What really happened in November 2018?

Talaingod was never a quiet Lumad town. It only appeared quiet to those who were not listening. Long before November 2018, the area was already widely known as a hotbed of CPP–NPA operations. For those of us inside, this was not speculation. Armed struggle, mass organizing, and legal activism did not exist on separate tracks. They moved together, fed into one another, and quietly shaped everyday life of the Ata Manobo.

What made November 2018 different was not that these elements suddenly appeared. They had always been there. What changed was the moment when their connections became visible, pushed into the open by heightened military activity and events that could no longer be managed quietly.

Inside the movement, this coordination was not accidental. It was doctrinal.

In accordance with the CPP Constitution, armed struggle is defined as the main form of struggle, while the legal democratic movement is secondary but indispensable. Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People’s Army was tasked to expand and consolidate its forces across the archipelago. At the same time, both underground and aboveground organizations, in urban and rural areas alike, were expected to grow through all forms of struggle. Patriotic and progressive alliances, sectoral groups, and legal front organizations were not separate from the armed movement. They were part of the same strategy, operating in different terrain, but moving toward the same objective.

This was the framework we worked under.

So when the 56th Infantry "Tatag" Battalion under the  1003rd Infantry Raptor Brigade, 10th Infantry "Agila" Division, Philippine Army was deployed to Talaingod, we already knew what that meant. From the NPA’s perspective, this was not routine troop movement. It was read as a direct challenge to a long-held guerrilla base. Conversations shifted. Orders moved faster. Units under NPA Guerrilla Front 55 and the Sub-Regional Guerrilla Unit of SRC5 began preparing tactical operations. Talaingod was treated as territory that had to be defended.

At the same time, another activity was unfolding. In public, it was called a “solidarity mission for Indigenous Peoples.” Inside the movement, this did not raise questions. We had seen this many times before. These missions were understood as part of an overt campaign linked to base defense. Political engagement and advocacy were not separate from armed activity. They were parallel, coordinated, and meant to reinforce each other.

Within the CPP–NPA–NDFP, collaboration between armed units and legal front organizations was institutionalized. When civilian delegations entered areas considered guerrilla mass bases, facilitation was expected. Security was discreet by design. No armed escorts walking beside visitors. No uniforms in photos. Instead, there was advance coordination, route clearing, intelligence updates, and monitoring from a distance. Inside the movement, this was standard practice. It was not debated. It was assumed.

Days before the clash, instructions circulated from the Regional Party Committee of the Southern Mindanao Regional Committee. The team of France Castro and Satur Ocampo was expected to enter Talaingod. GF 55 and SRGU were tasked to facilitate their movement and security. For us, this was routine. Another operation folded neatly into the larger campaign.

The area was already under heightened military alert. Base defense operations were active. The space between planning and consequence was thin.

Before November 28, government troops and NPA units clashed in the Pantaron Mountain Range in Barangay Palma Gil. There were casualties. One of those killed was Ka Wacky, a platoon commander under the Sub-Regional Guerrilla Unit. Communications were disrupted. In that moment, it became impossible to deny what Talaingod truly was at that point in time. It was not a neutral humanitarian space. It was an active conflict zone.

On the same day, authorities intercepted Castro, Ocampo, and their group.

Inside the movement, the response was not panic. It was adjustment.

A senior Party official, known as Ka Isang, advised SRC5 to secure Lumad students and bring them to UCCP Haran, which functioned as an evacuation center. This was framed internally as evacuation and protection, consistent with earlier bakwit practices. The children were moved from their communities to Davao City and housed at UCCP Haran, where statements and affidavits connected to the unfolding events were later prepared.

For those who know Talaingod’s history, this was not new.

Since the early 2000s, Lumad grievances in the area had been real and unresolved. Land issues, poverty, and lack of access to basic services shaped the ground where organizing took root. Salugpongan schools emerged in this context, blending education with mass organizing. By 2004, Talaingod had become the site of a municipal-level shadow governance structure. Schooling, activism, evacuation, and armed struggle existed within the same ecosystem.

Evacuation was never a one-time response. In 2014, mass bakwit movements had already brought Lumad families and children to UCCP Haran in Davao City. Many stayed for years. For some children, displacement was not an interruption of childhood. It was childhood.

I am not telling this story to interpret court rulings or speculate on legal outcomes. That is not my role.

I am telling this story because I know how the system worked. I know how doctrine translated into action. I know how lines blurred between civilian work and armed struggle. And I know how, in that blur, children were drawn into strategies they did not choose.

In Talaingod, armed struggle, political advocacy, and civilian life were never separate worlds. They intersected every day. November 2018 was the moment when those intersections could no longer be ignored.

This is not legend. It is not rumor.

It is the story of a community long positioned at the center of competing forces, and of children who grew up in the shadow of decisions they did not make.

The call now is not for louder slogans, nor for another generation of children to inherit conflict disguised as advocacy. The call is for protection of Indigenous Peoples that begins with keeping children out of war, politics, and propaganda. It is for education that is truly safe, culturally grounded, and accountable, not education that doubles as recruitment or mobilization. It is for schools that teach children how to think, not what to fight for.

If there is one lesson November 2018 leaves us, it is this. The future of the Ata Manobo and other Indigenous communities will not be secured by placing children at the center of struggle, but by placing their rights, their safety, and their learning above every ideology. Only then can peace become something lived, not merely promised.