Juxtaposing Justices: The Spiral of Vendettas and Philippine Frontier State Rule

Since 1987, in the pacifying northeastern Philippines, a number of prominent figures of the political elites have been assassinated. Despite the New People’s Army (armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines) claimed most of the responsibilities, the ordinary Filipinos choose to gossip upon their elites’ grief through the spiral of vendettas – a series of blood feuds exchanged by the local strongmen. The spiral of vendettas is a popular everyday discursive field largely re-constituted by side-walk allegations, street-corner gossips, after-meal mudslinging, in-karaoke scandal-making and drunken rumour-telling as well as not-so-serious pseudo-scientific claims. The spiral of vendettas swirls across everyday life as a truth regime that every discourse has its own ‘who, why and how’ theory and intention. More violence, more discourses; more discourses, more violence! By immersing myself into the spiral of vendettas, this paper will delineate four major killings in terms of actual sites of murder, choice of targets, possible motives, agency, mobilization, context, timing, ramifications and implicated suspects. When pursuing for the run-away culprits and hidden masterminds, the spiral of vendettas manifests an essential tradition-modern dilemma of the Filipino society in which traditional revenge justice collides with the modern judicial system. In the midst of spilling blood, grieving on losses, mourning on deaths, looking for the perpetrators of the crime, filing lawsuits and shedding tears, as the state builders, the strongman-elites are obliged to demonstrate high level of self-restraint. Leading survivor Hon. Mrs. Cristina Sideco Mamba negotiates for forgiveness and stands compassionately by transcending victim experience into new lives and new visions through the syncretized Catholic-Ilocano notion of karma (spirit, fate). Gradually but painfully, the modern notion of rule of law has been instituted into this pacifying frontier.