nine-hour firefight with an estimated 80 heavily-armed Abu Sayyaf militants in January 12, 2017.
Army spokesperson Maj. Felimon Tan, Jr. was quoted as saying that Capt. Capio fell when an enemy bullet hit him on the right temple. He was the first casualty of the armed forces for 2017 in the war on terror.
A member of Philippine Military Academy Class of 2006, Capio comes from Amlimay, Buguias in Benguet province—an agricultural town in the highlands that provides a major bulk of the temperate vegetables that serves the Metro Manila market and beyond.
His death brings to mind the fate of 14 SAF officers and men from Benguet and neighboring provinces—all IPs– who were among the 44 police special troopers gunned down in Mamasapano in January 25, 2015.
All were veterans of the Zamboanga siege in 2013 and majority were cited for bravery in action and courage in helping other government units confront an MNLF force comprising of 600 men.
One of the slain officers in the Mamasapano encounter, PS Inspector Gednat Garambas Tabdi was the son of a neighbor in the capital town of La Trinidad.
This young officer left behind (at the time of his death) a pregnant wife in Zamboanga City who asked that her husband be buried in that city.
With news of Capio’s death, my relatives are worried over another PMAer who also chose to be with the army, a nephew named Arwi Chiday Martinez who topped the PMA 2015 class. I assured them that unless he was assigned in Jolo, there is no clear and present danger to the boy.
Besides, I am told that the army always took care that only its experienced officers are in the forefront of hostilities.
In the case of Capio it seemed that while he was wearing a helmet, the bullet that hit him homed in where he was not protected.
Capio and the 14 SAF combatants were not the first from the Cordillera to die in Mindanao. In the 1970s, it was no strange sight in La Trinidad to see a military truck unload coffins of combatants who died in the battlefields of Mindanao.
I also recall my high school teacher, Ornis Macario, who left teaching to join the army and served in Mindanao but has since then retired from the service. But two of his sons I was told followed in his footsteps and are probably still in the service.
Although a tractable people who are peace-loving by nature, the inhabitants of Benguet and the surrounding provinces of Ifugao, Mt. Province and Kalinga are not new to the way of the warrior. In fact, like the IPs of Mindanao, they resisted Spanish colonial rule.
In the Cordillera, men and women in uniform especially those who served in actual combat, are looked up to with esteem, in the same breath as a respected government official or professional. Hence, it is rare for a soldier or a police officer from this region to be involved in anomaly, because of the belief that it brings dishonor not only to the family but to the community. The belief is rooted in the age-old practice of inayan, which in essence probably reflects the universal belief in karma or the fear of retribution.
During WWII, the soldiers and officers of the 66th USAFEE which liberated parts of La Union, Baguio City, the Ilocos and Benguet from the Japanese were mostly IPs, from the Ibaloi and Kankanaey ethnolinguistic groups.
Several of these war veterans were women, two of which are still living in La Trinidad, who served as nurses.
My maternal grandfather himself served with the 66th and was discharged as sergeant after the war. He went on to serve as provincial jail guard and was there when Atty. Ferdinand E. Marcos married Imelda Romualdez at the courtroom of Judge Fernando Ma. Chanco at the Benguet provincial capitol.
It was this grandfather who told me he has not heard of Marcos during the war.
It is probably in the PNP where Cordilleran officers and men are dime a dozen. The chief of the SAF guarding the Bilibid national prisons is an IP from Bontoc, Mt. Province, Chief Supt. Benjamin Lusad.
The PNP’s spokesperson, PCI Kimberly Molitas, herself comes from Kibungan, Benguet. And if fate would have it, Luigi James Banzali Laking, the son of a journalist from Benguet and a housewife from Davao Oriental, will be taking his oath as a police draftee this February.
Cheers!
