Honored Chairman and Members of the Société d’Exploration Anthropologique, the unrest in S. province has persisted as long as anyone can remember. The attitude of successive governments to the unrest and sporadic violence in the region can be characterized as indifference at the top and resignation below. The current regime with its progressive agenda would like to pacify and modernize the region. The new First Minister has even made an eloquent and edifying speech to that effect. However, from what I observed, the government is scarcely seen in the interior. The bulk of the province is densely forested; it is far from the capital and, apart from its two population centers, administered in a manner that is little more than nominal. In short, most of the interior along with its denizens remains much as it been probably have been, perhaps for centuries.
Notice the paradox, if you please. While the district is anything but peaceful, it is remarkably stable. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the region which I visited is in a state of perpetual war; but endless wars, such as the one between the sexes, require, fortunately, an infinite number of truces. Resentment and hostility are balanced by fascination and need. In such instances, neither adversary seeks the annihilation of the other. Feuds that endure over generations become normal. The conflict furnishes a structure and a culture that infuses life with meaning. As it is with the perennial grievances of men and women, rich and poor, nobles and commoners, the last generation and the next, so it is, ladies and gentlemen, with the Raktan and Nilham of S. Province.
The origin of their conflict can be understood in two ways: ours or theirs. Our way is to look to the economic substructure that drives events. This analysis makes the matter seem as familiar as the quarrel between Cain and Abel, as simple as disputes ranchers and sodbusters.
The Raktan are patriarchal and live by hunting and fishing while the matriarchal Nilam cultivate crops and raise boars they have managed to domesticate. It is not surprising that each tribe disdains the other’s way of life in contempt. One would expect the Raktan to see the Nilam as too settled to be honorable or to view their clearing of land, burning of fields, and diversion of river water as a threat to their fish and game. It is to be expected that in their raids the Raktan would steal the Nilam’s pigs, that they would tear up crops, and fill in irrigation ditches.
In the same way, it is understandable that the Nilam regard the Raktan as dirty, uncouth, and bloodthirsty, primitives whose raids threaten their livelihood. So, it is no wonder that they respond with raids of their own, sinking Raktan canoes and extirpating the plants from which their neighbors distill poison for their arrows.
As I say, this is how we would account for the state of war between the two tribes. But remember, this war is perpetual and therefore not total. Raids are always on a small scale, carried out by small bands of young men. Not all Nilam fields are destroyed or all their canals filled in; no more than three or four pigs are ever stolen. Nor have the Raktan, so far as I could discover, ever used their poison arrows against the Nilam. The raiders arm themselves with only cudgels and daggers. The Nilam show a corresponding restraint. At most, only two or three of the Raktan’s canoes are staved in, only a few of the curare plants ripped out. The Nilam carry the same weapons as the Raktan, clubs and knives, but neither side seems bent on killing. Victory is defined as a successful punitive expedition, but the victories, like the casualties, are measured by the limited aims. Attacks are intermittent, averaging, I estimate, no more than one every second month.
Before proceeding, I should say a brief word about language. The tribes speak the same tongue; however, there are enough differences to suggest distinct dialects. With your generous support for my expedition, I was able to obtain the services of a translator who knows both dialects, and much else beside. Ms. Ligaya Mahinay is the daughter of a trading family that has been doing business with both tribes since colonial times. She deserves credit for her indispensable contributions to this report.
So, how do the two tribes see things? Not having read Rousseau or Marx, let alone Lévi-Strauss, how do they understand the origin of the enmity that defines their lives? They have their own accounts, and these are at the same time contradictory yet consistent. In short, there is one story with two interpretations. The Raktan and Nilam think in tales, the sort we are accustomed to set aside as myths or legends but which they regard as history. I believe that before dismissing such stories we might reflect with some humility on how much of our own history is a patchwork of uncertain stories which, having heard them repeated our whole lives, we unquestioningly take to be factual.
According to both the Raktan and the Nilam, the two tribes once lived if not in harmony, then mostly in peace, sharing a language and worshiping the same animistic deities. Each tribe tolerated the customs if not the dignity of the other. The Raktan may have understood why the Nilam would choose to be governed by a woman, and the Nilam why the Raktan would elect to be led by a man. Why? Simply because the Raktan look down on farming as feminine, just as the Nilam see hunting as crudely masculine. Though there were always disputes between the two groups, even occasional brawls, the vast forest provided for all.
The Nilam and Raktan agree on the event that ended their peaceful coexistence. The feud began when the Nilam queen Tala and the Raktan chief Datu disappeared on the same night, never to be seen again. The Raktan are certain that Tala seduced Datu, cut his throat as he slept, and buried the corpse deep in the forest. The Nilam are equally sure that Datu abducted and raped Tala, then dismembered her body and threw the remains in the river. Thereafter, the two tribes became enemies and to this day young Nilam and Raktan earn their status by raiding. The Raktan carry out daylight attacks, the Nilam nighttime forays. The former honor bravery and power, the latter esteem stealth and cunning. It is hardly necessary to add that each despises the tactics of the other.
The Nilam believe they are avenging their original queen, the Raktan that they are doing the same for their first chief. In this way, a culture arose which, as I said, is at once disordered and disruptive yet stable and structured. As both tribes define themselves through their enmity, neither can do without the other. And so, they have established what I would like to call a symbiosis of war in S. Province, war within narrow parameters, a war both strive to win yet neither wishes to end.
You have been patient, and I promise I am almost finished. There is only one more thing I have to report.
There is a third version of the story of Tala and Datu. This was told to me by my assistant, Ms. Mahinay. One night, as we were reviewing my notes, she said she had remembered something her grandfather told her when she was little. It was a story about a brave chief and a wise queen. She recalled thinking at the time that her grandfather had made up a fairy tale but that, if she remembered correctly, her Lolo claimed he had been told the story by his father who had heard it from an old woman in S. Province. In the story, as she recalled it, the brave chief and the wise queen ruled over different clans who disliked one another, kept their distance, and never intermarried. One day, the chief came to the river to fish and saw the queen who had come to the river to bathe. The chief fell in love with the queen and she, seeing this strong, upright man looking at her longingly, fell in love with him, too. Aware that they could not marry without outraging their people, they resolved to run away and begin a new life together in a distant part of the forest. He would hunt and she would farm, and their children would learn to do both. Ms. Mahinay couldn’t recollect whether her grandfather said that the couple lived happily ever after. When I asked, she put her hand to her mouth and laughed.
Of course, ladies and gentlemen, there is no way to know which of the three versions of the story is correct or if all are equally imaginary. And yet, in preparing this report on my expedition, I found myself wishing to believe Ms. Mahinay’s grandfather’s love story, that it is not a fairy tale but true history while the versions that govern the lives of the Raktan and Nilam are both toxic, self-serving, and destructive misinterpretations.
Thank you once again for your support and thank you as well for your attention this evening.
To read more stories by the same author, click here
About the Author
Robert Wexelblatt is a professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published ten collections of short stories; two books of essays; two short novels; three books of poems; stories, essays, and poems in a variety of journals, and a novel awarded the Indie Book Awards first prize for fiction.
