By ARMAND GALANG
LAUR, Nueva Ecija – Lolita Guevarra is consumed by envy over what she says is the preferential treatment wealthy crime victims receive from law enforcers, compared to the neglect the poor suffer.
Guevarra is bristling at the snail’s pace of official action on the murder of her husband Pascual, who was shot dead down by a lone gunman a few days after President Benigno Simeon Aquino III took over the presidency last year.
“Yung mga napapanood naming dyan sa TV eh ang dali-dali namang nahuhuli ng mga pumapatay (From what we see on TV, it’s so easy for them to catch killers),” Aling Lolita said, referring to cases of carjacking with homicide where the victims were wealthy businessmen.
Pascual led a group of farmers who were fighting for their rights over 3,100 hectares of land that fall within the perimeters of the military’s Fort Magsaysay in this town. In 1991, then president Corazon Aquino ordered the land distributed to victims of the Mt Pinatubo eruption but none of them availed of the land, which straddles the villages of Sagana, San Isidro and Nauzon.
The Department of Agrarian Reform wants the land distributed to farmer-beneficiaries led by Guevarra, while the army wants it to revert to military control.
This is where things stood when, on July 9, 2010, a lone gunman killed 78-year-old Pascual Guevarra in front of his home in Barangay San Isidro.
In between deep breaths, Aling Lolita lamented that her husband had already been suffering from a heart ailment when he was gunned down. “Me sakit na nga yung matanda, ginanun pa nila (The old man was already suffering from illness and they had to do that to him),” she said.
Senior Supt. Roberto Aliggayu, director of the Nueva Ecija police provincial office (NEPPO), said the case remains “unsolved” but is still in their top priority being the “only Task Force Usig case” in Nueva Ecija. Task Force Usig is the national unit handling extrajudicial killings.
“Our only problem as far as sensational cases are concerned is that Guevarra case,” Aliggayu said.
The case, he said, warrants special attention because it concerns “a person who is believed to be involved in a leftist organization. So we have investigated this for quite sometime and it remains unsolved due to the fact that the leads that we followed di9d not produced good results.”
Since then, 76-year-old Aling Lolita has left the home she and her husband shared and moved in with her daughter, who even considered bringing their case to the media, were it not for a lack of funds.
She appealed to authorities to work hard to deliver justice to Ka Pascual. She said her family does not want any financial damages “but only justice.”
“Nabubuhay kami ng sariling kayod, di umaasa sa iba. Sikap at sikap ang ginawa naming mag-asawa dito (We have relied on no one but ourselves here. We strove and strove to be self-reliant),” Aling Lolita said.
The Guevarras settled here from Barangay Valdez, Floridablanca in Pampanga in 1960 with their three children. Guevarra only finished fifth grade. Despite this, Aling Lolita said, her husband even managed help others. In 1983, he was elected member of the Sangguniang Bayan (town council) of this town where he served for one term. A certificate he earned from a seminar in connection with his job as local legislator is one precious possession that still hangs on their wall.
Guevarra’s grandson Ronnel Viloria, 18, who was shot and wounded after trying to help his grandfather, is still undergoing therapy.
So far, Task Force Guevarra still has no leads on the identity of the gunman.
(This story is part of the VERA Files project “Human Rights Case Watch” supported by The Asia Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development.)