Rebels of Mindanao Read Online Free PDF

listened to the engineer’s explanation of religion as a business philosophy; she had heard so many versions of hopeful stories in a land where there was mostly bad news.
    When she finally told him, “Excuse me, please, I’m very tired,” and plugged her earpiece back in, he got the message and returned to reading his book.
    Elaiza had found the way to make her own future. Thanks to her good education and excellent language skills, she was fluent not only in English and Tagalog, and had good enough Chinese that she had learned from the kids she cared for, but also knew several local dialects from her home island of Mindanao. Before the embassy job, she had always planned for any eventuality, starting with her first Singapore adventure, which she saw as a step to personal freedom. She would never let herself have to depend on anyone.
    She saw the Philippines not as a developing country, but rather as a disintegrating economy, a banana republic in the purest sense, hamstrung by a primitive infrastructure and arcane attitudes. How could her country make it into the world-class society the forward thinkers visualized? How does one implement structural changes that conflict with the old cultural values? That’s what she had wanted to hear from her President in his speech tomorrow. Professional, living wages would have tobe paid to government bureaucrats and officials to encourage them to be honest, which meant taxes would have to be increased to cover the costs. But higher costs of doing business meant that businesses would relocate elsewhere—Vietnam, China, Bangladesh, anywhere else—putting still more desperate workers into the streets, adding to the growing constituency for the Communists, or worse yet, Muslim Communists.
    In fact, it was being reported that revolution in the Philippines was imminent and that conflict with the Communists and their New Peoples Army, NPA, was near, at the same time that the underpaid and prone-to-insubordination Philippine army was in rebellion against the current president and his regime. She realized that the salaries of even the well-educated were oriented toward bottom feeding; educated professionals could not afford to send their kids to college unless one of the spouses went overseas to earn a few dollars or euros as cleaning women or nurses. So the entire system in the Philippines was ripe for corruption. A small, or larger, cash “facilitation” presented with a wink would ease documents through the system, secure a position for a professional, find a parking place, or clear legal or illegal goods through customs. It was pervasive. No wonder that a junta of old army generals was threatening yet another coup, adding to the less than world-class image of her homeland as seen by the rest of the world. Well, maybe she could help do something about it some day, another reason for her to have taken that electronics course the Americans sent her to. It felt good to do such things, and even better to get paid for it.
    The pilot came back with welcome news: “Good afternoon, we are 114 nautical miles from Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The weather is good; the temperature is 88° F. We will be landing at 1:51 PM local time.” The aircraft was going into its final approach pattern. Before landing, she selected the same tune as before on her iPod, the words so appropriate:
    When approaching an airport a pilot must call at least ten miles before approaching, tick tock, what you do and what you think you can do, what you are and what you do, looking out at pebbles on the dance floor, what you need is what you get, tick tock, dreams rushing, knowing what the end is, dreams rushing in, dance floor
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    Would her dreams come true in the end, she wondered, as they flew in low over the Great Smokey Mountain Range, the deprecating name Filipinos gave to a high stack of trash coincidentally located along the flight path. The dump, home to